Preston Browning Jr. entered the world in 1929, a few months before the Crash and the onset of the Great Depression. In Culpeper, Virginia, Browning grew up amid the pervasive poverty of the times where he recalls being labeled by his father as the worlds worst grouch, led in song by Miss Lizzy Lovellwho banged on the piano at the local Episcopal church, and seated astride a cow who needed a lot of convincing to take him for a ride around the pasture beyond his house. With humor and exceptional detail, Browning shares a lively memoir that focuses on his coming-of-age journey and subsequent experiences in the rural South during the 1930s and 1940s, providing a compelling glimpse into how his family and others helped shape his emerging sense of self, his convictions, and his character. While providing snippets about the era and sketches of more than twenty relatives and ancestors that include an amusing retelling about his Uncle Sweets experiences at a hoochie-coochie show, Browning details the fascinating legacy of his Southern upbringing during a time when a struggle for racial, economic, and social justice prevailed in America. In this inspiring memoir, a Southerner reminisces about small-town Virginia before, during, and after the Great Depression through entertaining stories about his unconventional ancestors, his immediate family, and his own experiences.
Struggling for the Soul of Our Country is a book in search of answers: what does it mean to struggle for the soul of a country and how does the life of citizenship influence our common future? While discussing major cultural and political issues, Browning addresses the deeper questions haunting many of our citizens and reflects upon the spiritual dimension of the crises America faces today. With titles such as "American Global Hegemony vs. the Quest for a New Humanity," "Why I Am a Christian Socialist," and "American Dystopia" these essays examine aspects of American political and cultural life in an effort to shed light on the pathologies that Browning claims undermine the health of the country's soul. This book invites the reader to examine the development of America as a militaristic empire, initiating multiple wars abroad, including a disastrous war in Iraq, and fostering at home a culture of violence that led to the assassination of an American president, John F. Kennedy, by agents of the US government.
Several years ago, I contacted a poet who was known to advise writers about publication possibilities for their work. With considerable hope, I sent her 25 of my poems. When she came to consult with me a week later, she brought a sheet of paper on which were listed, under 3 headings--"too personal," "too political," and "Yes"--the results of decades of my labor. I was astonished to learn that the list marked "too political" contained many of what I considered my best poems. "Hell," I replied, "almost all of my poems are either political or personal." Even a totally innocuous poem such as "The Eyes of the Children of Solentiname" was destined to mold in the slush pile because I had included a slightly negative reference to Disneyland. Adrienne Rich defined a patriot as someone who "wrestles for the soul of her country." For decades I have followed Rich's injunction, and several years ago wrote a book entitled Struggling for the Soul of Our County. In that volume I wrote about the American Empire and castigated our political leaders for decades of invasions and occupations south of the Rio Grande, for C.I.A.-orchestrated coups from Guatemala to Chile and, much farther from home, from Indonesia to the Central African Republic, with lives lost, according to one former C.I.A. officer, numbering in the "gross millions." Hence readers will find here poems like "New World Order," angry poems, bitter in tone, as well as a satirical poem such as "Epitaph for Ronald Reagan." I even took a shot, in "Pledge of Allegiance," at Humpty Trumpty. But they will also encounter poems that are all sweetness and light such as the sonnet I composed in 1958 after my first date with Ann Hutt, who became my wife. As I approach my eighty-ninth birthday, I feel totally blessed to have had a career writing and teaching poetry. With luck I may live to write a few more poems. "In this wide-ranging book of exquisitely crafted poems, Preston Browning writes, "I long for poets/who speak a mother tongue/meant to connect//..." And that is precisely what he gives us. . . . Carry this book with you; when you need that special poem, you will no doubt find it here." --Patricia Lee Lewis, author of the poetry books, A Kind of Yellow and High Lonesome, leads creative writing workshops at Patchwork Farm "Preston Browning is a force of nature and a poet of remarkable range. In this volume of poems and translations, he moves effortlessly from poems of love and courtship to political reckoning. I was consistently transfixed." --Steve Almond, author of Bad Stories: What the Hell Just Happened to Our Country "Browning's poems range from sonnet to elegy to nursery rhyme. Through all the changes, he knows exactly what he is doing: striving to create " . . . poetry in a language less precious / than that other tongue / that may be just the thing / for communicating with angels." Sandino's Grave welcomes in all of us the angels of listening, and being the better for it." --Pat Schneider, author: Writing Alone and With Others and How the Light Gets In, and founder, Amherst Writers & Artists "Sandino's Grave is an all-encompassing triumph of erudition, craft, and political convictions." --Mark Pawlak, author most recently of Reconnaissance
When Flannery O'Connor began writing in the early 1950's, many reviewers assumed that she was little more than a talented female Erskine Caldwell, writing in the Southern gothic mode. And indeed her work was filled with freaks, one-armed con men, and pathological killers. By the time she died in 1964, serious readers of her fiction knew there was much more involved in her stories. What that extra was she called the added dimension, that is, the spiritual depth which she believed was as an ineluctable part of human life. Her stories dramatize the ways in which the holy or the sacred break into human life with the result of shocking readers out of their spiritual somnolence using characters who appear to be possessed by the Devil and who commit acts of terrifying violence. Browning bases his study of the works of O'Connor on the centrality of the yoking of opposites at the point where the opposites coincide, where violent crime and attraction for the Holy are held in tension, suggesting that out of this tension grew O'Connor's extraordinary creative power and unique vision. From this point of departure, Browning offers a detailed analysis of four O'Connor books: Wise Blood, A Good Man Is Hard to Find, The Violent Bear It Away, and Everything That Rises Must Converge.
Preston Browning Jr. entered the world in 1929, a few months before the Crash and the onset of the Great Depression. In Culpeper, Virginia, Browning grew up amid the pervasive poverty of the times where he recalls being labeled by his father as the worlds worst grouch, led in song by Miss Lizzy Lovellwho banged on the piano at the local Episcopal church, and seated astride a cow who needed a lot of convincing to take him for a ride around the pasture beyond his house. With humor and exceptional detail, Browning shares a lively memoir that focuses on his coming-of-age journey and subsequent experiences in the rural South during the 1930s and 1940s, providing a compelling glimpse into how his family and others helped shape his emerging sense of self, his convictions, and his character. While providing snippets about the era and sketches of more than twenty relatives and ancestors that include an amusing retelling about his Uncle Sweets experiences at a hoochie-coochie show, Browning details the fascinating legacy of his Southern upbringing during a time when a struggle for racial, economic, and social justice prevailed in America. In this inspiring memoir, a Southerner reminisces about small-town Virginia before, during, and after the Great Depression through entertaining stories about his unconventional ancestors, his immediate family, and his own experiences.
Struggling for the Soul of Our Country is a book in search of answers: what does it mean to struggle for the soul of a country and how does the life of citizenship influence our common future? While discussing major cultural and political issues, Browning addresses the deeper questions haunting many of our citizens and reflects upon the spiritual dimension of the crises America faces today. With titles such as "American Global Hegemony vs. the Quest for a New Humanity," "Why I Am a Christian Socialist," and "American Dystopia" these essays examine aspects of American political and cultural life in an effort to shed light on the pathologies that Browning claims undermine the health of the country's soul. This book invites the reader to examine the development of America as a militaristic empire, initiating multiple wars abroad, including a disastrous war in Iraq, and fostering at home a culture of violence that led to the assassination of an American president, John F. Kennedy, by agents of the US government.
When Flannery O'Connor began writing in the early 1950's, many reviewers assumed that she was little more than a talented female Erskine Caldwell, writing in the Southern gothic mode. And indeed her work was filled with freaks, one-armed con men, and pathological killers. By the time she died in 1964, serious readers of her fiction knew there was much more involved in her stories. What that extra was she called the added dimension, that is, the spiritual depth which she believed was as an ineluctable part of human life. Her stories dramatize the ways in which the holy or the sacred break into human life with the result of shocking readers out of their spiritual somnolence using characters who appear to be possessed by the Devil and who commit acts of terrifying violence. Browning bases his study of the works of O'Connor on the centrality of the yoking of opposites at the point where the opposites coincide, where violent crime and attraction for the Holy are held in tension, suggesting that out of this tension grew O'Connor's extraordinary creative power and unique vision. From this point of departure, Browning offers a detailed analysis of four O'Connor books: Wise Blood, A Good Man Is Hard to Find, The Violent Bear It Away, and Everything That Rises Must Converge.
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