ABOUT THIS BOOK

"Weaver's life studies and lyrics are imbued with a vivid sense of language, a vivid sense of the world, a vivid sense of their inseparability. And his tonal range—from unabashed passion to the subtlest velleity—is impressive indeed. This is a singular talent."—Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Afaa Michael Weaver is the author of twelve poetry collections, including Timber and Prayer: The Indian Pond Poems, The Plum Flower Dance: Poems 1985 to 2005, and The Government of Nature. He is Alumnae Professor of English at Simmons College in Boston. Weaver is the recipient of an NEA fellowship, a Pew fellowship, and a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts fellowship. He has been awarded a Pushcart Prize and a Fulbright scholar appointment, among other honors.

REVIEWS

"Weaver's life studies and lyrics are imbued with a vivid sense of language, a vivid sense of the world, a vivid sense of their inseparability. And his tonal range—from unabashed passion to the subtlest velleity—is impressive indeed. This is a singular talent."—Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

“Weaver is an outstanding new voice in African American poetry, the most lyrical writer to emerge this decade, a man who writes with rural and urban idioms that give us a truly new American poetry.”
—Dr. James V. Hatch, Hatch-Billops Collection

“Weaver is expanding the great tradition in American parlance and song. He strives for the deep resonance of American Grand Opera, in the Whitman tradition. One of his sources for inspiration are the Big Bands, his father’s and mine. His poems expand the rhythm section, “straight talk” from ancestry and remembrance. His poems are incremental revelations, his own poetic music. It is a fine rhetorical striving, undiminished.”

—Michael S. Harper

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

Cartography and Dreaming

Ego

The Missing Patriarch

Beginnings

Rough Riders on the Lawn

The Picnic, an Homage to Civil Rights

The Weekend Equestrian

The Appaloosa

The Dogs

Homecoming

Thanksgiving

Bethlehem

The Washington Papers

Atlantic City

The Madman's First Flight

The Madman Raises the Dead

The Madman in Solitary

The Madman in Treatment

Dialing for Dollars

My Father's First Baseball Game

Meditation for My Son

The Family Hymn

Back from the Arms of Big Mama

Navigation and Healing the Heart

Peeping Through Billows of Dust

An Improbable Mecca

The Message on Cape Cod

Taking Our Son to MOMA

The Honeymoon

Maple Mountain

The Helper

Tamo Before the Wall

Exploration and Writing the Way

My Father's Geography

Canadian Awe

Luxembourg Garden

By the Seine

Cannes

Switzerland

An Evening in Madrid

A Café Window

New England

Providence

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