Woods Are on Fire - (Ted Kooser Contemporary Poetry) by Fleda Brown (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

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 and Order, 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 fifty new poems, along with poems selected from seven previous books, showcasing an influential American poet's work over the last few decades.

Review Quotes

"Reading a poem by Brown is a lesson in how to read one's life, how each small thing, each seemingly casual detail, is in fact connected to perceptions and understandings of profound significance that we can all divine if only we calm our vision enough to fully experience the perishing present."--World Literature Today-- (9/8/2016 12:00:00 AM)

"The complexities and complications of the poet who is among and yet stands back, and who understands the limits of life yet yearns and hungers for everything life has within it, are offered in The Woods Are On Fire, and the pleasures and challenges of great poetry can both be found in this necessary book by Fleda Brown."--Adrian Koesters, Split Rock Review

"This is the kind of light-filled book we use to see the world more clearly and make our way forward--and we do it with a poem in each hand, as Kooser recommends."--Julie Larios, Numero Cinq

About the Author

Fleda Brown is professor emerita at the University of Delaware and is a faculty member of the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington. She served as Delaware's poet laureate from 2001 to 2007 and is the author of nine poetry books, including The Devil's Child and Fishing With Blood, and two memoirs, including Driving with Dvořák (Nebraska, 2010). Her work has twice appeared in The Best American Poetry and has won numerous awards, including a Pushcart Prize and the Felix Pollak Prize.