Killing Summer

by Sarah Browning

“Poetry must be honest and precise, yes—but it must also dare us to see what we are invited not to see and say what seems easier not to say. In Killing Summer, Sarah Browning writes what is difficult but essential in a time when buffoonery in our nation’s highest office tempts us to shake our heads and close our eyes. Perhaps the first step in asserting the need for a new paradigm is finding the words that reveal the brokenness of the current one. These are those words. With both tender ferocity and subtle elegance, this book helps to sustain us.” - Tim Seibles

Sarah Browning is co-founder and Executive Director of Split This Rock: Poetry of Provocation & Witness and an Associate Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies. She is author of a previous collection, Whiskey in the Garden of Eden (The Word Works, 2007), and co-editor of D.C. Poets Against the War: An Anthology (Argonne House Press, 2004).

Genres: Poetry

100 pages, Paperback

First published September 21, 2017

About the author

Sarah Browning is co-founder and for 10 years was Executive Director of Split This Rock. She is the author of Killing Summer (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2017), Whiskey in the Garden of Eden (The Word Works, 2007), and co-editor of D.C. Poets Against the War: An Anthology (Argonne House Press, 2004). The recipient of artist fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities, she has also received a Creative Communities Initiative grant and the People Before Profits Poetry Prize. Browning has worked as a community organizer in Boston public housing and as a political organizer for reproductive rights, gay rights, and electoral reform, and against poverty, South African apartheid, and U.S. militarism. She was founding director of Amherst Writers & Artists Institute — creative writing workshops for low-income women and youth — and Assistant Director of The Fund for Women Artists, an organization supporting socially engaged art by women. She has written essays and interviewed poets and artists for a variety of publications.

Reviews

[Nathan Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of nice variety in this collection of poems. The topical poems are especially strong.

[Kelsey May · Rating 3 out of 5]

My favorite poems: "Gas", "Going to See the Caravaggios", "The Blueberry Seasons", "Greeting", and "A Small Portion".