Woods Are on Fire: New and Selected Poems

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.

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 Dvorák (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.