Literary Analysis— Wrestling with Race, Rage, & Retribution in John Murillo’s “Refusal to Mourn the Deaths of Three Men, by Gunfire, in Brooklyn”

Smith College: ENG 112: Reading Contemporary Poetry — Professor Art Middleton — Dec. 17th, 2024

John Murillo’s “Refusal to Mourn the Deaths of Three Men, by Gunfire, in Brooklyn” uniquely utilizes the sonnet form to explore nuanced feelings around race and police brutality for the contemporary Black American. Murillo created the piece in response to Ishmael Brinsley killing two police officers and then himself in Brooklyn. Brinsley’s actions were an attempt to gain retribution after the ongoing police brutality and violence towards Black Americans. Despite countless examples of police violence, including the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, officers are rarely indicted for their crimes. This inaction spoke to particularly strong feelings of shared rage within the African American community at the time. Murillo, wrestling with his complicated feelings around Brinsley’s actions and the need for substantial change to protect Black Americans, chose to write “Refusal to Mourn” as a crown sonnet. The crown sonnet is a set of 15 sonnets where the first 14 sonnets follow the traditional structure, and the last line of one sonnet opens the subsequent one. However, it also has a 15th sonnet that uses all the first or last lines of the past 14. Historically, the sonnet explored complexities of love but has since expanded to encompass other complex issues. Murillo’s “Refusal to Mourn” is not a love sonnet in the traditional way. Instead, Murillo transforms a historically romantic Eurocentric form to explore the underrepresented feelings of rage and hurt surrounding the modern Black American community. “Refusal to Mourn” ultimately subverts the Eurocentric Crown Sonnet by emphasizing a Black American’s complex emotions around race, rage, and retribution in response to gun violence and police brutality.

“Refusal to Mourn” takes on a distinctively Black perspective not just in its references to Black experiences but also in the speakers’ overall approach to the work, disrupting a legacy of White speakers. Throughout “Refusal to Mourn,” the speaker shares a reverence for their local communities. They describe the “boulevard perfume of beauty shops and roti shacks” (Murillo, "Refusal to Mourn" 38) and the sounds of “funk, calypso, reggaeton, and soul” (38), wondering aloud why “some want [them] dead” (38). The speaker wishes to highlight the beauty of these neighborhoods, not necessarily to prove their merit to the audience, but to juxtapose this beauty with the violence and brutality present in such spaces. The approach of recognizing the beauties and struggles of non-white neighborhoods points to the speaker’s Black experiences and personal struggle to reconcile with the various aspects of their neighborhood. This intentionality is further exemplified in Murillo’s interview with Heidi Seaborn, where he expresses, “My poems engage racism, violence, and systemic injustice because that’s where I live. It’s where we all live. Just some of us don’t have the luxury of turning away” (Murillo, "In Silence and In the Streets: A Conversation with John Murillo".) This statement reflects the subversive nature of “Refusal to Mourn,” where instead of turning away from the complexities of race, as many Eurocentric poets did, the speaker actively provides a profound sense of interiority when wrestling with these ideas. Murillo showcases his intentionality in the nuances of racial inequality and injustice within the speaker’s language and imagery throughout the poem. This speaker, unlike much of the literary world, is unwilling to turn a blind eye and instead calls the audience to interrogate their implicated position in racial injustice through a historically tenuous poetic form. In highlighting the nuances of racial injustice through a new perspective, Murillo reimagines what the sonnet can hold and even teach its audiences.

Additionally, the use of imagery around fire and flames refines the breadth of Black perspective into a specific struggle with rage and violence, critiquing and expanding upon dominant feelings around the Black community. Throughout the work, there are many references to flame and fire. Regardless of the context of these references, there is always an undertone of rage. The first sonnet involves the speaker arriving at the corner store to “cop a light” (Murillo, "Refusal to Mourn" 37). The match, or fire in general, does not yet have an implicated undertone in the poem. However, once the reader sees the live news regarding Brinsley’s actions and notes “You’ve heard this one before. In which there is blood. In which a black man snaps” (38), the matches, and fire in general, take on a different connotation. This transition is partially effective because Murillo returns to this concept of burning and matches after the speaker points to the violence around them, effectively using descriptive language of burning and fire to sandwich the events of the shooting. Once this meaning is associated, whenever the speaker uses fire or burning-related imagery, there is an immediate connection to Black violence and rage. Lines such as “But I want a brick, a window. One good match, to watch it all bloom” (38), “You dream a flare sent up too late against the sky” (39), and “All these matchstick years…” (42), become implicated in the speaker’s feelings as a Black individual with a unique perspective surrounding these issues. Linking flame with aggression and violence also provides insights into a uniquely Black experience, further specifying an interior perspective and indicting the reader. By taking 15 sonnets to stretch out and deeply wrestle with these specific issues, Murillo further expands upon and critiques the association of flame with violence and by proxy, Blackness and violence. The crown sonnet is particularly effective at this as it takes time to break down the various factors and implications of these feelings of rage and violence, both within and surrounding the Black community. Thus, in using the crown sonnet, Murillo takes on contentious feelings around violence and rage through a historically underheard Black perspective.

Finally, the speaker continuously grapples with feelings of empathy and respect for Brinsley, acknowledging that retribution can sometimes create change, but understanding violence itself is not conducive to transforming how one is protected. Retribution arises as a natural continuation of the issues of race and rage within the poem. Murillo, who was at a poetry protest speaking out against police brutality at the time of the shootings, largely wrote “Refusal to Mourn” to grapple with his emotions around the lack of tangible action taken to protect Black Americans from ongoing police brutality. Murillo expresses that while Brinsley’s actions were problematic for many reasons, he empathizes with Brinsley’s choice and could even see himself committing similar acts. After years without any genuine changes, the speaker in “Refusal to Mourn” notes how Brinsley’s “…gun sang loud. Enough to make them all lean in” (46). The speaker also parallels Brinsley’s violent acts with previous riots throughout the poem. They speak of Normandy, Florence, Malcolm X, and the Black Panthers, attempting to place Brinsley’s actions within the greater context of the African American communities' fight for justice and equality. There is an air of respect when the speaker notes these people and movements, yet there is also an ongoing wrestling around how the speaker feels about violence. The last sonnet opens with the line, “But that was when you still believed in fire” (51), suggesting the speaker acknowledges the limitations of violence. While it is valuable to consider that the crown sonnet ends with this piece, the nature of the crown sonnet is that it continues to spiral back into itself, and therefore a conclusion is never reached. Thus, in completing “Refusal to Mourn,” the reader is not offered any neat insights into the Black experience but is instead left to wrestle with issues of race, violence, and the implications of the struggles that result from these topics, namely retribution.

Murillo successfully utilizes a historically Eurocentric poetic form to showcase widely underrepresented and ignored Black experiences and subvert dominant ideas of how minorities should portray themselves by offering no clear conclusion. In “Refusal to Mourn,” retribution serves as a tangible consequence of the struggles with race and violence. Decades of legal inaction to protect Black communities and their rich cultures from police brutality justifiable turns into feelings of rage. This rage manifests in several ways, one being Brinsely’s shooting and another being Murillo’s poem. Yet Murillo’s poem also encourages the reconciliation of the aftermath of these events and the long-term implications of violence. The speaker in “Refusal to Mourn” remains skeptical of violence’s effectiveness in creating change while simultaneously noting its influence in past racial justice movements. The structure of the crown sonnet ensures they never come to a clear-cut conclusion and are left circling back to their previous points or stances. This ambiguity is rarely the case for poems with minority speakers, as dominant audiences often want racial poems tied up to avoid feeling implicated by them. Murillo rejects this norm, embracing the unique capabilities of the crown sonnet to allow his speaker subjecthood in their continual struggle to reconcile with race, rage, and retribution. He encourages the audience to lean in and engage in the struggles of an experience they might not understand, even if it leaves both the speaker and audience in spaces of uncertainty. Ultimately, Murillo uses the crown sonnet to reclaim Black subjecthood and explore issues, including race, rage, and retribution, that otherwise are largely ignored intentionally or out of habit.

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Work Cited

Murillo, John. Interview by Heidi Seaborn "In Silence and In the Streets: A Conversation with John Murillo." June 2020, https://theadroitjournal.org/2020/06/16/a-conversation-with-john-murillo/.

---. Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry. Four Way Books, 2020.