No Other Paradise

Description

"'I am going to keep death from entering this poem, ' Kurt Brown writes in No Other Paradise. These masterful poems are taut with the power of the unspoken. Their urgency is visceral. If the problem of our century is Hegel's dilemma of cognition and the will--the more we know, the less we can act--Brown is searching for a knowledge so imm

Kurt Brown founded of the Aspen Writers' Conference, and Writers' Conferences & Centers (a national association of directors). His poems have appeared in many literary periodicals, and he is the editor of several anthologies including Blues for Bill, for the late William Matthews, from University of Akron Press and his newest (with Harold Schechter), Conversation Pieces: Poems that Talk to Other Poems from Alfred A. Knopf, Everyman's Library Pocket Poets Series. He is the author of six chapbooks and four full-length collections of poetry, including Return of the Prodigals, More Things in Heaven and Earth, Fables from the Ark, and Future Ship. A collection of the poems of Flemish poet Herman de Coninck entitled The Plural of Happiness, which he and his wife translated, was released in the Field Translation Series in 2006.

"At the climax of Kurt Brown's evocative meditations on everything from nature and news to baloney, there is his astonishing title poem. A walk through a teeming cityscape inhabited by the memorable likes of Miss Donna, 'Mystical Astrologist, ' this Whitmanesque celebration of the turbulent here-and-now powerfully conveys Brown's vision of the fleeting, sensory moment, a view summed up in his echoing line: don't let go. - Kimiko Hahn "I am going to keep death from entering this poem," Kurt Brown writes in No Other Paradise. These masterful poems are taut with the power of the unspoken.Their urgency is visceral. If the problem of our century is Hegel's dilemma of cognition and the will--the more we know, the less we can act--Brown is searching for a knowledge so immediate, so free of rhetoric, that our scary responsibilities will open the world up rather than paralyzing us. With a clear eye, zapping wit, and a mind haunted by the unfathomable future, Brown is creating fascinating poetry whose horizons lie far beyond the self. No Other Paradise leaves us in that strangest, richest moment, the human present. --D. Nurkse