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Original Essays | December 12, 2009

Alexander McCall Smith: IMG The Courage of Others



I have recently written a novel about life in England during the Second World War. I felt some concern before I tackled this theme — the War... Continue »
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    La's Orchestra Saves the World

    Alexander McCall Smith

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2 Burnside Poetry- A to Z

Other titles in the Wishbone Trilogy, Part 1 series:

  1. Taboo

Taboo (Wishbone Trilogy, Part 1)

by Yusef Komunyakaa

Taboo (Wishbone Trilogy, Part 1) Cover

ISBN13: 9780374291488
ISBN10: 0374291489
Condition: Standard
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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

The Paint-Box artists<BR> color in Adam & Eve, <BR> using every hue & cry <BR>of temptation. Because God<BR> blends into the darkness<BR> the faces keep coming off.<BR>--from "Chiaroscuro" <BR>With the allusive leaps and improvisational chops of a jazz soloist, Yusef Komunyakaa is our great poet of connectivity--the secret blood that links slave and master, explorer and native, stranger and brother. In "Taboo" he examines the role of blacks in Western history, and how these roles are portrayed in art and literature. In taut, meticulously crafted three-line stanzas, Rubens paints his wife looking longingly at a black servant; Aphra Behn writes "Oroonoko" "as if she'd rehearsed it/for years in her spleen"; and in Monticello, Thomas Jefferson is "still at his neo-classical desk/musing, but we know his mind/is brushing aside abstractions/so his hands can touch flesh." "Taboo" is the powerful first book in a new trilogy by a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet whose work never ceases to challenge and delight his readers.<BR>

Review:

"A much-honored poet faces a global canvas in this lengthy, information-rich if sometimes repetitive sequence (the first in a promised trilogy), whose poems consider interracial contact, conflict and misunderstanding in the African diaspora, from Herodotus, ancient Greece and Egypt to modern (not to say modernist) New York. Phillis Wheatley, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Faulkner's Miss Emily, Perseus, Othello, Anne Frank and several giants of jazz stand among the many whose legacy (evil, praiseworthy or both) prompts at least one poem. The large cast makes the book feel at times exhilaratingly expansive, at other times simply crowded — no poet has used this much history, this many figures and famous names, since Robert Lowell (himself another character here). Komunyakaa won a Pulitzer for 1993's Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems, which featured his extraordinarily skillful jazz-inspired short lines. Those lines here serve off- balance three-line stanzas that bear tremendous weights of raw information, and finally carry the book. The best poems either tell unfamiliar stories (Benedict the Moor, in the volume's moving finale) or eschew proper nouns for personal reflection ('In Line at the Bank'). If other verse tells more than it can show, or sounds more reportorial than lyrical, the whole sequence testifies to a skill, and an ambition, that will surely continue to merit national attention. (Sept.)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Synopsis:

The Paint-Box artists color in Adam & Eve, using every hue & cryof temptation. Because God blends into the darkness the faces keep coming off.--from "Chiaroscuro"With the allusive leaps and improvisational chops of a jazz soloist, Yusef Komunyakaa is our great poet of connectivity--the secret blood that links slave and master, explorer and native, stranger and brother. In Taboo he examines the role of blacks in Western history, and how these roles are portrayed in art and literature. In taut, meticulously crafted three-line stanzas, Rubens paints his wife looking longingly at a black servant; Aphra Behn writes Oroonoko "as if she'd rehearsed it/for years in her spleen"; and in Monticello, Thomas Jefferson is "still at his neo-classical desk/musing, but we know his mind/is brushing aside abstractions/so his hands can touch flesh." Taboo is the powerful first book in a new trilogy by a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet whose work never ceases to challenge and delight his readers.

About the Author

Yusef Komunyakaa's eleven books of poems include Talking Dirty to the Gods (FSG, 2000) and Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems, for which he received the Pulitzer Prize. He teaches at Princeton University.

Product Details

ISBN:
9780374291488
Subtitle:
The Wishbone Trilogy, Part One; Poems
Author:
Komunyakaa, Yusef
Publisher:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Location:
New York
Subject:
American - General
Subject:
Blacks
Subject:
General Poetry
Edition Number:
1st ed.
Edition Description:
Includes bibliographical references.
Series:
Wishbone Trilogy, Part 1
Series Volume:
348
Publication Date:
20040901
Binding:
HC
Language:
English
Pages:
144
Dimensions:
8.58x5.76x.66 in. .64 lbs.

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