Full Description
Angela Jackson returns with a poetic collage that draws on imagery from the African American South and the South Side of Chicago, storytelling, the Black Arts Movement, and Hausa folklore. Deftly using narrative and free verse, she artfully expresses the complexities, beauty, and haunts of the multilayered Black voice. Jackson offers a stirring mixture of the music, food, and soul that have come to characterize her lyrical work.
The speakers of these poems reflect on memory and saga, history and legend. Voices recall evenings spent catching fireflies with a younger sister, the aroma of homemade rolls, the father who squeezes papers into his wallet alongside bills in order to appear wealthy ("a flock of green birds rustling inside/ to get out for some extravagance"). A Black girl watches TV and dreams of the perfect partner. A citizen contends with the unrelenting devastation of police violence in a work reminiscent of Gwendolyn Brooks's "verse journalism." A mother loses her daughter only to witness her rebirth: "Praise be / the human being / that is being."
In "For Our People," an homage to Margaret Walker, Jackson summons the resilience and imagination of African Americans, celebrating "each of us injured or exalted, betrayer or betrayed, muted / and declamatory, all one, each of us all of us, each a private star beloved in the universe." Lauded as one of American poetry's most vivid voices, Jackson continues her reign as one of the country's foremost wordsmiths. This sublime collection delves deep into the porch stories and folktales that have carried the Black voice through all its histories.
Contents
Hero House
The Guide
Heat wave
Higher Ground
He Was a Trained Carpenter
A Country Girl
Beside the House
The Garden
Tenants
Madaddy and the Honduran Mau
Overnight
Summer and the City
Homemade Rolls
Novenas
Bills
Christmas Eves
Club DeLisa
Not your Government Name
Hot Fun in the Summertime
The Eiffel Towers
Hero - House
One of the Guys
A Portion of the Story
After the Killing
Love in High Places
The Wisdom of Ghosts
After Ablution
Bellwether
Blizzard, 2011
The House on Wentworth Avenue
The Memory Borrower
Vacant Lot
Frappe Toast
Sacred Heart: Atriptych
O, Mama
The Flowering Bamboo
Wishbone Wish
Thread Unwinds
A Beloved Girl Begins
A Mother Muses
Destitution
Goodness is its Own Reward
As I Walk I Sing
God Don't Like Ugly
Is This the Breeding Ground for Bitter Men?
Three Little Birds
Pausing for Elimination
The Dead Speak
What is the Difference
Sumptuous Meals
Upon Reflection
Knock, Knock
The Three Little Birds
Being a good mother
Going Straight on the Right
The Three Birds in the Tree
I Keep on Going, Going to the Right
A New Sky
Welcome!
In the Morning
What the little birds said -
After Work
Glimmering Sparks
Caress
God is God
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder
Motive is Everything
The Act
A Girl's Folly
What She Said as She Was Grinding her Up
A Daughter's Bones Remember
Musings
A Bird in a Tree
She Moved in Command
Party Time
As She Strutted
She Turned a Deaf Ear
A Bird Tweeted
The Way it Went
The Arch-Bishop Bull
She Kicked Back Reclining
Hot Mess
High Noon
Call Her Consequence, Call Her Karma, Call Her on the Run
Curious Mother
A Half Girl
Who Signed My Name In Blood
Girls at Play
Coda
