"A stunning collection of poems."

That's how fellow Kentuckian and acclaimed novelist Gwyn Rubio described two new volumes of poetry by EKU English professor Harry Brown.

"Ego's Eye and Other Poems" and "Everything Is Its Opposite and Other Poems," recently published by Mellen Press, are available at the EKU Bookstore, through on-line booksellers, via special order at any bookstore or directly from Mellen (716-754-2788). Each volume costs $14.95.

Playing off Blake's "The Clod and the Pebble," the title poem of "Ego's Eye" removes the egocentric self from genuine love. Love and ironies come alive in the mother who makes clothes for her family, in the husband and wife plagued by the tears of life; in two brothers who come upon a muskrat chewing its leg in two to escape their trap. The volume ridicules snobbery, conformity and opportunism, takes a humorous look at birds and cats and concludes with poems of irony.

The first section of poems in "Everything Is Its Opposite" turns on the difference between reality and appearance. The second section centers on struggles of the spirit - struggling to know God, to revive a dead love, to value friendship, to overcome prejudice. Section III centers on psychological illness, and the final section is a thematic smorgasbord, using images from nature.

The new volumes follow "Paint Lick Idyll and Other Poems" and "Measuring Man and Other Poems," published by Mellen in 1989 and 1990. When those books were published, North Carolina Poet Laureate Fred Chappell said, "A thousand other poets writing for a thousand years shall not produce the qualities this highly individual poet offers."

Kentucky poet Joy Bale Boone noted that Brown's two vocations, literature and farming, "create a splendid counterpoint. Most of his poems have interesting philosophical undertones."

Brown, who joined the EKU faculty in 1970, teaches creative writing and American literature and directs the popular Creative Writing Conference at Eastern every other summer.

In 1994, he became the first recipient of the Senior Fellowship at the Mary Anderson Center for the Arts, and was a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. In 1995, he was named an EKU Foundation Professor, the University's highest honor for teaching excellence.

Brown, who lives near Paint Lick, earned a bachelor's degree from Davidson College, a master's degree from Appalachian State and a doctorate from Ohio University.