This collection also contains a chapbook by Enid Shomer and a chapbook co-written by brothers Anders and Kai Carlson-Wee.

This collection also contains a chapbook by Enid Shomer and a chapbook co-written by brothers Anders and Kai Carlson-Wee.

This is the third volume in the Floodgate Poetry Series, an annual series of books collecting three chapbooks by three poets in a single volume, edited by Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum.

Chapbooks—short books under 40 pages—arose when printed books became affordable in the 16th century.

The series is in the tradition of 18th and 19th century British and American literary annuals, and the Penguin Modern Poets Series of the 1960s and ’70s.

 



Begotten captures the bliss, consternation and heart-thumping ruckus of being both parent and child. A wild and tender ride.
— Tracy K. Smith
...despite the generational wounds, the single constant expressed so variously and valiantly in these musical poems is love. Begotten portrays fatherhood with dazzling originality. Don’t miss this book.
— Barbara Ras
“Have I done anything right” ends one poem in this tough, concentrated collection of tender lyric and formal exploration, but the anxiety runs throughout. [...] Make no mistake, these are love poems, maybe because they are fatherhood poems, but likely because the poets want desperately to get fatherhood right(ed) despite their own unstable footing.
— Douglas Kearney

It all started when...

F. Douglas Brown and Geffrey Davis met in 2012 at the Cave Canem Retreat.

In between workshops, readings, and laughter, they discussed fatherhood and the poetry that stems from it.

The poems in Begotten, as well as their first full-length books, are a continuation of their conversations.

They borrow from one another's poems, both in structure and in dialectic; they lift lines to create new lines; and in some cases, they write back and forth all in an effort to interrogate as many aspects and borders of fatherhood as they can handle.