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Nurture trumps nature in Elizabeth Brewster's austerely beautiful poemHer poems vibrate in both time and a timeless zone where the voices of past and present are simultaneously distinct and one.Susan McCaslin, writing for The British Columbia ReviewNature or nurture? A common debate in psychology asking the perennial question: are we born this way or do we become who we are because of the world around us? Today’s poem comes down firmly on the latter side. From the very first line Elizabeth Brewster sets out her stall: we are all ‘made of places’. Exploring the connection between the places we’ve lived and the people we become, Brewster believes that a person’s childhood environment leaves a lasting impression on a person’s sense of self, and how they project that sense to others:People are made of places. They carry with themhints of jungles or mountains, a tropic graceor the cool eyes of sea-gazers. Atmosphere of citieshow different drops from them, like the smell of smogor the almost-not-smell of tulips in the spring,nature tidily plotted in little squareswith a fountain in the centre; museum smell,art also tidily plotted with a guidebook;or the smell of work, glue factories maybe,chromium-plated offices; smell of subwayscrowded at rush hours. Where I come from, people carry woods in their minds, acres of pine woods;blueberry patches in the burned-out bush;wooden farmhouses, old, in need of paint,with yards where hens and chickens circle about,clucking aimlessly; battered schoolhousesbehind which violets grow. Spring and winterare the mind’s chief seasons: ice and the breaking of ice.A door in the mind blows open, and there blowsa frosty wind from fields of snow.Brewster begins her poem with an arresting idea: People are made of places so they will always carry a little of the world around with them. You are the sum of the places you’ve been. In her first line, she makes an association between a person’s identity and where they’ve lived through alliteration; the letter P links people and places strongly together, as the sound of one word intermingles with the other. The first three lines expand and develop this premise by taking us on a tour of grand landscapes, all very different from each other. Whether an imposing mountain range, jungle vista, tropic island, or sea stretching to the horizon as far as the eye can see, the character of a place expresses itself somewhere in the character of the person. Using the word hints, Brewster imagines this as a subtle expression, not overt, nothing to do with clothing, skin colour, or any physical feature like that. More, she’s not suggesting an old sea hand will be a ‘deep’ person, or a mountain dweller ‘hard’ - nothing so direct. Rather Brewster imagines something ineffable in the way a person might gaze outwards, or might hold their posture (grace) as a sign of their history. Call to mind the briny sharpness of the sea wind, waves foaming on sand, the layered complexity of a jungle canopy, a mountain’s patient toughness, or the jagged edge of a rocky ridge. It’s in the qualities of a person felt, rather than seen, that one can faintly detect the marks of lived experience.There's something unpleasant about city atmospheres that cling to people throughout their lives. Restricted spaces, busy schedules, and unnatural smells pervade the city.After this tour of far-flung landscapes, almost reluctantly, Brewster brings us to visit a very different kind of place: the urban environment. Like the ocean or great forests, cities too leave an indelible impression. But unlike great natural landscapes which penetrate deep inside, atmospheres of cities cling to people more superficially, like off-putting smells, a word Brewster repeats until you wrinkle your nose in distaste. A series of olfactory images make cities feel redolent and clammy. Sweat lingers in the smell of work, crowded subways reek with commuters; acrid and industrial smells of smog and nearby factories (glue factories maybe, Brewster speculates) spread in a pall over the city. In this context, even museum smells come across as stale and musty. Brewster undercuts everything with a persistent, sibilant hiss that accentuates the moribund, greasy images: atmosphere of cities… smell of smog… museum smells… smell of subways… rush hours… all give off the sharp tang of sibilance like a sour note hanging in the air. By the end of the verse, it’s hard to detect the qualities that city people carry with them. There’s no hint of grace or of cool calm in Brewster’s city citizens. Instead, while city atmospheres surround people stiflingly, they fail to penetrate and leave no lasting mark on the quality of people’s character beyond a faint, unpleasant odour that drops in their wake.Through accentuating how unnatural cities have become, Brewster comments on the effect of urbanisation on the soul and psyche of our collective humanity. Since 2007, more than 50% of people in the world have lived in cities, in planned, shaped, and unnatural environments, places that plot out every last detail of what to do, where to go, and how to live. If we accept the basic premise of the poem, that people are made of places, there must be a cumulative impact of so many people living in such lifeless, soulless environments. Through a conspicuous repetition of the phrase tidily plotted, Brewster suggests how restrained and constraining city life can be. Nature has no way of expressing itself besides what is permitted by unseen city planners. Natural features and decorative items become symbols of artificiality; art is confined to a museum, a fountain is carefully positioned at the centre of a little square, and plasticky tulips seem subdued, the flowers giving off an almost-not-smell that fails to pep up the flat atmosphere. People are not only disconnected from nature but are themselves constrained in similar ways. When not scurrying to-and-fro on subterranean subways, they are penned up inside chromium plated offices; visually imposing, flashy and stylish, but clad in mirrored chromium that deflects the sun away. Lives are lived according to routines and schedules: factories work to shifts, subways run on timetables, office hours rule inside those chromium towers. A potent symbol of this overly plotted, restrained world is the guidebook used by visitors to the museum. Relying on a guidebook represents simply following a prescribed route to look only at recommended artworks. It’s convenient and easy - and it eliminates the possibility of finding something new just for oneself or feeling the thrill of discovery. If people are made of places, Brewster thinks, then people who live in such prescribed environments find themselves lacking in qualities of creativity, spontaneity, and imagination as might be gained if they lived somewhere less constrained.By contrast, where Brewster comes from is defined by the clean fresh smell of pine forests stretching to the horizon. Born in a logging village, the poet's internal landscape is shaped by the trees and mountains of the Canadian wilderness.You probably won’t be surprised to discover that Brewster was not a city gal! Born in 1922 in Chipman, New Brunswick, she grew up in a remote Canadian logging town, pine forests and mountains blanketing her horizons. In Brewster’s lifetime she published twenty books of poetry, many hearkening back to rural eastern Canada (her 1951 collection was called East Coast, for example). In verse two, she leaves the built city environment behind and teleports us away as far as possible, to the place of her childhood. Where I come from… the second verse begins and, somewhat thanks to the repetition of the poem's title, you can almost hear the nostalgia sing from the page. The word woods repeats twice in the first couple of lines, and a caesura (white space) that indents the start of the second verse creates a physical partition between urban and rural worlds. While it looks like the two parts of the poem should interlock like puzzle pieces, it actually feels as if they’re breaking apart like continents drifting in opposi

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