Singing with Jarred Edges by Joyce Compton-Brown

Joyce Compton-Brown enjoyed a long career teaching literature and writing at Gardner-Webb University where she inspired many who have gone on to distinguished careers in that field, perhaps most notably Ron Rash. A few years ago she retired back to the higher North Carolina mountains where she and her husband, Les Brown, both grew up. This is her first poetry collection, following a chapbook. “Joyce Compton Brown’s wonderful new collection of poems could literally have been sung into being, filled with homespun eloquence and wisdom and all kinds of mountain music . . . Visual, melodic, character-driven, Joyce Brown’s extraordinary poems literally leap off the page. – Lee Smith. Music abound in Joyce Compton Brown’s Singing with Jarred Edges . . . Brown has succeeded admirably in her quest of “calling forth a living past, / giving strength for the present, / making bearable all thought / of the future.” – Jim Clark. Joyce Brown’s poetry is like the best bluegrass music; there is a stron