The Essential Etheridge Knight

The Essential Etheridge Knight PDF Author: Etheridge Knight
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822991098
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 143

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Book Description
Seminal African American poet Etheridge Knight did not begin writing poetry until a robbery conviction sent him to prison in 1960. A Korean War veteran who suffered a shrapnel wound that led to drug addiction, Knight published his first collection in 1968, Poems from Prison, which set him apart as an important new voice in the Black Arts Movement. His second collection, Belly Songs and Other Poems (1973), earned him Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award nominations, and his third collection, Born of a Woman: New and Selected (1980), was also critically acclaimed. The Essential Etheridge Knight is a selection of the best work by one of the country’s most prominent and still-relevant poets, decades after his death. It brings together poems from Knight’s three previously published books and a section of later poems available only in this collection, which features a striking new cover.

The Essential Etheridge Knight

The Essential Etheridge Knight PDF Author: Etheridge Knight
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822991098
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 143

Get Book

Book Description
Seminal African American poet Etheridge Knight did not begin writing poetry until a robbery conviction sent him to prison in 1960. A Korean War veteran who suffered a shrapnel wound that led to drug addiction, Knight published his first collection in 1968, Poems from Prison, which set him apart as an important new voice in the Black Arts Movement. His second collection, Belly Songs and Other Poems (1973), earned him Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award nominations, and his third collection, Born of a Woman: New and Selected (1980), was also critically acclaimed. The Essential Etheridge Knight is a selection of the best work by one of the country’s most prominent and still-relevant poets, decades after his death. It brings together poems from Knight’s three previously published books and a section of later poems available only in this collection, which features a striking new cover.

Born of a Woman

Born of a Woman PDF Author: Etheridge Knight
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 150

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Book Description
"Poems written [between 1964 and 1979], products of the experiences of one Black man in a divided society, evoke the brutality, fear, and desperation fostered in injustice and comment on love and brotherhood"--From Amazon.com.

Understanding Etheridge Knight

Understanding Etheridge Knight PDF Author: Michael S. Collins
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 1611172632
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
Understanding Etheridge Knight introduces readers to a major—but understudied—American poet. Etheridge Knight (1931–1991) survived a shrapnel wound suffered during military service in Korea, as well as a drug addiction that led to an eight-year prison sentence, to publish five volumes of poetry and a small cache of powerful prose. His status in the front ranks of American poets and thinkers on poetry was acknowledged in 1984, when he won the Shelley Memorial Award, which had previously gone, as an acknowledgement of "genius and need," to E. E. Cummings, Gwendolyn Brooks, and W. S. Merwin. In this first book-length study of Knight and his complete body of work, Michael Collins examines the poetry of a complex literary figure who, following imprisonment, transformed his life to establish himself as a charismatic voice in American poetry and an accomplished teacher at institutions such as the University of Hartford, Lincoln University, and his own Free Peoples Poetry Workshops. Beginning with a concise biography of Knight, Collins explores Knight's volumes of poetry including Poems from Prison, Black Voices from Prison, Born of a Woman, and The Essential Etheridge Knight. Understanding Etheridge Knight brings attention to a crucial era in African American and American poetry and to the literature of the incarcerated while reflecting on the life and work of an original voice in American poetry.

To Float in the Space Between

To Float in the Space Between PDF Author: Terrance Hayes
Publisher: Wave Books
ISBN: 1950268837
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 191

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Book Description
“Hayes leaves resonance cleaving the air.” —NPR In these works based on his Bagley Wright lectures on the poet Etheridge Knight, Terrance Hayes offers not quite a biography but a compilation “as speculative, motley, and adrift as Knight himself.” Personal yet investigative, poetic yet scholarly, this multi-genre collection of writings and drawings enacts one poet’s search for another and in doing so constellates a powerful vision of black literature and art in America. The future Etheridge Knight biographer will simultaneously write an autobiography. Fathers who go missing and fathers who are distant will become the bones of the stories. There will be a fable about a giant who grew too tall to be kissed by his father. My father must have kissed me when I was boy. I can’t really say. . . . By the time I was eleven or even ten years old I was as tall as him. I was six inches taller than him by the time I was fifteen. My biography about Knight would be about intimacy, heartache. Terrance Hayes is the author of How to Be Drawn, which received a 2016 NAACP Image Award for Poetry; Lighthead, which won the 2010 National Book Award for poetry; and three other award-winning poetry collections. He is the poetry editor at the New York Times Magazine and also teaches at the University y of Pittsburgh. American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin will also be forthcoming in 2018.

Belly Song and Other Poems

Belly Song and Other Poems PDF Author: Etheridge Knight
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : African Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
Etheridge Knight's first book of poetry, Poems from Prison, was acclaimed by poet Gwendolyn Brooks with the words "This poetry is a major announcement." Since its publication in 1968, Knight's reputation has grown steadily, and he has read his poetry throughout the nation. He has edited a collection of prison writings, Black Voices from Prison. Belly Song has as introduction a moving lettter written just before Knight's release from prison. Some of the poems were written in prison, others after his release, but they all show the increasing power and sensitiveness of his often anquished poetry.

Windy Place

Windy Place PDF Author: Henry Blakely
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 80

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Book Description


Transformations

Transformations PDF Author: Anne Sexton
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 150403435X
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 125

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Book Description
Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Anne Sexton morphs classic fairy tales into dark critiques of the cultural myths underpinning modern society Anne Sexton breathes new life into sixteen age-old Brothers Grimm fairy tales, reimagining them as poems infused with contemporary references, feminist ideals, and morbid humor. Grounded by nods to the ordinary—a witch’s blood “began to boil up/like Coca-Cola” and Snow White’s bodice is “as tight as an Ace bandage”—Sexton brings the stories out of the realm of the fantastical and into the everyday world. Stripping away their magical sheen, she exposes the flawed notions of family, gender, and morality within the stories that continue to pervade our collective psyche. Sexton is especially critical of what follows these tales’ happily-ever-after endings, noting that Cinderella never has to face the mundane struggles of marriage and growing old, such as “diapers and dust,” “telling the same story twice,” or “getting a middle-aged spread,” and that after being awakened Sleeping Beauty would likely be plagued by insomnia, taking “knock-out drops” behind the prince’s back. Deconstructed into vivid, visceral, and often highly amusing poems, these fairy tales reflect themes that have long fascinated Sexton—the claustrophobic anxiety of domestic life, the limited role of women in society, and a psychological strife more dangerous than any wicked witch or poisoned apple.

{#289-128}

{#289-128} PDF Author: Randall Horton
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813179904
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 77

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Book Description
"Forgive state poet #289-128 / for not scribbling illusions / of trickery as if timeless hell / could be captured by stanzas / alliteration or slant rhyme," remarks the speaker, Maryland Department of Corrections prisoner {#289-128}, early in this haunting collection. Three sections—{#289-128} Property of the State, {#289-128} Poet-in-Residence (Cell 23), and {#289-128} Poet in New York—frame the countless ways in which the narrator's body and life are socially and legally rendered by the state even as the act of poetry helps him reclaim an identity during imprisonment. These poems address the prison industrial complex, the carceral state, the criminal justice system, racism, violence, love, resilience, hope, and despair while exploring the idea of freedom in a cell. In the tradition of Dennis Brutus's Letters to Martha, Wole Soyinka's A Shuttle in the Crypt, and Etheridge Knight's The Essential Etheridge Knight, {#289-128} challenges the language of incarceration—especially the ways in which it reinforces stigmas and stereotypes. Though {#289-128} refuses to be defined as a felon, this collection viscerally details the dehumanizing effects of prison, which linger long after release. It also illuminates the ways in which we all are relegated to cells or boundaries, whether we want to acknowledge it or not.

Morning Haiku

Morning Haiku PDF Author: Sonia Sanchez
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807069116
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 58

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Book Description
Poems of commemoration and loss for readers of all ages, from a leading writer of the Black Arts Movement and the American Poetry Society's 2018 Wallace Stevens Award–winner. Sonia Sanchez's collection of haiku celebrates the gifts of life and mourns the deaths of revered African American figures in the worlds of music, literature, art, and activism. In her verses, we hear the sounds of Max Roach "exploding in the universe," the "blue hallelujahs" of the Philadelphia Murals, and the voice of Odetta "thundering out of the earth." Sanchez sings the praises of contemporaries whose poetic alchemy turns "words into gems": Maya Angelou, Richard Long, and Toni Morrison. And she pays homage to peace workers and civil rights activists from Rosa Parks and Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm to Brother Damu, founder of the National Black Environmental Justice Network. Often arranged in strings of twelve or more, the haiku flow one into the other in a steady song of commemoration. Sometimes deceptively simple, her lyrics hold a very powerful load of emotion and meaning. There are intimate verses here for family and friends, verses of profound loss and silence, of courage and resilience. Sanchez is innovative, composing haiku in new forms, including a section of moving two-line poems that reflect on the long wake of 9/11. In a brief and personal opening essay, the poet explains her deep appreciation for haiku as an art form. With its touching portraits and by turns uplifting and heartbreaking lyrics, Morning Haiku contains some of Sanchez's freshest, most poignant work.

Felon: Poems

Felon: Poems PDF Author: Reginald Dwayne Betts
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393652157
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 112

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Book Description
Winner of the 2019 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work in Poetry Finalist for the 2019 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry A searing volume by a poet whose work conveys "the visceral effect that prison has on identity" (Michiko Kakutani, New York Times). Felon tells the story of the effects of incarceration in fierce, dazzling poems—canvassing a wide range of emotions and experiences through homelessness, underemployment, love, drug abuse, domestic violence, fatherhood, and grace—and, in doing so, creates a travelogue for an imagined life. Reginald Dwayne Betts confronts the funk of postincarceration existence and examines prison not as a static space, but as a force that enacts pressure throughout a person’s life. The poems move between traditional and newfound forms with power and agility—from revolutionary found poems created by redacting court documents to the astonishing crown of sonnets that serves as the volume’s radiant conclusion. Drawing inspiration from lawsuits filed on behalf of the incarcerated, the redaction poems focus on the ways we exploit and erase the poor and imprisoned from public consciousness. Traditionally, redaction erases what is top secret; in Felon, Betts redacts what is superfluous, bringing into focus the profound failures of the criminal justice system and the inadequacy of the labels it generates. Challenging the complexities of language, Betts animates what it means to be a "felon."