Roger Dickinson-Brown

Roger Dickinson-Brown is an American poet, author and teacher, born in 1944, who writes in English and French. After studying under Yvor Winters at Stanford University, he published and broadcast poems, criticism and reviews (Song, The Southern Review, World Order, WONO-FM) in the 1970s, and now lives in France.

In 1975, the poet Robert Hayden wrote that Dickinson-Brown "is a gifted poet who has begun to attract favorable attention," and that "he has distinguished himself as a teacher of creative writing and modern poetry." The entire book-length series Jonathan: A Death Miscellany was broadcast over WONO-FM (New York) in April 1976. During that broadcast Dickinson-Brown argued that most poets write too much, and indicated that he wished to leave only a small number of poems at his death. At about the same time, he stopped publishing his work in literary reviews and journals, and more or less entirely withdrew from conventional publication.

Some of Dickinson-Brown’s usually short poems are written in experimental (mostly French-style syllabic) meters, but most are classical in both form and subject. They are often written in the plain style and were evidently influenced by the epigrammatic tradition of Catullus, Martial (whom he translates) and J. V. Cunningham, including their social satire and sometimes risqué humor. The most frequent themes are loneliness, age, love, death, physics and religion. The French poems are all epigrams.

Poetry

 * Jonathan: A Death Miscellany. 1974.
 * The Dilapidated Heart: Poems 1965-2003. Crepy-en-Valois, 2004.
 * Bread and Wine: Poems 1988-2009. 2009.
 * Catullus & Martial: Translations & Imitations (2011)

Fiction

 * Three French Murder Mysteries. La Croix Saint-Ouen, 2005.

Non-fiction

 * The Art of Edmund Waller: A technical and prosodical analysis (1976)

Epigrams

 * Notes pour mes petits-enfants / Notes for My Grandchildren (bilingual French-English). La Croix Saint-Ouen, 2008.
 * Ragtime (bilingual French-English). La Croix Saint-Ouen, 2012.

Translated

 * ''Catullus and Martial: Translations and imitations. 2012.