The Woods Are On Fire

New and Selected Poems

Fleda Brown

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780803294943
• eBook ISBN: 9781496200327
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

The Woods Are On Fire is Fleda Brown's deeply human and intensely felt poetic explorations of her life and world. Her account includes her brain-damaged brother, a rickety family cottage, a puzzling and sometimes frightening father, a timid mother, and the adult life that follows with its loves, divorces, and serious illnesses. Visually and emotionally rich, Brown's poems call on Einstein, Shakespeare, Sophocles, Law andOrder, Elvis, and Beethoven. They stand before the Venus de Milo as well as the moon, as they measure distances between what we make as art and who we are as humans. In wide-ranging forms—from the sestina to prose poems—they focus on the natural world as well as the Delaware legislature and the inauguration of William Jefferson Clinton. The Woods Are On Fire includes nearly fiftynew poems, along with poems selected from seven previous books, showcasing an influential American poet's work overthe last few decades.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction by Ted Kooser
• Backfires
• I. from Fishing with Blood | 1988
• II. from Do Not Peel the Birches | 1993
• III. from Breathing In, Breathing Out | 2002
• IV. from The Women Who Loved Elvis All Their Lives | 2004
• V. from Reunion | 2007
• VI. from Loon Cry: Selected and New Michigan Poems | 2010
• VII. from No Need of Sympathy | 2013
• VIII. New Poems
• About Fleda Brown
• Series List
• Other Works by Fleda Brown