No Need of Sympathy is an exceptionally wide-ranging poetry collection, touching on contemporary science, physics, family, politics, and the natures of poetry and reality. These poems, the eighth collection by Fleda Brown, ask huge questions; they zero in like a microscope on what's here, at hand. They are spoken with humility, great humor, curiosity, and a deep love of living.

Fleda Brown's memoir Driving With Dvorák was published in 2010 by the University of Nebraska Press. Her six collections of poems have won a Pushcart Prize, the Felix Pollak Prize, the Philip Levine Prize, the Great Lakes Colleges New Writer's Award, and have twice been a finalist for the National Poetry Series. Brown's poems have appeared in Poetry, Kenyon Review, Southern Poetry Review, American Poetry Review, The Georgia Review, and many other journals and anthologies, and they have been used as texts for several prize-winning musical compositions performed at Eastman School of Music, Yale University, and by the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble. She is professor emerita at the University of Delaware, and former poet laureate of Delaware. She now lives in Traverse City, Michigan, and is on the faculty of the Rainier Writing Workshop, a low-residency MFA program in Tacoma, Washington.

Table of Contents

I

For, Or, Nor /6
The Purpose of Poetry /7
The Kayak and the Eiffel Tower / 9
Bird's Eye View / 10
Sugar, Sugar / 11
My Father and Hemingway Go Fishing / 12
The Dead / 13
Pilgrims / 14
Roofers / 15
Chipmunk of a Rock / 16
Year of the Tent Caterpillars / 17


II

Hare's Breath / 19
Dancing at Your Wedding / 20
The Heart Stops / 21
The Chinless Woman in the Smart Park Booth / 22
I Take the Boys Up the Eiffel Tower / 23
Note to My Sister from Notre Dame / 24
God, God / 26
The Puffball / 27

III

Reading About the Unsolved Murder at Good Hart, Michigan, 1968 /29
Child Labor / 30
Relationship Therapy / 31
Here, in Silence / 33
The Illustration / 35
Short History of Music / 36
Big Bang / 37
Memorial Day / 38
Michigan / 39

IV

Pointillism / 42
The Grandmother Sonnets
Josh, 15 / 43
Zach, 14 / 44
Jake, 11 / 45
Noah, 10 / 46
Max, 9 /47
Samantha, 9 / 48
Joie, 7 / 49
Rita, 6 / 50
Casey, 5 / 51
Abigail, 3 / 52
Ribcage Heart / 53
Worms / 54

V

Building a Cathedral / 56
Felled Tree / 58
Translation / 59
Venus de Milo / 60
Birdhouse/ 61
Talk Radio / 62
Fourteen Lines / 63
Photo of Us on the Cottage Front Porch / 64