![[logo] Crest of the University of Wisconsin-Madison](/images/crest.png)
![[logo] Ask a Librarian](/images/ask.png)
« Back to All News Releases
Parallel Press releases 'The Promised Land' by Harriet Brown
Posted 1/22/2004
MADISON, Wis. -- Madison poet Harriet Brown uses the subtle imagery of gardens and growth to evoke and explore family
relationships, Judaism and the process of growing older in The Promised Land, the latest release from the Parallel Press. Brown’s delicate twists of phrase and lush descriptions create a detailed world where readers can see the slow growth of plants and feel the change in family relationships as time passes.
“I think of them as poems about loss and coming to terms with loss; as well as the experiences of growing up Jewish
in America,” Brown said. She writes in “After a Miscarriage”: “Not a forgetting / but a softening, as if the harsh / outlines of loss were growing / over now with something like the tender / grass of spring”. Many of the poems included in The Promised Land were written over the last decade, although several were penned recently.
The 18-poem collection was published as a chapbook, a small format work usually reserved for poetry and essays
employing an affordable and straight-forward design. The chapbooks are published by the Parallel Press, an imprint
of the UW-Madison Libraries. The Promised Land is the 29th chapbook released.
Harriet Brown received a master's in fine arts in creative writing from Brooklyn College, where she studied with John
Ashbery, Susan Fromberg Schaeffer, C.K. Williams and other poets.
Her poems have won many awards, including Grand Prize in The Atlanta Review's International Poetry Competition,
first prize in the Stone Ridge Poetry Society's competition, a New York State CAPS grant and numerous
fellowships to Yaddo. Her nonfiction appears in the New York Times, Glamour, Ms., Health, the Chicago Tribune,
American Girl, and other publications. Her first nonfiction book, The Good-Bye Window: A Year in the Life
of a Day-Care Center, was published in 1998 by the University of Wisconsin Press.
From The Promised Land:
Weeds
Their seeds are in the soil always.
Dig them or yank them up,
spade over them ? they will be back.
The creepers thread roots
through the soil's lacy eyes.
The sprouters love true darkness.
The binders make a weakness
out of strength.
Crown vetch, velvetleaf, creeping Charlie.
Leaves like umbrellas, like hearts,
barbed arrows lifted to the sun.
The ordinary and the obscure
all bound to the same dirt.
Some defend themselves with thorns
and some with flowers.
Some dig their roots deeper
than water. Some make it
to the edge of the known
world before dying back.
Like us, they are all tender
at the start. What they grow into
is another story.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Each Parallel Press chapbook is $10; annual subscriptions
for six are $50. Titles may be ordered by writing:
The Parallel Press
372 Memorial Library
728 State St.
Madison, WI 53706
For information, see their Web site at
http://parallelpress.library.wisc.edu,
or phone (608) 262-2600.
