Fleda Brown's new collection No Need of Sympathy is honored as a "February Exemplar" by the Washington Independent Review of Books. In her monthly column “Exemplars: Poetry Reviews,” reviewer Grace Cavalieri calls Brown's work a "'classic technique,' hiding shadows and pockets of tiny universes within each poem." According to Cavalieri, a longtime a fan of Brown's poetry, "If you take a lid off, you'll get history, popular culture, society, childhood--and all as if she's just learning something new about herself by the writing. This is her poetic capital--a cultivated writer with the gift of intricacy/enrichment imbedded in a poem so you never even see the seams." Any one poem in Fleda Brown’s eighth collection may touch on contemporary science, physics, family, politics, the nature of poetry, and the nature of reality. There are sonnets for all ten grandchildren written by a grandmother, poems about the Big Bang, child labor, the moon over Paris, and tent caterpillars, all written with humility, humor, curiosity, and a deep love of life. "In every move she makes, she works the extremes in poetry, to combine passive thoughts and active situations to create a polarizing tension of intellectual excitement. In poetry, our thinking comes first – then with Brown, come the complications and layers. Her brand is weaving disparate thought forms. Sylvia Plath called poetry 'a tyrannical art.' Brown is meticulous at it. For her, nothing but the best will do." Click here to see the full WIRoB list of "February Exemplars." To purchase a copy of Brown's No Need of Sympathy, visit the BOA Bookstore.