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Brian Brodeur is the author of the poetry collectionsSelf-Portrait with Alternative Facts(2019),Natural Causes(2012), andOther Latitudes(2008), as well as the poetry chapbooksLocal Fauna(2015) andSo the Night Cannot Go on Without Us(2007). Founder and Coordinator of the digital interview archiveHow a Poem Happens,as well as the Veterans Writing Workshop of Richmond, Indiana, Brian lives with his wife and daughter in the Whitewater River Valley. He teaches at Indiana University East.
In one wonderfully crafted narrative after another, the poems of Natural Causes address loss: of human memory, of life, of sanity, and of the connection to our world as we grow into old age (and eventually die). While it's perfectly fair to call these poems prosy, this is the first, most obvious observation one should make, and the underlying negativity of the term prosy when applied to verse exists in these poems purely for the fact that, yes, they are narrative; yes, they tell stories--not that they are flawed in some essential way. The second (and more worthy) observation a reader should make of these poems is how deftly Brodeur utilizes sound, meter, figurative language, and other more traditional poetic devices to spin these yarns in a way more akin to sermons, more akin to music, than to 'stories with line breaks.' --Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum Southern Indiana Review -In one wonderfully crafted narrative after another, the poems of Natural Causes address loss: of human memory, of life, of sanity, and of the connection to our world as we grow into old age (and eventually die). While it's perfectly fair to call these poems prosy, this is the first, most obvious observation one should make, and the underlying negativity of the term prosy when applied to verse exists in these poems purely for the fact that, yes, they are narrative; yes, they tell stories--not that they are flawed in some essential way. The second (and more worthy) observation a reader should make of these poems is how deftly Brodeur utilizes sound, meter, figurative language, and other more traditional poetic devices to spin these yarns in a way more akin to sermons, more akin to music, than to 'stories with line breaks.'---Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum, Southern Indiana Review In one wonderfully crafted narrative after another, the poems ofNatural Causesaddress loss: of human memory, of life, of sanity, and of the connection to our world as we grow into old age (and eventually die). While it s perfectly fair to call these poems prosy, this is the first, most obvious observation one should make, and the underlying negativity of the termprosywhen applied to verse exists in these poems purely for the fact that, yes, they are narrative; yes, they tell stories not that they are flawed in some essential way. The second (and more worthy) observation a reader should make of these poems is how deftly Brodeur utilizes sound, meter, figurative language, and other more traditional poetic devices to spin these yarns in a way more akin to sermons, more akin to music, than to stories with line breaks. Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum, Southern Indiana Review
