At Once: Poems

by Jenny Browne

Jenny Browne delivers a world At Once, in which things happen‹ abundantly. From the opening poem, "For the Morning," from which the book¹s title is drawn, through the very last line "but I didn¹t want / to stop here," At Once portrays both the far-flung and the intimate. With concerns that range from the sudden demise of a morning glory to gymnastics on a train across Kansas, from the death penalty in Texas to Tibetan sky burials, from the excess wedding gifts to the shelf life of mayonnaise, these poems are grounded in the human, in the bloom and wither of daily life with all its surprise, mystery, and disappointment. Through leaps in language, image, and perception, At Once energetically reminds us that in this world of amazing flux and juxtaposition, what happens, matters. As children in a first grade class remind their poetry teacher, pumping their folded hands in the yes, a heart loves and loses and waits and wonders, but in the end what a heart, like time itself, does best "is somehow / keep itself beating like this, Miss. / Mine goes like this."

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

First published October 30, 2003