Cora Fry works because Brown has found a persona close to herself: the spirit of a woman in a small New England town, half pioneer, half modern. Brown is secure enough as a poet to let the words stand on their own, to know when she's said enough, not to explain or justify what she's said. She's strongest where she's most alone, working from the primitive parts of herself. The poems leave a lot unsaid, they make us stop and think, relate them to our own life. At times some of the modern images seem a little surface, but they also serve to show the reader this isn't really grandmother's old days; the poet still has to exist right here…. Brown knows what she's doing, and she does it well.