Emily Vance Brown

Recent Posts

  • “Ovid in Tears” (Poem)

    by Jack Gilbert

    Love is like a garden in the heart, he said.
    They asked him what he meant by garden.
    He explained about gardens. “In the cities,”
    he said, “there are places walled off where color
    and decorum are magnified into a civilization.
    Like a beautiful woman,” he said. How like
    a woman, they asked. He remembered their wives
    and said garden was just a figure of speech,
    then called for drinks all around. Two rounds later
    he was crying. Talking about how Charlemagne 
    couldn’t read but still made a world. About Hagia
    Sophia and putting a round dome on a square
    base after nine hundred years of failure. 
    The hand holding him slipped and he fell.
    “White stone in the white sunlight,” he said
    as they picked him up. “Not the great fires
    built on the edge of the world.” His voice grew 
    fainter as they carried him away. “Both the melody
    and the symphony. The imperfect dancing
    in the beautiful dance. The dance most of all.”

  • Cloud Cuckoo Land (Book Review)

    by Anthony Doerr

    5/5

    To me, this book is flawless. I recently read it for the third time (well, technically, I listened to the audiobook, which I would recommend for a re-reading, although not for a first read). Doerr’s characters are desperately clinging to life, empathetic even in their glaring flaws, and courageous in their own, occasionally misguided, ways. Their worlds are fully fleshed out and whole. With every scene change, I feel like I’ve been transported to the world of the given character. From ancient Constantinople to the prison camps of the Korean War, the book’s settings feel tangible and delicate. It’s clear that the peace provided by the fable will be disrupted at any moment, but this fragility only makes the story and its retellers more precious. 

    Cloud Cuckoo Land is my favorite book to re-read when I’m in a dark place. It’s far from a happy book, but the bittersweet ending always makes me feel grateful to be here, with you, reader, in this bizarre, remarkable world. I’ve never read anything else like it.

  • “Instructions for Traveling West” (Poem)

    by Joy Sullivan

    First, you must realize you’re homesick for all the lives
    you’re not living. Then, you must commit to the road
    and the rising loneliness. To the sincere thrill of coming
    apart. Divorce yourself from routine and control. Instead,
    find a desert and fall in. Take the trail that promises a view.
    Get lost. Break your toes. Bruise your knees. Keep going.
    Watch a purple meadow quiver. Get still. Pet trail dogs.
    Buy the hat. Run out of gas. Befriend strangers.
    Knight yourself every morning for your newborn 
    courage. Give grief her own lullaby. Drink whisky beside
    a hundred-year-old cactus. Honor everything. Pray
    to something unnameable. Fall for someone impractical.
    Reacquaint yourself with desire and all her slender hands.
    Bear beauty for as long as you are able and if you spot
    a stunning warbler glowing like a prism, remind yourself—
    joy is not a trick.