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Icon
Historically, icons are devotional and meant for praise, or to represent ideals or act as role models for a mass audience. This was the case for the abolitionist Frederick Douglass, and the Harlem Renaissance painter, Jacob Lawrence. Each, an icon in his own right and era, delivered uplifting images of possibility for the black body.
In a time when images are validated as rapidly as they are created; in a time when our role models continuously fail, and deviate from the exact ideals society associates with them, it is important to step back to consider what is at stake: what happens when the image flips; the icon vilified, destroyed? F. Douglas Brown, inspired by Lawrence's 1938 panel series, which observes both Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, brings ICON, a biographical/poetic reflection doing the task of considering and re-considering role models, heroes. Through conversations with poets, pop stars, comic book sensations, and of course, the historical characters Douglass, Tubman and Lawrence, Brown distills this discussion into an examination of the self.
ICON offers a baroque reflection of ourselves through our own personal histories, and how it might pertain to the global history at large. For F. Douglas Brown, who is named after Frederick Douglass, the implications of those histories connecting are abundant, wrought with vulnerability, interrogation and a call to action.
In a time when images are validated as rapidly as they are created; in a time when our role models continuously fail, and deviate from the exact ideals society associates with them, it is important to step back to consider what is at stake: what happens when the image flips; the icon vilified, destroyed? F. Douglas Brown, inspired by Lawrence's 1938 panel series, which observes both Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, brings ICON, a biographical/poetic reflection doing the task of considering and re-considering role models, heroes. Through conversations with poets, pop stars, comic book sensations, and of course, the historical characters Douglass, Tubman and Lawrence, Brown distills this discussion into an examination of the self.
ICON offers a baroque reflection of ourselves through our own personal histories, and how it might pertain to the global history at large. For F. Douglas Brown, who is named after Frederick Douglass, the implications of those histories connecting are abundant, wrought with vulnerability, interrogation and a call to action.
- GenresPoetry
134 pages, Paperback
Published March 8, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 19, 2020
The 50 plus poems in this book meditate on race, American history, personal identity and what it means to be named after the most photographed man of the 19th Century. The San Francisco born and now Los Angeles based poet and educator F. Douglas Brown is named after the famous 19th Century former slave and abolitionist, Frederick Douglass and these poems address Douglass’s storied legacy. The poems not only examine Douglass, but Harriet Tubman, Sandra Bland, Bruno Mars, Rashida Jones, Don Cheadle, Freddy Gray, Eric Garner and most of all the poet himself.
Mr. Brown mixes the formal and colloquial with dexterity and this collection uses a plethora of poetic forms like the golden shovel, the bop, ghazal and ekphrasis. The cover was hand painted by Umar Rashid aka Frowhawk Two-Feathers and it shows Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman juxtaposed against Egyptian iconography. The time travelling element of the cover matches the palimpsest of historical eras that overlap and interact in the poems. Brown connects the dots across time. In his poem, “Why I Write: Partial Kucha,” he concludes, “Blood-lined articles to write the red, to write spirit, and / Write the toil. We have so much work to do.”
Brown has been doing the work as long as just about anybody. He’s been a high school English teacher for 25 years and he is most definitely one of the poets Tara Betts is talking about that have mentored hundreds of young poets over the last two decades. His own interest in poetry began in high school when he read a Quincy Troupe poem about Magic Johnson. In 2013, Brown’s first book Zero to Three won the Cave Canem Book Prize.
Brown is also the creator and producer of the Sandra Bland Reading Series in Downtown Los Angeles that honors her legacy. “All in all,” Patrick Rosal writes, “Icon isn’t just a book of poems. It is a compendium of story, song, catalog and remix. It is a much-needed reappraisal of our most convenient narratives around race.” As Rosal states, Brown educates and entertains. A quintessential example of this is in the poem “Love Letter from George Clinton to Bruno Mars: an imagined conversation.” Brown states: “This funk nation was built on the backs / of those who needed voice, // so put your pinky / in your pocket, and listen.” Like Brown tells Bruno Mars, open up this book and listen—this is a poetic roadmap to freedom.
Mr. Brown mixes the formal and colloquial with dexterity and this collection uses a plethora of poetic forms like the golden shovel, the bop, ghazal and ekphrasis. The cover was hand painted by Umar Rashid aka Frowhawk Two-Feathers and it shows Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman juxtaposed against Egyptian iconography. The time travelling element of the cover matches the palimpsest of historical eras that overlap and interact in the poems. Brown connects the dots across time. In his poem, “Why I Write: Partial Kucha,” he concludes, “Blood-lined articles to write the red, to write spirit, and / Write the toil. We have so much work to do.”
Brown has been doing the work as long as just about anybody. He’s been a high school English teacher for 25 years and he is most definitely one of the poets Tara Betts is talking about that have mentored hundreds of young poets over the last two decades. His own interest in poetry began in high school when he read a Quincy Troupe poem about Magic Johnson. In 2013, Brown’s first book Zero to Three won the Cave Canem Book Prize.
Brown is also the creator and producer of the Sandra Bland Reading Series in Downtown Los Angeles that honors her legacy. “All in all,” Patrick Rosal writes, “Icon isn’t just a book of poems. It is a compendium of story, song, catalog and remix. It is a much-needed reappraisal of our most convenient narratives around race.” As Rosal states, Brown educates and entertains. A quintessential example of this is in the poem “Love Letter from George Clinton to Bruno Mars: an imagined conversation.” Brown states: “This funk nation was built on the backs / of those who needed voice, // so put your pinky / in your pocket, and listen.” Like Brown tells Bruno Mars, open up this book and listen—this is a poetic roadmap to freedom.
September 28, 2020
I bought “Icon” probably a year or so ago thinking it would be the cool thing I could get my advisory students into that I would also be into. And now that I’ve finally found time to read it, I’m not even in the classroom. Whether I could get kids into it—who knows. But definitely, it sews together history, personal history, and contemporary America beautifully.
February 20, 2024
actually incredible
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews