The Voices [Paperback]

One of the main themes is the essential presence of music and music-making in the world; I would never go into the dark without the voices, as the title poem says. The book also includes a number of elegies for departed family members and friends in balance with poems that celebrate existencelove your life, as the final (wedding) poem insists. The epigraph at the beginning of the book suggests the way we all must live in contradiction.

MICHAEL DENNIS BROWNE is an emeritus professor at the University of Minnesota, where he taught for thirty-nine years, served for some years as director of the Creative Writing Program, and was a member of the Academy of Distinguished Teachers. Previously, he taught at Iowa, Columbia and Bennington. He was the first Kilian McDonnell Writer-in-Residence at the Collegeville Institute at St. Johns University and received the 2014 Graven Award from Wartburg College. His poems have appeared in many magazines and anthologies; two of his collections won the Minnesota Book Award for poetry. He has written numerous texts for music, working principally with Stephen Paulus; their most recent collaboration is The Shoemaker, a church opera based on a short story by Leo Tolstoy. Other composers who have set his words include Carol Barnett, Abbie Betinis, John Foley S.J., Juliana Hall, Carolyn Jennings, Craig Hella Johnson, David Lord, Donald Krubsack, David Evan Thomas, and Dale Warland.