The poetry in "How to Start a Revolution" is, simultaneously, personal and universal, technically created yet colloquially spoken. Brown's poems attend to the intimate needs of the reader, while maintaining an incredible depth of poetic integrity. Traditional forms such as the sonnet, haiku, and pantoum bloom among his most personal examples of free verse. The conversational language and the sensitivity to the reader's presence manifest themselves beautifully in this skillfully crafted, highly digestible first collection of poems.