Gathering the Light

de Brown, Robert E.

Gathering the Light is a poetry chapbook, published under a federal grant by Red Hill Press in California, remembers the author's wife, Elizabeth Brown and their travels during the spring of 1972 through England, France and Italy. The elegiac tone embraces Elizabeth, the publisher of a small-press collection of poems. Elizabeth died of a brain tumor in the fall of 1974. Her husband, the author of the chapbook, spent a year in a poetry workshop led by the brilliant writer Alvaro Cardona-Hine. The result was the long poem which the author read at a bookstore in Venice, California. In the audience was the editor and poet, Paul Vangelisti, who saw the poem through to its publication. Decades later, the author happened to bound up the stairs of the venerable NY Public Library to discover that the library had collected one copy of Gathering the Light. The author is also worked with colleague Kristine Doll of Salem State University to translate the beautiful poems of Joan Alcover: Elegies [http://www.amazon.com/Elegies-Joan-Alcover/dp/0893043699].