Vol. 1, No. 3
February 2000
Contributor

Lee Ann Brown is a poet and filmmaker. She founded Tender Buttons press in 1989, a press dedicated to publishing experimental women's poetry, with the publication of Bernadette Mayer's Sonnets. Ten years later, in April 1999, her own first full-length collection, Polyverse, appeared in Sun & Moon Press. She has just finished another manuscript called The Sleep That Changed Everything.

Working Notes

These poems represent a range of compositional strategies, spanning between being caught in the Steele Eye of a song, to overhearing (antennas tweaked), and simply transcribing what 'others' say around the her, who is me. She, who is hunter gatherer, who does hunt and peck then a hug around your neck. Basically, I pay attention to my scribble and stay up late putting it all together. I sing more now when I remember how good it feels. I wish people would sing together more, even poems of their own devising. Expecially the scribbled ones in fragment not to throw away.

Ballad

fragment

    (o death)

loved one's
   loved ones

 

we laughed 
            goodbye

 

  generous
        all we can do is
        hold them
  like I held
           wanted to be
do not desert
    us life not yet
we have to hold the other
on to us the living 
     let go

 

 

Campion Cento

Author of light

Break now my heart

Our pleasure sleeps

This place I remember