What It Takes, Poems by Grey Brown
The poems of Grey Brown's What It Takes offer a hard, unflinching gaze at the cold realities of life and death--work, struggle, birth, passing--and the brief moments of grace they contain.
"There is a physicality in the language of Grey Brown’s poems that is appetizing or sensual—arousing and answering a hunger for insight, music, connection."--Robert Morgan
"At the center of these poems reside the eternally-connected bodies that make up family: a father dying as a granddaughter is born, a mother’s body laboring in birth, a child’s growing body slowly revealing a story of autism. Grey Brown writes of these matters with extraordinary courage and great beauty. She pitches her tent at the entrance to the hermit’s cave, and peers in with her poet’s eye. Here, she finds a kind of redeeming music in the fleeting imagery of small, coherent moments in her own daughter’s life, as well as an appreciation for the day to day struggles of all people with autism and of those who care for them. An important and healing book of poetry."--Kate Daniels
"I admire these poems tremendously, the courage it took to attempt them, and the skill they demanded in order to be brought forth."--Kathryn Stripling Byer
"Grey Brown’s poems are remarkable for their formal poise, their subtlety, and their refusal to settle for easy answers to the complexities of married life and raising children (especially a child with Autism). It’s this inclusivity of mind and heart—this ability to explore ambivalence without diminishing her commitment to self and other, to balance the burden of a mother’s overwhelming love against the burden of a child’s overwhelming need—that makes What It Takes so compelling."--Alan Shapiro
Grey Brown is the author of Staying In, winner of the North Carolina Writers’ Network Chapbook Contest, 1992, and When They Tell Me, Finishing Line Press, 2009. She is the director of the literary arts program for Health Arts Network at Duke Medical Center where she offers writing workshops to patients, visitors and staff. To learn more about Grey’s experience raising a daughter on the autism spectrum and her work in healthcare arts, visit greybrownpoetry.com.
ISBN 978-1936370108, 88 pages, $18.00
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