Betsy Brown is no stranger to loss. Breast cancer runs rampant in her family; both
her mother and her thirty-two-year old sister died of the disease and another sister has been diagnosed with its late stages. Her father also fell victim to cancer, this time pancreatic. The poems in Brown's stunning first book pivot around the mechanisms we use in facing loss and fear-whether those confrontations are as wrenching as a
bone marrow transplant or as confused as a brief love. In lyric verses with a driving narrative force, the poet depicts loved ones coping with illness, sometimes achieving recovery, and reshaping a family. From his hospital bed a father relates "the color of his pain-killers, /…
Year of Morphines Poems Betsy Brown The National Poetry Series / Selected by George Garrett "Allusive, edgy, smart, and utterly relentless, the poems of Year of Morphines move gracefully in the zone… Beautifully various and distinguished-like a needle in the eye. I adore this book and this poet.
