Brutal imagination : poems / Cornelius Eady.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Eady, Cornelius, 1954-

Contributor:

Joanna Banks Collection of African American Books (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

African Americans--Poetry.

African Americans.

Race relations.

Race awareness.

Race awareness--Poetry.

Race relations--Poetry.

Genre:

Poetry.

Penn Provenance:

Banks, Joanna (donor) (Banks Collection copy)

Physical Description:

14 unnumbered pages, 108 pages, 6 unnumbered pages ; 22 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2001.

Summary:

Brutal Imagination is made up of two cycles of poems, each confronting the same subject: the black man in white America.

The first cycle, which carries the book's title, deals with the vision of the black man in white imagination. Narrated largely by the black kidnapper invented by Susan Smith to cover up the killing of her two small sons, it displays Eady's stunning range: his deft wit, inventiveness, and skillfully targeted anger, as well as his talent for combining the subtle with the charged, street idiom with elegant inversions, harsh images with the sweetly ordinary.

The second cycle, "Running Man," presents poems Eady drew on for his libretto for the music-drama of the same name, which was a 1999 Pulitzer Prize finalist. The focus here is the black family and the barriers of color, class, and caste that tear it apart, and the title character represents every dreaming black boy who ever crashed into the limits set by the white world as he reached manhood. As The Village Voice wrote, "It is a hymn to all the sons this country has stolen from her African-American families."

Taken together, the two cycles offer a stark reappraisal of race in America. They are the work of a poet at the peak of his considerable powers.

Contents:

Brutal Imagination. 1. How I Got Born; My Heart; Who Am I?; Sightings; My Face; Susan Smith's Police Report; Where Am I?; The Lake; The Law; Why I am Not a Woman; One True Thing; Composite; Charles Stuart in the Hospital. 2. Uncle Tom in Heaven; Uncle Ben Watches the Local News; Jemima's Do-Rag; Buckwheat's Lament; Stepin Fetchit Reads the Paper. 3. The Unsigned Confession of Mr. Zeno; What I'm Made Of; What the Sheriff Suspects; Next of Kin; What is Known about the Abductor; Interrogation; My Eyes; What Isn't Known about the Abductor; Press Conference; Sympathy; Confession. 4. Birthing

The Running Man Poems. When He Left; Hold the Line; The Train; Piss; Armor; Mamie; Failure; Home; Miss Look's Dream; Baby Sister & the Radio; My Sister Makes Me Up While I Sleep; First Crimes; Liar; Sex; Revenge; What I Do; Replaced; Truth; What Happened; Gossip/Denial; Hunger; Denouncement; Running Man.

Notes:

"A Marian Wood book."

"Book design by Judith Stagnitto Abbate/Abbate Design."

Title page printed horizontally.

Local Notes:

Kislak Center Banks Collection copy presented to the Penn Libraries in 2018 by Joanna Banks.

ISBN:

0399147187

0399147209

OCLC:

44969493