Acacia Road by Aaron Brown

Poetry. African & African American Studies.

"These poems proceed by an earnest story-telling and remembering. And while the surfaces of the poems are characterized by skillful narrative and descriptive impulses, underpinning most of them runs a deeper agon and self-critique, uncovering both a fear of and a relentless thirst for the ecstatic. These poems embody, at their best, that thirst."—Li-Young Lee

"Acacia Road is a vivid, brilliant, and haunting memory palace, evoking Aaron Brown's childhood spent in Chad on the cusp of its civil war, and while at times the 'second space" of recollection seems idyllic, the sound of shelling and gunfire, and news of human violence is never far away. - Michael Collier

Aaron Brown has held fellowships through Image's Glen Workshops as well as the Folger Shakespeare Library, and he has received Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations. His poetry and prose have been published in World Literature Today, Tupelo Quarterly, The Millions, Cimarron Review, Portland Review, Ruminate, and Transition, among others. He is also the author of the poetry chapbook Winnower and novella Bound, both published by Wipf & Stock. Brown now lives with his wife, Melinda, in Kansas, where he is a professor of writing at Sterling College.