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Fanny Says
An “unleashed love song” to her late grandmother, Nickole Brown’s collection brings her brassy, bawdy, tough-as-new-rope grandmother to life. With hair teased to Jesus, mile-long false eyelashes, and a white Cadillac Eldorado with atomic-red leather seats, Fanny is not your typical granny rocking in a chair. Instead, think of a character that looks a lot like Eva Gabor in Green Acres, but darkened with a shadow of Flannery O’Connor. A cross-genre collection that reads like a novel, this book is both a collection of oral history and a lyrical and moving biography that wrestles with the complexities of the South, including poverty, racism, and domestic violence.
136 pages, Paperback
First published April 7, 2015
7 people are currently reading
147 people want to read
About the author
Nickole Brown
18 books60 followersNickole Brown received her MFA from the Vermont College, studied literature at Oxford University, and was the editorial assistant for the late Hunter S. Thompson. She worked at Sarabande Books for ten years. Her first collection, Sister, a novel-in-poems, was first published in 2007 by Red Hen Press and a new edition was reissued by Sibling Rivalry Press in 2018. Her second book, a biography-in-poems called Fanny Says, came out from BOA Editions in 2015 and won the Weatherford Award for Appalachian Poetry. The audio book of that collection came out in 2017. Her poems have, among other places, appeared in The New York Times, The Oxford American, Poetry International, Gulf Coast, and The Best American Poetry 2017. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Kentucky Foundation for Women, and the Kentucky Arts Council. She was an Assistant Professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock for four years until she gave up her beloved time in the classroom in hope of writing full time. Currently, she is the Editor for the Marie Alexander Poetry Series and teaches periodically at a number of places, including the Sewanee School of Letters MFA Program, the Great Smokies Writing Program at UNCA, Poets House, the Poetry Center at Smith College, the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, and the Hindman Settlement School. She lives with her wife, poet Jessica Jacobs, in Asheville, North Carolina, where she volunteers at four different animal sanctuaries. She’s at work on a bestiary of sorts about these animals, and a chapbook of those poems called To Those Who Were Our First Gods recently won the 2018 Rattle Chapbook Prize.
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
July 14, 2015
Well folks, I am just deeply and rapturously in love with this dang book. Nickole sings my family's songs (despite Fanny's departures from my own Nanna - Pepsi, not Coke, White Castle, not Krystal, and... cursing) and addresses both nostalgic Southern pigheadedness and her own tragedy and heartbreak with precise, crystalline poetry. I will read this many more times, and I will give it to anyone who will listen (especially my mama).
November 4, 2024
I love Nickole Brown and I love my own dearly departed grandmother, so needless to say, I was extremely excited to read this book. It did not, of course, disappoint.
This book provides a real and thorough look at Brown's grandmother, clearly an important woman in her life. There are no stones left unturned, whether they are beautiful or hard to look at.
Highly recommend this (and all of Brown's books)!
This book provides a real and thorough look at Brown's grandmother, clearly an important woman in her life. There are no stones left unturned, whether they are beautiful or hard to look at.
Highly recommend this (and all of Brown's books)!
April 11, 2024
This is so deeply moving. The dialect is perfectly portrayed in the writing and I loved the language and like breaks. The topics written about, from marriage to grocery shopping, were touching.
September 16, 2020
Often, the very best poetry defies categorization: Nickole Brown’s latest collection, Fanny Says, is at once a work of lyric mastery and a biography-in-poems, a genre-bending marriage of storytelling and poetic artistry. Fanny Says is a monument to the poet’s grandmother, the titular Fanny, a bold, brazen, and sometimes deeply flawed Southern woman. Brown juxtaposes poems about her grandmother’s life with those composed only of Fanny’s words, with a hearty helping of Brown’s own story in the mix. As the poet grows up, she learns more about life, her family, and herself, so just as Fanny Says is a biography of her grandmother, it’s also a coming-of-age and coming-out narrative of Brown’s own.
Brown’s career in poetry mixed with her background in fiction is abundantly clear in this collection. Her strength lies in the lyricism of storytelling, in the making of a memory into a poem, sacrificing none of the complexity in the process. These poems orbit the quotidian as they lend symbolic meaning to everyday objects, special because of how Fanny used them, like in “Pepsi,” “Clorox,” and “Crisco.” Brown’s characterization of her grandmother emerges in these poems, which are at once character studies of Fanny, testaments to growing up in the South, and the emotions and impressions of Brown herself. In “Pepsi,” about Fanny’s love for, well, Pepsi, Brown writes, “Well, Pepsi was good enough for Joan Crawford, / Pepsi was a bitch who knew how to ash with two taps from a two-inch filter, / not one nicotine stain on her manicured hands.”
But Fanny’s story is as heartbreaking as she is hilarious. The edges of her narrative, particularly where it converges with the poet’s, are rimmed with the bruises of domestic violence as well as grief as Fanny grows old and passes away, never knowing the truth of her granddaughter’s sexual identity. In one poem, Fanny asks, “You ain’t a lesbian, are you?” And after a brief implied pause, adds, “Well, okay. I’m just checking.” This is one of the painful facets of Fanny’s legacy that Brown explores through the act of writing. She must find herself, grieve her grandmother, and deal with the traumas of being a woman that she inherits from her foremothers. The poet’s heart must break again and again to process the life of a loved one, and the reader’s heart breaks along with it.
Brown clearly doesn’t shrink from hard truths. Her grandmother was, at times, as racist to Black folks as she was loving to her family, throwing around the n-word like it wasn’t a shocking pejorative but a fact of life. In “A Genealogy of the Word,” Fanny’s genteel, friendly behavior towards her maid, Bernie May, is belied by what Nickole observes when Fanny doesn’t know that she’s looking. “I want to say she loved Bernie,” writes Brown, “but she often counted / the bath towels after she was gone.” The poet must confront this side of Fanny in order to do her justice, and she must confront her own fears of becoming like her grandmother: tough, loving, but with a poisonous streak. She must condemn the worst part of a loved one to stay faithful to the truth.
Brown does her grandmother justice by portraying her with what feels to the reader as accuracy and compassion, musing on her boundless love and courage as well as the disturbing facets of her identity as a white Southern woman in the twentieth century. Ultimately, these poems ring with truth, and the truth, as they say, too often hurts, but that’s the beauty of a story well-told. It can be difficult to successfully merge narrative with lyric poetry, but Brown does it. Those of us who write, or read, or simply live, can learn much from her.
Brown’s career in poetry mixed with her background in fiction is abundantly clear in this collection. Her strength lies in the lyricism of storytelling, in the making of a memory into a poem, sacrificing none of the complexity in the process. These poems orbit the quotidian as they lend symbolic meaning to everyday objects, special because of how Fanny used them, like in “Pepsi,” “Clorox,” and “Crisco.” Brown’s characterization of her grandmother emerges in these poems, which are at once character studies of Fanny, testaments to growing up in the South, and the emotions and impressions of Brown herself. In “Pepsi,” about Fanny’s love for, well, Pepsi, Brown writes, “Well, Pepsi was good enough for Joan Crawford, / Pepsi was a bitch who knew how to ash with two taps from a two-inch filter, / not one nicotine stain on her manicured hands.”
But Fanny’s story is as heartbreaking as she is hilarious. The edges of her narrative, particularly where it converges with the poet’s, are rimmed with the bruises of domestic violence as well as grief as Fanny grows old and passes away, never knowing the truth of her granddaughter’s sexual identity. In one poem, Fanny asks, “You ain’t a lesbian, are you?” And after a brief implied pause, adds, “Well, okay. I’m just checking.” This is one of the painful facets of Fanny’s legacy that Brown explores through the act of writing. She must find herself, grieve her grandmother, and deal with the traumas of being a woman that she inherits from her foremothers. The poet’s heart must break again and again to process the life of a loved one, and the reader’s heart breaks along with it.
Brown clearly doesn’t shrink from hard truths. Her grandmother was, at times, as racist to Black folks as she was loving to her family, throwing around the n-word like it wasn’t a shocking pejorative but a fact of life. In “A Genealogy of the Word,” Fanny’s genteel, friendly behavior towards her maid, Bernie May, is belied by what Nickole observes when Fanny doesn’t know that she’s looking. “I want to say she loved Bernie,” writes Brown, “but she often counted / the bath towels after she was gone.” The poet must confront this side of Fanny in order to do her justice, and she must confront her own fears of becoming like her grandmother: tough, loving, but with a poisonous streak. She must condemn the worst part of a loved one to stay faithful to the truth.
Brown does her grandmother justice by portraying her with what feels to the reader as accuracy and compassion, musing on her boundless love and courage as well as the disturbing facets of her identity as a white Southern woman in the twentieth century. Ultimately, these poems ring with truth, and the truth, as they say, too often hurts, but that’s the beauty of a story well-told. It can be difficult to successfully merge narrative with lyric poetry, but Brown does it. Those of us who write, or read, or simply live, can learn much from her.
August 14, 2021
(Two five-star reads in the same week?!? This has never happened to me before.)
Fanny Says describes itself as a cross-genre collection, both poetry and biography. It contains some of the most beautiful, evocative writing I've ever encountered in my life. When I'm chasing that knock-you-to-your-knees, soul-shaking feeling I only get from a select few poetry collections, this is what I'm looking for.
Brown's poetry is clear, gripping, and vivid. Most poems begin simply, domestically, before bringing the reader to such emotional heights that the experience is utterly unforgettable. I'm sure I'll be thinking about this collection for many years to come, as sure as I am that I'll return to it to give it a reread every now and then.
Of course, just as important as Brown's mastery of poetry is her obvious, deep connection to her subject... her late grandmother, Fanny Lee Cox.
Much of this collection takes place around Louisville, Kentucky, which is where Fanny spent much of her life and which is only about three hours northeast of where I grew up. And perhaps this, along with Brown's gorgeous writing, is why I connected with this collection on a deeper level than I connect with a lot of poetry collections. Fanny was her own specific person, of course, but she also felt like a portrait of so many of the women I've loved and who've loved me. Fanny's characterization as a brash, vulgar, deeply loving and deeply protective, Pepsi-addicted, gun-toting woman is so clear throughout the text that I felt like I knew her by the time I was finished reading. (And I suppose, in many ways, I did.)
Fanny Says describes itself as a cross-genre collection, both poetry and biography. It contains some of the most beautiful, evocative writing I've ever encountered in my life. When I'm chasing that knock-you-to-your-knees, soul-shaking feeling I only get from a select few poetry collections, this is what I'm looking for.
Brown's poetry is clear, gripping, and vivid. Most poems begin simply, domestically, before bringing the reader to such emotional heights that the experience is utterly unforgettable. I'm sure I'll be thinking about this collection for many years to come, as sure as I am that I'll return to it to give it a reread every now and then.
Of course, just as important as Brown's mastery of poetry is her obvious, deep connection to her subject... her late grandmother, Fanny Lee Cox.
Much of this collection takes place around Louisville, Kentucky, which is where Fanny spent much of her life and which is only about three hours northeast of where I grew up. And perhaps this, along with Brown's gorgeous writing, is why I connected with this collection on a deeper level than I connect with a lot of poetry collections. Fanny was her own specific person, of course, but she also felt like a portrait of so many of the women I've loved and who've loved me. Fanny's characterization as a brash, vulgar, deeply loving and deeply protective, Pepsi-addicted, gun-toting woman is so clear throughout the text that I felt like I knew her by the time I was finished reading. (And I suppose, in many ways, I did.)
April 5, 2023
Pepsi knew how to stroll in Italian heels, how to pin a hairpiece / at her crown and let it waterfall into an aerosol nest / of natural, how to glue a strip of lashes to her you-got-that-right wink, / knowing how easy it is to get a man / and just how hard he is to keep.
I don't take pictures, she said. It just makes me sad, / and if anything ever did happen / to one of the kids, I don't want to be left / staring at their face.
See it was such a different time; necessity meant you ate / even the little things you loved. Aunt Lonni, she had chickens, / and she killed hers.
I was, curled up and hiding in that woolen nest / behind the driver's seat. Up front, my matriarchal line / laughed and cussed and flicked so many cigarettes / we were our own comet, / tiny red stars sparking down that road.
What's lovely in this world is no more impossible / than what's not--
Fanny, tell me: / How can manufactured particles carry you / through the air?
I don't take pictures, she said. It just makes me sad, / and if anything ever did happen / to one of the kids, I don't want to be left / staring at their face.
See it was such a different time; necessity meant you ate / even the little things you loved. Aunt Lonni, she had chickens, / and she killed hers.
I was, curled up and hiding in that woolen nest / behind the driver's seat. Up front, my matriarchal line / laughed and cussed and flicked so many cigarettes / we were our own comet, / tiny red stars sparking down that road.
What's lovely in this world is no more impossible / than what's not--
Fanny, tell me: / How can manufactured particles carry you / through the air?
December 11, 2017
What a beautiful book. Poems and prose all focusing on (or even in the voice of) Brown’s grandmother, Fanny, the book does an incredible job of building out Fanny’s personality, life, and relationship to the speaker. I truly felt like I got a glimpse of the real Fanny, and that through Brown’s careful eye and attention to detail and especially diction (the words in this book are dripping with character and heft) I know her better than I know most people in my life. What a love letter to a family member, one that celebrates their history and the way they shaped those who live beyond them, without glossing over the harder edges people can be built upon. A stunning book that is, and I don’t say this kind of thing lightly at all, bursting with love. And it is a total privilege that we as readers can experience it.
March 16, 2018
These poems. This book. I just--wow.
Okay, to be more coherent: I hesitated starting this one because, you know, grandma poems, which was stupid on my part because I know Nickole is a fantastic poet.
I read the book slowly, a few pages per sitting, just to savor the journey. The poems map out such a rich portrait of the title character but also of the setting and the complicated webwork of family and other attachments. And then, toward the end, the whole thing just rises up into another dimension, like an actual city mapped so intricately and with such care that it just grows into a territory that the reader physically *inhabits*--I don't know how else to describe it. Masterful poems, achingly smart and beautiful and so laden with longing, they just took my breath away.
Okay, to be more coherent: I hesitated starting this one because, you know, grandma poems, which was stupid on my part because I know Nickole is a fantastic poet.
I read the book slowly, a few pages per sitting, just to savor the journey. The poems map out such a rich portrait of the title character but also of the setting and the complicated webwork of family and other attachments. And then, toward the end, the whole thing just rises up into another dimension, like an actual city mapped so intricately and with such care that it just grows into a territory that the reader physically *inhabits*--I don't know how else to describe it. Masterful poems, achingly smart and beautiful and so laden with longing, they just took my breath away.
January 27, 2026
I do not know where this poetry book came from. It just appeared on my bed one day, and no one in the house could tell me how it got there. I flipped it open, saw the first poem was titled the F word and almost threw it out. But I paused. I'm glad I did. This is a poetry collection of love, celebrating the life of her grandmother: a spirited Southern woman who called those she love F-er (hence the name of the first poem). While I was reading it, it stirred up a lot of memories of my childhood and family. Her grandmother sounds like a complicated but fabulous person. I'll read this collection again.
July 31, 2017
I don't often read poetry, but when I do, I love poetry like this. Each poem is a biographical sketch of a fascinating character, the author's grandmother Fanny. I loved getting to meet Fanny. Brown did a great job of capturing a spirit. The book was at turns funny, sad, dark, light, and poignant. It was a fast read and I hated to get to the last section, in which Fanny is in decline and dies. A rich, in-depth, satisfying read.
December 10, 2018
Brutally honest, beautifully composed, and completely enveloping. I love Nikole Brown’s poetry. “Fanny Says” paints the portrait of her proud grandmother as though she is in the room, simultaneously cursing you and giving you valuable advice. A voice of distinction, Nikole Brown is such a gifted artist with a wonderful voice.
January 17, 2019
I really enjoy Nickole Brown's poetry. She uses a variety of forms, but always tells a story, using simple yet evocative language and compelling metaphors. The book is about her grandmother, and I really liked how she talked about her grandmother, putting her in context but not letting her off the hook.
November 7, 2021
A beautiful tribute that engages with home, belonging, identity, poverty, racism, sexism, religion, love, and loss. The forms and long lines are interesting, to study how story and poetic movements shape on the page and in the mind of the reader. Excellent collection.
June 14, 2024
Okay, you write it. I’ll read it. This was beautiful and funny and sad and vulnerable. And lovely.
And I have to say, more than a few southernisms have keeps into this central Illinois woman’s linguistic upbringing.
And I have to say, more than a few southernisms have keeps into this central Illinois woman’s linguistic upbringing.
August 24, 2017
Lovely bawdy Fanny tells it like it is.
February 10, 2018
Daring, shocking - beautiful. This collection will leave you begging for more with it's inspired approach and larger than life grandmother.
April 25, 2021
Outstanding collection
June 5, 2022
Fantastic! Not just a few good moments. A whole narrative of cohensive greatness. Nothing like Nazi Hikmet but I haven’t read poetry I liked this much since then.
March 18, 2017
These poems wrecked me. I laughed out loud and I sobbed in public. I feel Fanny is a part of my life now, and she reminds me so much of my own grandmother it hurts. This book really is a love song. Thank you Nickole for sharing it.
January 4, 2017
Part biography, part reflection, part loss, part love letter, part Southern life. It's imbued with Franny's voice, her life, advice, and customs she passed on to her granddaughter. I especially loved hearing her linguistic nuances and the expectations she had for being a woman.
January 26, 2016
Grandma was a product of her time; Brown is a product of her grandma. The poems tell their story.
This collection of sassy, moving poems turns on two axes: the geography of Southern womanhood and the lingua franca of Frances Lee, a/k/a Fanny, Brown's grandmother. Fanny drinks Pepsi, affectionately calls people "fuckers," dispenses horrible advice, and wears her hair all the way up to Jesus. At first blush you might be tempted to dismiss Fanny as Southern trash; dig a little deeper, though, and you find out how trash gets made, as well as how it gets recycled. The narrative timeline dips back and forth to different times in Fanny's life and death. Brown gives us the facts, and then the facts underneath the facts, showing how complicated families can be. Even after death, Fanny is very much alive, now a cherished ancestor from whom Brown can draw strength.
These poems are rooted in Fanny's singular vocabulary. Like many people, she makes up words, pronounces words wrong, and uses words in certain ways that mean special things only to certain people. It's like a dictionary, or phrasebook. All of these linguistic maneuverings weave a web that leads you to the spider in the middle: "Genealogy of the Word," which unpacks some ugly, unavoidable truths that can't be gentled, no matter how likeable or otherwise sympathetic Fanny is And yet, for all her flaws, she was no better than the culture that produced her. Brown's attempt to balance all the wonderful things about her heritage with all the unpleasant things replicates the process so many of us go through when dealing with other loved ones who are "products of their time," so to speak.
Brown's conflicted love for her grandmother is more love than conflict, and yet she doesn't shy away from saying the harder things. People are complicated. It's hard to be a woman. We all play the cards in our hand the best we're dealt. Fanny's life will make you laugh, cry, and squirm, both for her personally, and for the culture that produced her. And Brown's storytelling will have you cheering for her, the poet who managed to make a life very different from all the models for womanhood she was given. Like Fanny, Nickole Brown is her own creature; unlike Fanny, she's had--and taken--the chance to bloom. Recommended for people who like lyric poetry, value wordplay, or are interested in working class/Southern issues.
This collection of sassy, moving poems turns on two axes: the geography of Southern womanhood and the lingua franca of Frances Lee, a/k/a Fanny, Brown's grandmother. Fanny drinks Pepsi, affectionately calls people "fuckers," dispenses horrible advice, and wears her hair all the way up to Jesus. At first blush you might be tempted to dismiss Fanny as Southern trash; dig a little deeper, though, and you find out how trash gets made, as well as how it gets recycled. The narrative timeline dips back and forth to different times in Fanny's life and death. Brown gives us the facts, and then the facts underneath the facts, showing how complicated families can be. Even after death, Fanny is very much alive, now a cherished ancestor from whom Brown can draw strength.
These poems are rooted in Fanny's singular vocabulary. Like many people, she makes up words, pronounces words wrong, and uses words in certain ways that mean special things only to certain people. It's like a dictionary, or phrasebook. All of these linguistic maneuverings weave a web that leads you to the spider in the middle: "Genealogy of the Word," which unpacks some ugly, unavoidable truths that can't be gentled, no matter how likeable or otherwise sympathetic Fanny is And yet, for all her flaws, she was no better than the culture that produced her. Brown's attempt to balance all the wonderful things about her heritage with all the unpleasant things replicates the process so many of us go through when dealing with other loved ones who are "products of their time," so to speak.
Brown's conflicted love for her grandmother is more love than conflict, and yet she doesn't shy away from saying the harder things. People are complicated. It's hard to be a woman. We all play the cards in our hand the best we're dealt. Fanny's life will make you laugh, cry, and squirm, both for her personally, and for the culture that produced her. And Brown's storytelling will have you cheering for her, the poet who managed to make a life very different from all the models for womanhood she was given. Like Fanny, Nickole Brown is her own creature; unlike Fanny, she's had--and taken--the chance to bloom. Recommended for people who like lyric poetry, value wordplay, or are interested in working class/Southern issues.
September 5, 2015
I should've been too deeply offended by the first poem (which dwells, in detail, on the ways the poet's Grandma said and used the F word) to even read the next page. But I wasn't. I'm not sure exactly why, except that I respected Nickole Brown's attentiveness. That is the thing I most want in a poet.
Interspersed among her adult interpretations of her memories are the italicized words of Fanny herself, as best as her granddaughter can remember them. What Fanny says ranges from colorful descriptions to certain (albeit sometimes bizarre) advice, most of which I'd rather not repeat. By the end of the book I felt simultaneously that I knew Fanny and that Fanny would remain forever an enigma. And that I liked Fanny while also finding her pretty distasteful.
Brown's admiration for her grandma is clear, though she is unsparing in displaying her ambivalence about some of her grandma's ideas and choices. My favorite poem was a series of 5 poems that all discussed her Grandma's relationship with Clorox Bleach which shows us a great deal about Fanny as she knew herself while also revealing Fanny's blind spots. This poem, like so many others, was accessible and insightful and entirely unforgettable.
This is a quick read because it is a collection of poems, but you can tell that these poems were carefully and tenderly written. It reminded me of own straight-shooting Grandma, a woman who raised 8 kids of her own and doled out advice freely and without apology.
Interspersed among her adult interpretations of her memories are the italicized words of Fanny herself, as best as her granddaughter can remember them. What Fanny says ranges from colorful descriptions to certain (albeit sometimes bizarre) advice, most of which I'd rather not repeat. By the end of the book I felt simultaneously that I knew Fanny and that Fanny would remain forever an enigma. And that I liked Fanny while also finding her pretty distasteful.
Brown's admiration for her grandma is clear, though she is unsparing in displaying her ambivalence about some of her grandma's ideas and choices. My favorite poem was a series of 5 poems that all discussed her Grandma's relationship with Clorox Bleach which shows us a great deal about Fanny as she knew herself while also revealing Fanny's blind spots. This poem, like so many others, was accessible and insightful and entirely unforgettable.
This is a quick read because it is a collection of poems, but you can tell that these poems were carefully and tenderly written. It reminded me of own straight-shooting Grandma, a woman who raised 8 kids of her own and doled out advice freely and without apology.
March 21, 2015
A collection of poetry that brings to life the woman who was Frances Lee Cox. Fanny says a lot about life and a lot about the lessons that one has to learn in life. She is a look into the life of a Southern woman, plagued by heat of Florida and an affectionate love of her children and grandchildren. What Nickole Brown does with her poetry is incredible, she weighs it down with details that are all things Fanny. It is not an exaltation or overabundant and eulogic perfection, but instead a true portrayal of a woman who was measured parts of both sweetness and harshness, and who inspired the poet so much. I may be a little bit biased, however, as I recently had the pleasure of hearing Nickole Brown do a reading from Fanny Says, but what I felt when hearing her read of her late grandmother was incredible. This collection works as both an observance of language and life, it weaves a story that is both narrative and peppered with little moments and long moments. It weighs as tumultuous as life, with poems short and sweet and others long and lazy. I loved reading about Fanny in here, she reminds me so much of people I know, parts of recognition that I can find scattered throughout my own life. It works, overall, as one of the most honest portrayals of a person I have ever read.
June 26, 2015
How can I possibly do justice in such a small space to the wonder that is Nickole Brown's "Fanny Says"? By the last page I felt that I knew, in some capacity, the woman who was Francis Lee Cox. Brass, yet tender, she was the kind of grandmother who's life was made for the written page. Who wouldn't be enamored by this ballsy, witty, and wise woman who dished out advice for everything, from sex to potato salad. I'm not ashamed to say that I clutched this book to my chest and wept, because not only was I given the opportunity to get to know the kind of woman Fanny was, but I experienced the poet's loss once I turned the last page. All I can say is this: Thank YOU, Nickole Brown, for sharing such personal memories, good and bad, of a woman who taught you so much about love, life, and the way we see the world. Everyone, do yourself a favor, and treasure "Fanny Says", read it, and read it again, and learn about this wonderful woman and the beauty in these poems.
May 31, 2015
When Fanny Says, I am rapt-- in both senses of the word-- in the presence of one of the most complicated bawdy broads to be drawn (or conjured up)in contemporary poetry. The poems are audacious, the prose full of spitfire, and the whole moves towards asking difficult questions about love, class, race, violence, and identity. This is one beautiful little fucker.
August 8, 2015
This book was sugessted to me by one of our librarians and I couldn't have enjoyed it more. Highly reccomend to all readers, not just poetry lovers.
November 7, 2015
I look forward to the day when I can be my own version of Fanny. Life filled with lessons we can now pass on, and laugh at. Big hair/don't care.
May 4, 2016
4.25 Great tribute to a lady I wish I had the chance to know.
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews