Blue-tail fly / Vievee Francis.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Francis, Vievee.

Series:

Made in Michigan writers series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

African American soldiers--Poetry.

African American soldiers.

Mexican War, 1846-1848--Poetry.

Mexican War, 1846-1848.

United States--History--Civil War, 1861-1865--Poetry.

United States.

History.

Genre:

Poetry.

Physical Description:

77 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Detroit, Mich. : Wayne State University Press, [2006]

Summary:

The title of Blue-Tail Fly comes from an antebellum song commonly known as "Jimmy Crack Corn." The blue-tail fly is a supposedly insignificant creature that bites the horse that bucks and kills the master. In this collection, poet Vievee Francis gives voice to "outsiders"--from soldiers and common folk to leading political figures--who play the role of the blue-tail fly in the period of American history between the Mexican American War and the Civil War. Through a diverse range of styles, characters, and emotions, Francis's poems consider the demands of war, protest and resistance to it, and the cross-cultural exchanges of wartime. More than a narrowly themed text, Blue-Tail Fly is a book of balances, weighing the give-and-take of people and cultures in the arena of war. For lovers of poetry and those interested in American history, Blue-Tail Fly will illustrate the complexities of the American past and future.

Contents:

The Scale of Empire 1

Aftermath

1880, The Binding Tie 5

The Finishing Thoughts of Festus Spencer as He Looks into the Camera 12

Frederick Douglass Speaks before the Anti-Mexican War Abolitionists 15

Ample Cause of War 16

General Taylor Convinces Himself That He Is for War 17

Doubt 18

Letter to the Governor of Texas 19

Notes from Officer Hitchcock's Lost Leather Journal 20

Liberation 21

By the end 23

Three Hundred and Seventy-Two Miles from Home 24

Pokagon Accepts Colonel Taylor's Invitation 26

Colonel Zachary Taylor Has Pokagon for Tea 27

The Escarpment 28

In Private Conversation: Buchanan to Like Minds 30

The Book Speaks of Pretenders 31

South of Houston 32

Civil Beginnings 35

Darling Wife 36

Grey Jebediah 37

The Bone Boiler 38

Shadows 40

1864, Fragments of a Camp near Yorktown 41

1864, A Pocket Full of Rye 42

Snake Swamp 43

1863, Walt Whitman Reads to the Limbless, Dying 44

Linsey-Woolsey 45

1864, Dear Mother 46

Gettysburg: Blue and Grey 47

A Singular Dispersion over Franklin, Tennessee 49

Lincoln Dreams of Sarah, the Servant 51

"If Not for You" 52

1863, Detroit Riots, Again 55

1864, Dear Son 55

Private Athens Descries 59

Hannibal of Athens, Georgia 60

White Glove Test 61

Private Smith's Primer 62

Br'er Rabbit in Chickamauga 63

Drummer Boy 64

Interview: Survivor, Fort Pillow 65

A Second Dream of Sarah 66

Nigger Pine 67

Lincoln Speaks after the Bones Are Thrown 68

The White Immensities 69.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (page 75).

ISBN:

0814333230

OCLC:

62615913

Publisher Number:

9780814333235