Randy Brown's new work includes three extremely short poems. Some are only a few lines in length.
"A literary journal editor once gave me the gift of calling one of my 'micro-poem' experiments a 'koan,'" says Brown. "A 'koan' is a "paradoxical anecdote or riddle a paradoxical anecdote or riddle, intended to provoke enlightenment. Her insight helped me unlock a mystery of my own making—just what was at work in these 'fragments of bird song?'"
"I wrote the poem 'America' after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, but before the civil unrest following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis," he says. "It is a poem that keeps changing on me; every time I think I know what it's about, it shifts on me. I resisted the title, at first—it seemed potentially too on the nose, and maybe a little hackneyed. Now, I think it wouldn't work under any other name."
The three new poems are:
- "daily exercise (haiku)
- "America"
- "I tell my children"
A former newspaper journalist, Brown encourages other poets and veterans to engage in artistic reactions to current events. News-driven poetry markets include, but are not limited to:
