University of Pittsburgh Press, 1986 eISBN: 978-0-8229-9109-0 | Cloth: 978-0-8229-3529-2 | Paper: 978-0-8229-5378-4 Library of Congress Classification PS3561.N45A6 1986 Dewey Decimal Classification 811.54
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
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.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Etheridge Knight (1931–1991) is widely regarded as one of America’s most prominent and compelling poets. His work has been featured in such anthologies as Norton Anthology of American Poets, New Black Poets, and Black Voices, among others.
REVIEWS
“A foremost American poet in the black oral tradition, can move from pathos and a near-tragic vision of the destructiveness of imprisonment to tenderness and a lusty, incisive wit. . . . the work as a whole bears testimony anew to his authentic ‘blues’ voice, deep feeling, and concern for communication between the races.” --Library Journal
“Wonderful in its ability to combine love and anger, irony and sweetness. Knight is a street-smart poet with an ear for the Black American idiom and experience, and his poems reflect a life lived largely at the cutting edge edge of that experience: poverty, racism, prison, drug addiction, and rehabilitation. Whether in the form of incantatory blues, narrative poems, or his distinctly individual urban haiku, Knight’s is a compelling voice.” --Seattle Times
"To read Knight is not to escape from or to transfigure America. It really isn't a 'comfortable' experience. He is too aware of the violent spaces between races and individuals to attempt grandiloquescence. Equally he is too screwed into the mundane to attempt sleight of hand tricks. His poetry is clarified on the oilstone of experience. The sad, funky, yet celebrative sound of his 'blues' is experience being honed on the quartz grains of a grindstone."
—The Iowa Review
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CONTENTS
Genesis
1
Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane
Cell Song
He Sees through Stone
The Idea of Ancestry
On the Yard
A Wasp Woman Visits a Black Junkie in Prison
Haiku
For Freckle-Faced Gerald
The Warden Said to Me the Other Day
My Life, the Quality of Which
A Poem for Black Relocation Centers
2
You Are
The Violent Space
A Poem for a Certain Lady on Her 33rd Birthday
The Stretching of the Belly
As You Leave Me
No Moon Floods the Memory of That Night
Upon Your Leaving
Feeling Fucked Up
Indiana Haiku—2
Vigo County
The Penal Farm
Crown Hill Cemetery, Indianapolis
Indianapolis War Memorial
Harlem
For Langston Hughes
Welcome Back, Mr. Knight: Love of My Life
Another Poem for Me
The Bones of My Father
Evolutionary Poem No. 1
Evolutionary Poem No. 2
3
A Poem for Myself
Report to the Mother
The Sun Came
It Was a Funky Deal
Dark Prophecy: I Sing of Shine
For Malcolm, a Year After
A Poem of Attrition
For Black Poets Who Think of Suicide
For Mary Ellen McAnally
The Keeping of a Promise
Ilu, the Talking Drum
Poem for the Liberation of Southern Africa
Television Speaks
On Watching Politicians Perform at Martin Luther King's Funeral
4
A Fable
Memo #9
Memo #32
Memo #2
Memo #5
Portrait of Mary
My Uncle is My Honor and a Guest in My House
I and Your Eyes
On the Birth of a Black / Baby / Boy
Birthday Poem
Cop-Out Session
A Poem to Galway Kinnell
Missouri Haiku
Boone County
Outside St. Louis
Clay County
Mizzu
Indiana Haiku
Riverside Park
Indiana Avenue, 1949
Indianapolis Winter, 1973
We Free Singers Be
Talking in the Woods with Karl Amorelli
Boston 5:00 A.M.—10/74
A Poem on the Middle East “Peace Process”
Haiku 1
Memo #43
And Tell Me Poet, Can Love Exist in Slavery?
Green Grass and Yellow Balloons
Belly Song
Apology for Apostasy?
Con / Tin / U / Way / Shun Blues
5
On Seeing the Black Male as # 1 Sex Object in America
Last Words by “Slick”
Haiku
Genesis 11
Eat Helen B Happy
Various Protestations from Various People
At a VA Hospital in the Middle of the United States of America: An Act in a Play
On the Projects Playground
Circling the Daughter
For a Brookline Lady I Love
Once on a Night in the Delta: A Report from Hell
A Black Poet Leaps to His Death
Rehabilitation & Treatment in the Prisons of America
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