Ithaca College

Professor Brown’s fifth book of poems, A Long Slow Climb, is a series of sonnets meditating on our current political and existential crisis. 

Poet Dave Smith writes: A Long Slow Climb aligns itself in narrative structure with Dante's great Divine Comedy and in form with the verse novel by Les Murray and others. But the context or, loosely, subject is the Covid 19 Pandemic, so Brown's 63 sonnets link also to Ellen Bryant Voigt's Kyrie, a fine poem of war and home experience in the era of the Great Flu Pandemic. Such a heritage is a mighty shouldering for any poet, combining the tasks of elegy, history, religious inquiry, journalism, and philosophy. Brown composes an altogether impressive rising against diverse and multiple odds, and not least is a readable, smart, resonant poem trying to help readers make sense of a deadly year. He reminds us how intensely the life of the mind matters when we are under duress....

Professor Anthony Di Renzo writes: A Long Slow Climb documents one soul's journey through a Dantean landscape of politics, punditry, and plague. If you are struggling to find grace and meaning in the limbo of lockdown, this funny and moving collection is the answer to your prayers. Both timely and timeless, these sonnets distill six decades of thoughts and feelings into sixty-six pages. Tend to the movements of the heart, they teach us, and redemption can be your life’s art.