The Weight of Yr Heart: Love Poetry for Connie Yu

The Weight of Yr Heart is an collection of thirty-seven love poems from emerging poet Brennan Kenneth Brown. Centered around a transcendental love for his partner Connie, this chapbook of poems examines the tender complexities of relationships through surreal imagery and vulnerability.

Brown's spare yet resonant verses chart the topography of devotion—moments of joy, desire, doubt, comfort, and more. Poems such as "gravity," "inheritance," and "a brief guide to poetry" offer glimpses into the way romantic connection shapes identity and purpose. While pieces including "the pleasures of being unknown" and "finding God @ foothills medical centre" explore how love provides shelter amid life's storms.

These love letters are steeped in symbolism, weaving themes of fate, gravity, and more. In "Her Many Roles," he pens "She is a soft anchor & flyfish— & my walls are within a tempestuous sea / where i lose everything i don’t need." An intimate waltz unfolds in "The Dance, the Dance," as "do our bodies know the rhythm? the dance / of love and longing & no need for language". Brown lays bare romantic philosophies, proclaiming "we were not created / to be the last of our species" and "there is so much more love poetry left to write" ("The Anatomy of Obsession").

Brown's poems feel both timeless and urgently present. His playful wit and turn of phrase in works like "the importance of pun names" balance exquisitely captured emotional nuance. Through it all, Brown returns again and again to his anchoring love for Connie.

The Weight of Yr Heart is a melodic, bittersweet ode made all the more poignant for its ephemerality—love as butterfly wings, gossamer yet heavy with meaning. Fans of Pablo Neruda, Billy-Ray Belcourt, and Dionne Brand are sure to connect with Brown’s raw, relatable verses on the most fundamental of human bonds.