Overview

Poetry collection by Beth Brown Preston. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Adanna, African American Review, Atticus Review, Birmingham Arts Journal, The Black Scholar, Callaloo, Calyx, Cave Wall, Euphony Journal, Evening Street Review, Free State Review, Hanging Loose, Helix, Illuminations, Muse, Obsidian, Oyster River Pages, Passenger, Pennsylvania Review, Pensive, Potomac Review, Rain Taxi, Seneca Review, Sinister Wisdom, Storm Cellar, Talking River Review, That Literary Review, Vox Populi and numerous other literary and scholarly journals.

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9780971821446

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Reviews

In these poems by Beth Brown Preston evokes the resilience, the joy, the sadness, of life, the many great musicians and singers of the blues and jazz, the great art works by Black painters, the personal triumphs of family and lovers, and the long history of Black Americans. All of this is perceptively, compassionately, and eloquently articulated in her new book of poems, OXYGEN II. Her poems leap from place to place, and span a rainbow of feelings, from desire to heartbreak. In her own words, her book is a ""house built on a foundation of dreams."" And on that foundation, she writes, ""we test the spirited weight of our language."" Brown brings into her work the friends, mentors, fellow poets and artists who have touched her own work as poet and painter. She portrays her mother's bravery in the white world, including her achievement as a painter. Often vividly metaphorical, the poems include both celebration and elegy, both love sustained and love lost, as if the world itself were, in her words, ""a wreath of smoke and stars, / gleaming filaments of light""-the smoke of loss, the light of love. To her work she brings polar opposites such as ""the sound of rain descending / like a chant of dragons"" and ""Ella's voice [...], lyrical and true, soothing as the morning cup of herbal green tea."" Her poems range from childhood experience to the appalling harm of warfare (the bombing of Hiroshima). Gorgeously she offers an apology to a lover: ""Forgive me that so long ago I let you run away / into the dangerous forest of forgetting."" -Reginald Gibbons, author of Young Woman With A Cane

Author Information

Beth Brown Preston is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College and the MFA Writing Program at Goddard College. She has been a CBS Fellow in Writing at the University of Pennsylvania and a Bread Loaf Scholar. Her work has been recognized by the Hudson Valley Writers Center, the Sarah Lawrence Writing Institute, The Writer's Center, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and by A Public Space. OXYGEN II was a finalist for the 2023 Moon City Press Poetry Prize.

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