THE CAIRNS: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS

The Cairns: New and Selected Poems Bill Brown: Author

The Cairns: New and Selected Poems represents over

thirty years of writing and publishing poems, by author

Bill Brown, beginning in the early 1980’s. The title

poem uses cairns, stacked stones, metaphorically: “I

stack words to remember what words alone / can’t say.

The tongue is an eye, a poet wrote, / not just a choking

muscle, fumbling with age. / The earth a grave of lost

words, stones / and children’s bones; a cairn, itself,

crude and holey… .”

Words About The Poetry Of Bill Brown

Bill Brown has been honing his craft and writing some of the most emotionally

engaging poetry available. With this new book, he has achieved what few

contemporary poets have, a voice that is intellectually rigorous and linguistically

accessible. These are poems in which love—desperate, dangerous, and

courageous—brings us here, to this poet’s world, in all its evocative power.

—Kathryn Stripling Byer, Descent

About The Author

Bill Brown is the author of ten

collections of poetry and a writing

textbook on which he collaborated with

Malcolm Glass. During the past thirty

years, he has published hundreds of

poems and articles in college journals,

magazines, and anthologies. In 1999,

Brown wrote and co-produced the

Instructional Television Series, Student

Centered Learning, for Nashville Public

Television. Since 1983, Brown directed

the writing program at Hume-Fogg

Academic High School in Nashville. He

retired from Hume-Fogg in May, 2003

and accepted a part-time lecturer’s

position at Peabody College of

Vanderbilt University. In 1995, the

National Foundation for Advancement

in the Arts named him Distinguished

Teacher in the Arts. He has been a

Scholar in Poetry at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, a Fellow at the Virginia Center for the

Creative Arts, and a two-time recipient of Fellowships in Poetry from the Tennessee Arts

Commission. In 2011, the Tennessee Writers Alliance awarded Brown: Writer of the Year.

Selection From The Cairns: New and Selected Poems

 The Cairns

They’re stacked beside the creek

on a hidden gravel road—patience

and craft, the artful searching,

seeing, chipping, shaping. Mostly

limestone, each rock—millions of years

forming, fossilized, story-filled—itself a cairn.

The hours spent in rugged contemplation,

water burble, wind in leaves, the forest’s sway—

a present for those who pass as the earth

crumbles in time what human hands have made.

I stack words to remember what words alone

can’t say. The tongue is an eye,  a poet wrote,

not just a choking muscle, fumbling with age.

The earth a grave of lost words, stones

and children’s bones; a cairn, itself, crude and holey.

The gift is in the labor , mother taught—

 scraped palms, broken nails, tired backs,

the ordered wonder of shape.

About The Press

at the confluence of culture and creativity

3: A Taos Press is a multicultural and ethically voiced independent publisher

committed to fostering and honoring the work of writers of all cultures.

The publisher is pleased to host readings, book signings, workshops, and

ekphrasis events throughout the year across the United States featuring

its list of contributors.

Our editors and authors may be contacted at www.3taospress.com or at:

3taospress@gmail.com.

Purchasing Information

ISBN: 978-0-9994848-0-7

Publication Date: November, 2018

The Cairns: New and Selected Poems is available directly from the publisher for

$25.00 with free shipping

3: A Taos Press Bookstore: www.3taospress.com

The book also is available from Amazon.

3: A Taos Press

P.O. Box 370627

Denver, CO 80237

Please contact the publisher for special price for classroom sets:

3taospress@gmail.com