University of Wisconsin Press, 2007 eISBN: 978-0-299-22183-6 | Cloth: 978-0-299-22180-5 | Paper: 978-0-299-22184-3 Library of Congress Classification PS3560.A21534R48 2007 Dewey Decimal Classification 811.54
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | EXCERPT | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
The poems in Reunion insistently turn back toward sources: toward home and the idea of home, toward the body, and toward objects that return us to ourselves. They always surprise, moving from quantum mechanics, wildflowers, and a Bobcat driver to a woman killed by a flying deer, magma becoming rock, and an invasion of flying ants. Fleda Brown deftly unites daily frustrations and suffering with profound psychological, physical, and cosmic questions.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Fleda Brown is Poet Laureate of Delaware, professor of English at the University of Delaware, and author of Breathing In, Breathing Out, winner of the Philip Levine Prize, and The Women Who Loved Elvis All Their Lives. Her poetry has been published in journals including Poetry, Kenyon Review, AmericanPoetry Review, and Georgia Review. This is her sixth collection of poems.
REVIEWS
"From rigorously formalist to prose-poetic, these poems, with their invariably eloquent details, are lessons in sharp observation and what it is to be a woman with a grand heart, a penetrating mind, and not least, a keen wit."—Sydney Lea, author of Ghost Pain
"The neighborly language of local exchange and local enchantment, slipknot and memory, cell-stream and the surgeon's knife, runs like springwater through the poems of Fleda Brown. So perfectly tempered are the apprehensions of metaphor, so cunning are the felicities of form—rhyming as natural as human breath!—we're tempted to think it's not art at all. Except for the radiance, which only art, and a generous mind, can make."—Linda Gregerson
"Things fall apart in these poems—memories, family, and the expanding universe are scattered into pieces, spread across imagination's space. But Brown also seeks to compose—or at least to imply the possibility of—their reunion. Cast in an impressive variety of forms, she manages her signature, magical metamorphoses, poetry soaring at its best, yet, somehow, never leaving the ground it rises from."—Dabney Stuart
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
Acknowledgments 000
I
Canada Anemone 000
I Return to Fayetteville after Twenty Years 000
What It Was Like 000
Biology Lesson 000
Fayetteville Junior High 000
Elegy for Donna 000
The Explanation 000
Knot Tying Lessons: The Slip Knot 000
Makeup Regimen 000
Delaware 000
The Death of Cleone 000
II
Trillium 000
If Names Started Coming Loose 000
Small Boys Fishing under the Bridge 000
Light 000
Red Paint 000
Poverty of Spirit 000
Ode to the Buffman Brothers 000
Knot Tying Lessons: The Clove Hitch 000
Flying Ants 000
For My Daughter's Fortieth Birthday 000
The Moon Is Moving Away 000
No Heron 000
Knot Tying Lessons: The Perfection Knot 000
III
Bladder Campion 000
Perspective Map 000
Mouse 000
Birthday 000
Twelfth Wedding Anniversary Poem 000
Wild Lily of the Valley 000
Rubbing Feet 000
Reading Poetry at the Horse Meadow Senior Center 000
Elegy for a Woman Killed on New London Road by a Flying Deer 000
The Student 000
The Girl Thit Got Struck with Lightning 000
Indian River Inlet, I 000
For Bill, Injured in Final Dress Rehearsal 000
Lady's Slipper 000
Oppressions 000
Through Security 000
Walker 000
Indian River Inlet, II 000
IV
Jack in the Pulpit 000
Knife 000
On a Marble Relief Sculpture of an Unknown Boy, 1865 000
Bridal Veil Falls 000
University of Wisconsin Press, 2007 eISBN: 978-0-299-22183-6 Cloth: 978-0-299-22180-5 Paper: 978-0-299-22184-3
The poems in Reunion insistently turn back toward sources: toward home and the idea of home, toward the body, and toward objects that return us to ourselves. They always surprise, moving from quantum mechanics, wildflowers, and a Bobcat driver to a woman killed by a flying deer, magma becoming rock, and an invasion of flying ants. Fleda Brown deftly unites daily frustrations and suffering with profound psychological, physical, and cosmic questions.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Fleda Brown is Poet Laureate of Delaware, professor of English at the University of Delaware, and author of Breathing In, Breathing Out, winner of the Philip Levine Prize, and The Women Who Loved Elvis All Their Lives. Her poetry has been published in journals including Poetry, Kenyon Review, AmericanPoetry Review, and Georgia Review. This is her sixth collection of poems.
REVIEWS
"From rigorously formalist to prose-poetic, these poems, with their invariably eloquent details, are lessons in sharp observation and what it is to be a woman with a grand heart, a penetrating mind, and not least, a keen wit."—Sydney Lea, author of Ghost Pain
"The neighborly language of local exchange and local enchantment, slipknot and memory, cell-stream and the surgeon's knife, runs like springwater through the poems of Fleda Brown. So perfectly tempered are the apprehensions of metaphor, so cunning are the felicities of form—rhyming as natural as human breath!—we're tempted to think it's not art at all. Except for the radiance, which only art, and a generous mind, can make."—Linda Gregerson
"Things fall apart in these poems—memories, family, and the expanding universe are scattered into pieces, spread across imagination's space. But Brown also seeks to compose—or at least to imply the possibility of—their reunion. Cast in an impressive variety of forms, she manages her signature, magical metamorphoses, poetry soaring at its best, yet, somehow, never leaving the ground it rises from."—Dabney Stuart
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
Acknowledgments 000
I
Canada Anemone 000
I Return to Fayetteville after Twenty Years 000
What It Was Like 000
Biology Lesson 000
Fayetteville Junior High 000
Elegy for Donna 000
The Explanation 000
Knot Tying Lessons: The Slip Knot 000
Makeup Regimen 000
Delaware 000
The Death of Cleone 000
II
Trillium 000
If Names Started Coming Loose 000
Small Boys Fishing under the Bridge 000
Light 000
Red Paint 000
Poverty of Spirit 000
Ode to the Buffman Brothers 000
Knot Tying Lessons: The Clove Hitch 000
Flying Ants 000
For My Daughter's Fortieth Birthday 000
The Moon Is Moving Away 000
No Heron 000
Knot Tying Lessons: The Perfection Knot 000
III
Bladder Campion 000
Perspective Map 000
Mouse 000
Birthday 000
Twelfth Wedding Anniversary Poem 000
Wild Lily of the Valley 000
Rubbing Feet 000
Reading Poetry at the Horse Meadow Senior Center 000
Elegy for a Woman Killed on New London Road by a Flying Deer 000
The Student 000
The Girl Thit Got Struck with Lightning 000
Indian River Inlet, I 000
For Bill, Injured in Final Dress Rehearsal 000
Lady's Slipper 000
Oppressions 000
Through Security 000
Walker 000
Indian River Inlet, II 000
IV
Jack in the Pulpit 000
Knife 000
On a Marble Relief Sculpture of an Unknown Boy, 1865 000
Bridal Veil Falls 000