Late Winter

The idea of home, the magic of story, and the healing power of nature inform the poems in Late Winter. Yet, Bill Brown understands that loss and grief, breaking and mending deepen the human experience. "Taking joy, isn't easy," Brown writes, "as if you could ignore lost faces in city streets, or playgrounds littered with broken glass." These poems often mine the darkness of loss, war and our culture's constant barrage of status and style. Even so, in "Dream Letter Lullaby" Brown asks us to "be as hopeful as the hands of children sleeping." His world gives us the right to reclaim our innocence. He knows what every child knows- "A closed heart can't greet a winter sky. Even a rain puddle is filled with it, and a horse trough, and the slow current of creeks." Late Winter opens with a search for home. By the book's end, Brown believes that, with the power of memory and love, home can be born like a covenant in each of us, and that "Some ancient hope, like winter light, is allied with the gravity of stars."