[In the review below, Olson praises Brown as "one of the great contemporary poets of place."]

When Brown died on April 13, 1996, one of the great contemporary poets of place died. Nearly 75, he had spent virtually his entire life in Orkney, the islands directly north of Scotland, refusing even invitations to be honored in England, which he visited only once. As he lived in Orkney, so he wrote of Orkney, whose history and perennial occupations, farming and fishing, were, together with the Christian holidays, the stuff of his writing. These books [Following a Lark and Selected Poems, 1954–1992] are the last new collection and the last retrospective selection of his verse that he made. The work in them is modern in its specific vocabulary, its combinations of austerity and sensual vividness and of conversational and formal tones, and its sharp imagery. It is formal verse, often stanzaic and rhymically intentional, yet it seldom rhymes. Since for Brown events of a thousand years past were as present as those of his own boyhood, in his poems history, both great and little, comes to singing life. Here is King Macbeth talking with the earl of Orkney, and here, over and over, are seasonal labors in the fields and at sea and children going to school or to town on Saturday. And here, too, are the events of Easter and Christmas reset in Orkney with amazing power and cogency. "I hoard," Brown wrote, "before time's waste / Old country images." His hoarding is our treasure.