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Overview
“Vital and sophisticated ... sinks hooks into you that cannot be easily removed.” —The New York Times
Divided into "Home Recordings" and "Field Recordings," Brown speaks to the way personal experience is shaped by culture, while culture is forever affected by the personal, recalling a black Kansas boyhood to comment on our times.
From "History"—a song of Kansas high-school fixture Mr. W., who gave his students "the Sixties / minus Malcolm X, or Watts, / barely a march on Washington"—to "Money Road," a sobering pilgrimage to the site of Emmett Till's lynching, the poems engage place and the past and their intertwined power.
These thirty-two taut poems and poetic sequences, including an oratorio based on Mississippi "barkeep, activist, waiter" Booker Wright that was performed at Carnegie Hall and the vibrant sonnet cycle "De La Soul Is Dead," about the days when hip-hop was growing up ("we were black then, not yet / African American"), remind us that blackness and brownness tell an ongoing story.
A testament to Young's own—and our collective—experience, Brown offers beautiful, sustained harmonies from a poet whose wisdom deepens with time.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781524732547 |
---|---|
Publisher: | Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group |
Publication date: | 04/17/2018 |
Pages: | 176 |
Product dimensions: | 6.25(w) x 9.28(h) x 0.82(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Brown
for my mother
The scrolled brown arms
of the church pews curve like a bone—their backs
bend us upright, standing
as the choir enters
singing, We’ve come this far
by faith—the steps
& sway of maroon robes,
hands clap like a heart
in its chest—leaning
on the Lord—
this morning’s program
still warm
from the mimeo machine
quick becomes a fan.
In the vestibule latecomers
wait just outside
the music—the river
we crossed
to get here—
wide boulevards now
*
in disrepair.
We’re watched over
in the antechamber
by Rev.
Oliver Brown,
his small, colored picture
nailed slanted to the wall—former pastor of St. Mark’s
who marched into that principal’s office
in Topeka to ask
why can’t my daughter school here, just steps from our house—
but well knew the answer—
& Little Linda became an idea, became more
what we needed & not
a girl no more—Free-dom
Free-dom—
*
Now meant
sit-ins & I shall I shall
I shall not be
moved—
& four little girls bombed into tomorrow
in a church basement like ours where nursing mothers & children not ready to sit still
learned to walk—Sunday school sent into pieces
& our arms.
We are swaying more now, entering
heaven’s rolls—the second row
behind the widows in their feathery hats
& empty nests, heads heavy
but not hearts
Amen. The all-white
*
stretchy, scratchy dresses
of the missionaries—
the hatless holy who pin lace
to their hair—bowing
down into pocketbooks opened for the Lord, then
snapped shut like a child’s mouth mouthing off, which just
one glare from an elder
could close.
God’s eyes must be
like these—aimed
at the back row where boys pass jokes
& glances, where Great
Aunts keep watch,
their hair shiny
as our shoes
&, as of yesterday,
just as new—
*
chemical curls & lop-
sided wigs—humming
during offering
Oh my Lord
Oh my Lordy
What can I do.
The pews curve like ribs
broken, barely healed,
& we can feel
ourselves breathe—
while Mrs. Linda Brown
Thompson, married now, hymns
piano behind her solo—
No finer noise
than this—
We sing along, or behind,
mouth most
every word—following her grown, glory voice,
the black notes
*
rising like we do—
like Deacon
Coleman who my mother
always called Mister—
who’d help her
weekends & last
I saw him my mother
offered him a slice of sweet potato
pie as payment—
or was it apple—
he’d take no money
barely said
Yes, only
I could stay
for a piece—
trim as his grey
moustache, he ate
with what I can only
call dignity—
fork gently placed
*
across his emptied plate.
Afterward, full,
Mr. Coleman’s That’s nice
meant wonder, meant the world entire.
Within a year cancer
had eaten him away—
the only hint of it this bitter taste for a whole
year in his mouth. The resurrection
and the light.
For now he’s still
standing down front, waiting at the altar for anyone to accept the Lord, rise
& he’ll meet you halfway
& help you down
the aisle—
legs grown weak—
As it was in the beginning
Is now
*
And ever shall be—
All this tuning
& tithing. We offer
our voices up toward the windows whose glass I knew
as colored, not stained—
our backs made upright not by
the pews alone—
the brown
wood smooth, scrolled
arms grown
warm with wear—
& prayer—
Tell your neighbor
next to you
you love them—till
we exit into the brightness beyond the doors.
Table of Contents
Thataway 3
Home Recordings
1 The A Train
Swing 9
Rumble in the Jungle 11
Open Letter to Hank Aaron 13
Mercy Rule 15
Slump
Stealing
Patter
Flame Tempered
Practice
The Division
Ode to the Harlem Globetrotters 26
Ashe 27
Shirts & Skins 29
I doubt it 33
2 On The Atchison, Topeka & The Santa Fe
Ad Astra Per Aspera 37
Western Meadowlark
American Bison
Sunflower
Phys. Ed. 42
Warm Up
Tumbling
Dodgeball
Bleachers
Practice
City
Ice Storm, 1984 50
History 53
Dictation 58
Booty Green 59
Brown 65
Field Recordings
3 Night Train
James Brown at B. B. King's on New Year's Eve 77
Fishbone 78
Chuck Taylor All Stars
Checkerboard Vans
Creepers
DocMartens
John Fluevogs
Lead Belly's First Grave 86
It 88
Ode to Big Pun 89
De La Soul Is Dead 90
Ode to OL Dirty Bastard 114
4 The Crescent Limited
B. B. King Plays Oxford, Mississippi 119
Bass 120
Triptych for Trayvon Martin 121
Not Guilty (A Frieze for Sandra Bland)
Limbo (A Fresco for Tamir Rice)
Nightstick (A Mural for Michael Brown)
A Brown Atlanta Boy Watches Basketball on West 4th. Meanwhile, Neo-Nazis March on Charlottesville, Virginia 126
Howlin' Wolf 128
Repast 131
Hospitality Blues
The Head Waiter's Lament
Reservations
Booker's Place
Waiting
Death's Dictionary
A Glossary of Uppity
Pining, A Definition
Sundaying
Whistle 147
Money Road 148
Hive 156
Notes & Acknowledgments 159