Brown, Fleda 1944-

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Brown, Fleda 1944-
(Fleda Brown Jackson)

PERSONAL:

Born 1944; married Jerry Beasley; children: two. Education: University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, B.A., 1969, M.A., 1976, Ph.D., 1983.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Newark, Delaware.

CAREER:

Poet and educator. Springdale High School, Springdale, AR, teacher, 1970-75; University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, teaching assistant, 1976-78; University of Delaware, Newark, instructor, 1979-85, assistant professor, 1986-90, associate professor, 1991-94, professor, beginning 1995 (retired), also director of Graduate Student Poets in the Schools program; Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma, WA, Rainier Writing Program, teacher.

MEMBER:

Associated Writing Programs, American Poetry Society, Delaware Association of Teachers of English, College English Association, National Council of Teachers of English, Phi Beta Kappa.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Joseph P. Slomovich Memorial Award, 1981, for poetry; President's Award, National Marine Education Association, 1985; for outstanding contribution to marine education; Delaware Arts Council Individual Artist's Fellowship, 1986; Pushcart Prize: Best Poems in Magazines and Journals nominations, eighteen poems, 1987, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1999; James Wright Prize, Mid-American Review, 1992; Poet Laureate of the State of Delaware, 2001—; Porter Fund Literary Prize, Arkansas, 2001; Philip Levine Prize, Anhinga Press, 2001, for Breathing In, Breathing Out; William Allen Creative Nonfiction Award, Journal, 2004, for "Anatomy of a Seizure"; Verna Emery Poetry Prize, for Do Not Peel the Birches; Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award, for Fishing With Blood; Felix Polak Prize, 2005, for Reunion.

WRITINGS:

(Editor, with Dennis Jackson) Critical Essays on D.H. Lawrence, G.K. Hall (Boston, MA), 1988.

Fishing with Blood: Poems, Purdue University Press (West Lafayette, IN), 1988.

The Eleusinian Mysteries ms: Poems, images by Norman Sasowsky, Moment Press (Newark, DE), 1992.

Do Not Peel the Birches (poetry), Purdue University Press (West Lafayette, IN), 1993.

Devil's Child (poetry), Carnegie Mellon University Press (Pittsburgh, PA), 1998.

Breathing In, Breathing Out (poetry), Anhinga Press (Tallahassee, FL), 2002.

The Women Who Loved Elvis All Their Lives: Poems, Carnegie Mellon University Press (Pittsburgh, PA), 2006.

Reunion (poetry), University of Wisconsin Press (Madison, WI), 2007.

Also author of the chapbook The Earliest House, Yarrow, 1993; contributor to periodicals, including Poetry, Kenyon Review, Southern Poetry Review, American Poetry Review, and the Georgia Review.

SIDELIGHTS:

Fleda Brown was appointed Poet Laureate of Delaware and has written several volumes of poetry. In her second collection of poems, Do Not Peel the Birches, Brown writes about the human condition through exploration of the outdoors and activities such as canoeing, hiking, and fishing. Family also inhabits her poems, such as her poem about her aging grandfather and his determination to persevere. Writing in World Literature Today, Mary Kaiser commented that the outdoorsy theme of the poems could "easily sink into triviality" but added that the author "avoids this pitfall … by using the summer-camp background as a quarry of psychological metaphors for exploring human experience."

The Devil's Child is a collection of poetry presented as monologues that tell the story of Barbara, who developed multiple personality disorder after her Satanic parents abused her. In addition to Barbara, monologues are presented by a Catholic priest trying to help her and a poet who hears the story. In a review in Poetry, John Taylor wrote that "this book represents an impressive effort," adding: "It shows how poetry can enter intrepidly into areas more often reserved to the novel: the most sordid aspects of human behavior."

In her collection The Women Who Loved Elvis All Their Lives: Poems, Brown presents poems about Elvis Presley written from different perspectives, including a poem about Elvis reading the famous William Butler Yeats poem "Wild Swans." Kliatt contributor Janis Flint-Ferguson wrote: "The poems raise the issue of what popular culture says about what we value while they recount the images of a man rather than the man himself." Fred Dings, writing in World Literature Today, called The Women Who Loved Elvis All Their Lives "a wonderful book." Dings also wrote: "The emotional truth of this writing is never humid in its intimacy, but it is affecting in its delicacy and restraint, nevertheless."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Kliatt, September, 2004, Janis Flint-Ferguson, review of The Women Who Loved Elvis All Their Lives: Poems, p. 38.

Poetry, January, 2001, John Taylor, review of The Devil's Child, p. 277.

World Literature Today, spring, 1994, Mary Kaiser, review of Do Not Peel the Birches, p. 378; May-August, 2005, Fred Dings, review of The Women Who Loved Elvis All Their Lives, p. 88.