Zero to Three - (Cave Canem Poetry Prize) by F Douglas Brown (Paperback)

About the Book

Poems on the early life and development of a child (zero to three years) and the transformation of adults through parenting. Poems that paint a composite of the emotional gestational period that extends beyond the womb and exceeds beyond the grave.

Book Synopsis

What started out as a way to address dealing with parenting and, in particular, fatherhood, became a series of poems focused on familial roles and situations that are difficult to articulate, even among family members. The poems in Zero to Three mark both the change in the child and in the father, who is also a son himself. The term "zero to three" derives from the developmental period that many clinicians and pediatricians believe is the most fundamental phase for children whose delicate brains are undergoing drastic and formative change. Research also shows that parents undergo formative change alongside their children during this period from conception to toddler age. These poems do not intend to offer a definitive stance on parenting or fatherhood but, rather, to capture an emotional gestational period that extends beyond the womb and exceeds beyond the grave. They celebrate pop culture and family, as well as lament the anguish and frustration of a parent losing his temper or a parent losing a parent. Ultimately, these poems attempt to sing and dance in the fact that parenting is a wonderful mystery to witness and experience.

Review Quotes

These poems lead us from the birth cry in a hospital delivery room, to dusk and revelry in Spain, to modern-day Florida and history-laden Mississippi where Trayvon Martin and Emmett Till were slain. Even when
what Brown has set out to do is grieve loss, his lines move with a buoyant, marrow-deep music, percussive and rich. They move like 'a train, bound to a destination' and they arrive with 'the crackle lightning makes when it hits.'

--Tracy K. Smith "author of Life on Mars, winner of 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry"

F. Douglas Brown writes on behalf of the families we make and the families that make us. Poets like Robert Hayden and Elizabeth Bishop join lovers and kin in shaping his magnanimous craftsmanship and compassion. The late poet Stanley Kunitz once said he wrote about his life in order to amplify it. Likewise, this engrossing debut makes our world more vivid, transformative, and transcendent. Zero to Three is simply a triumph.--Terrance Hayes "National Book Award Winner, Lighthead"

From the hectic blur of family dynamics amidst raising young children, F. Douglas Brown's Zero to Three reminds us there is much to learn about what shapes parents into better people.--Samantha Duncan "The Rumpus"

These are those rare poems that actually make you feel grateful to be a human and to have been given the privilege to love (and sometimes loathe) oneself and others in the most complicated of ways.--Keetje Kuipers "Poetry Northwest"

About the Author

F. DOUGLAS BROWN is an English teacher at Loyola High School of Los Angeles.