One of Nashville's homegrown literary treasures, Bill Brown writes poetry that is simultaneously subtle and powerful. He's a poet of everyday epiphanies, with a gift for finding a wealth of meaning in familiar images. Pigeons roosting under a bridge, lichen on a tree—such ordinary sights become platforms for fierce reveries, or for lamenting the harm we inflict on one another. In his new collection Late Winter, he largely abandons the social commentary of his earlier work to explore somber personal themes of mourning and loss. What's lost, recalled / in little fictions I make / to shape the shadows, Brown writes in "Cottonwood," one of the collection's many poems about his rural childhood. Such "little fictions" make up the core of Brown's recent work, and he crafts them with skill and passion.
Thu., Sept. 25, 7 p.m., 2008
