Reviewed by Emmett Wheatfall
Of a Certain Age by Tricia Gates Brown
Fernwood Press, 2026, 90 pages. $20 paperback
https://www.fernwoodpress.com/2026/06/09/of-a-certain-age/
or
https://triciagatesbrown.net
It is an honor to review Of a Certain Age by Tricia Gates Brown. It’s a work I admire, beginning with the dedication. Keen observers will note that this collection is dedicated simply “For Ed.” The first name offered without a last name foreshadows beautifully the intimacy to come.
The first poem in any book of poetry is essential, representing the entrance into the imaginative world of the collection. “Profligate” is noteworthy in this regard. It metaphorically renders love analogous with animal behavior and ecology and suggests the arc of the book. This introductory poem ends:
…fly me over
this life to places love crumbled
battlements and raised the dead.
be profligate with love, tell me,
and it will astound you. spend it all.
now. go.
Or consider the poem “Summer at Twelve,” which references The Joy of Sex. Most young people at some point thumbed their way through that book, which played a coming-of-age role for many. An excerpt reads:
The shopkeeper kept silent each time
my friend and I sneaked behind the far row
of books, eyes wide at The Joy of Sex.
Perhaps it was time we knew. At
twelve, we bled, could reproduce.
And we were children of the 70s;
innocence so passé.
Here, Brown is not writing a self-help poem but introducing pure adolescent experience.
The poet is unabashed, too, about the complicated role faith plays in her life and poems. Take for example the poem “Baptism.” The narrative hints at Brown’s search for meaning and truth amid brokenness in herself and others, including the minister who baptizes her. she writes:
That day, authority still dripped
from him, clung to me like innocence
I, too, would lose, as surely as
our mirror-images scattered on impact,
rippling forever into one.
Of a Certain Age is organized in sections that denote the decades and is chronological and dispensational. In many poems, this is subtle: in others, overt, as in the poem entitled “Pre-Middle,” defining the life stage that predates middle age.
In the last section of the book, several poems wrestle directly with mortality, especially in contemplating the death of Brown’s aging partner. In “Your Death,” she writes of the grim daydreams we have of how a particular death will occur, imagining certain eventualities
…or other scenarios/beyond even abilities to conjure.
the before and after always the same:
you and me,
then you and me
then only me.
I highly recommend Of a Certain Age. The collection invites readers into Brown’s poetic wonder and disappointments—notwithstanding love, tenderness, kinetic energy, sensuality, and heartbreak. In some of the poems, I am reminded of my own coming of age—and of all the decades of my aging. I imagine other readers will be reminded as well.
Reviewer’s Bio:
Emmett Wheatfall is an Oregon Poet Laureate nominee and recipient of the prestigious Oregon Poetry Association Patricia Ruth Banta Award. His poetry has been published in several books, collections, and anthologies. One of them, As Clean as a Bone, was a 2019 Eric Hoffer Award Finalist and a da Vinci Eye award finalist. Emmett has keynoted two Oregon Poetry Association’s Conferences. In 2020, Corban University produced a nine-part documentary that highlights Emmett’s early life and poetry. He is one of Oregon’s premier poets.