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      Note to the Reader

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      Thank you. We hope you enjoy these poems.

       This e-book edition was created through a special grant provided by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation. Copper Canyon Press would like to thank Constellation Digital Services for their partnership in making this e-book possible.

       For Paula

      Contents

        Title Page

        Note to Reader

        Foreword by Robert Pinsky

        Dedication

       Part One: Nightly News

      1  Nightly News

      2  Song: Lead Story

      3  Haiti

      4  Beirut

      5  Joplin

      6  Headlines 1

      7  News Flow

      8  West Point

      9  Rain Shadow Review

      10  Campaign 2012

      11  European Union

      12  Intervention

      13  Song of the News

       Part Two: Questions

      1  The Art of the Interview

      2  Philip Roth

      3  Taha Muhammad Ali

      4  Mark Morris

      5  Headlines 2

      6  Richard Avedon

      7  Gore Vidal

      8  Suzanne Farrell: September 10, 2001

      9  Brice Marden

      10  Neanderthal

      11  Museum of Modern Art

      12  Night

      13  Interview

       Part Three: The News from Home

      1  Letters to the Editor

      2  Voice

      3  The Influence of Anxiety

      4  Sam Brown

      5  Side Effects

      6  Television: An Argument

      7  Headlines 3

      8  Memory

      9  Succession

      10  The News inside His Head

      11  Channel One: Guide

      12  Cortona

      13  Forecast

       Part Four: The News at Midnight

      1  Theater of War

      2  Honor Roll

      3  History

      4  Obituary

      5  Poetry and Prose

      6  Haiti: Kacite

        Afterword

        Acknowledgments

        About the Author

        Copyright

        Special Thanks

      Foreword

      Jeffrey Brown in this book apprehends some specific realities: the news as a medium and the news that is the medium’s object. Brown’s poetry examines that material in a new way, giving it a fresh, urgent form. I mean form as the term applies to sports or dance: an effective, useful organizing of energy. The News is more than a venture into art by someone prominent in another field. In these poems, an unconventional subject for poetry is dealt with from within, by a real poet.

      “To see beyond the camera,” says Brown about his purpose. The phrase works in two directions. Looking outward, these poems strive to see beyond the camera’s instrumental vision of what is before it, the stuff of the daily news: disasters and elections, celebrations and wars, famous artists and notorious criminals. Looking inward, Brown offers a vision from the other side of the camera: the feelings, understandings, and bewilderments of the makers who work behind the instrument, directing and controlling its gaze.

      Jeffrey Brown respects his profession. His belief in the value of news reporting, along with his ways of questioning the processes, gives a spine of purpose to The News. Jaded skepticism would be trivial, and preening would be even worse. Pride in the work, along with candid fatigue and misgivings, animates the poet’s quest to get what the news medium and its devices can see externally and what it can know internally.

      Ultimately, this subject matter is as mysterious as culture itself. More immediately, it has immeasurable importance in the political realm, the world of power. Brown treats that world, its eminences and accomplishments, its thugs and abominations, with the passionate, lyrical understatement of a onetime classics major.

      For

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