Blue-tail fly / Vievee Francis.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Francis, Vievee.

Series:

Made in Michigan writers 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.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (89 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

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

Language Note:

English

Summary:

A poetic treatment of the period of American history between the beginning of the Mexican War and the end of the Civil War, by Michigan poet Vievee Francis. 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:

Cover

Contents

The Scale of Empire

AFTERMATH

1880, The Binding Tie

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

I

Frederick Douglass Speaks before the Anti-Mexican War Abolitionists

Ample Cause of War

General Taylor Convinces Himself That He Is for War

Doubt

Letter to the Governor of Texas

Notes from Officer Hitchcock's Lost Leather Journal

Liberation

By the end

Three Hundred and Seventy-Two Miles from Home

Pokagon Accepts Colonel Taylor's Invitation

Colonel Zachary Taylor Has Pokagon for Tea

The Escarpment

In Private Conversation: Buchanan to Like Minds

The Book Speaks of Pretenders

South of Houston

II

Civil Beginnings

Darling Wife

Grey Jebediah

The Bone Boiler

Shadows

1864, Fragments of a Camp near Yorktown

1864, A Pocket Full of Rye

Snake Swamp

1863, Walt Whitman Reads to the Limbless, Dying

Linsey-Woolsey

1864, Dear Mother

Gettysburg: Blue and Grey

A Singular Dispersion over Franklin, Tennessee

Lincoln Dreams of Sarah, the Servant

"If Not for You"

1863, Detroit Riots, Again

1864, Dear Son

III

Private Athens Descries

Hannibal of Athens, Georgia

White Glove Test

Private Smith's Primer

Br'er Rabbit in Chickamauga

Drummer Boy

Interview: Survivor, Fort Pillow

A Second Dream of Sarah

Nigger Pine

Lincoln Speaks after the Bones Are Thrown

The White Immensities

Notes on the Poems

Credits and Acknowledgments.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

ISBN:

9780814335215

0814335217

OCLC:

755621241