The Gilded Flicker by Joanna Brown

Consider: “for a moment we are swimming together”­­–– nowhere near a body of water. In Joanna Brown’s poetry, compassion and pathos are one. The “we” in her lines, as with Walt Whitman’s, contain multitudes––sometimes a patient, sometimes a child, the speaker’s wife, the unborn, David Buckel, a LGBT pioneer/suicide, two gilded flickers, and always her readers. A fragment of a poem, with a line like “I get lost in their scars,” is emblematic of the depth and risks this poet takes in the striking poems in this remarkable first collection.

–Elaine Sexton, author of Drive 

With poignant lyricism, Joanna Brown’s The Gilded Flicker bears witness to what separates us and what binds us, to the knife’s edge upon which our society lives. Her poems are vibrant and tender, and acutely aware of each passing moment, and it is there, on every page of The Gilded Flicker, that nothing is left unnoticed, unlived, unsung.

–Christopher Kondrich, author of Valuing