Crave Radiance: New and Selected Poems 1990-2010
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The first career retrospective by the award-winning poet Elizabeth Alexander, including her poem delivered at Barack Obama's presidential inaugurationWe crave radiance in this austere world, light in the spiritual darkness. Learning is the one perfect religion, its path correct, narrow, certain, straight. —from “Allegiance” Over twenty years, Elizabeth Alexander has become one of America’s most exciting and important poets, and her selection as the inaugural poet by President Obama confirmed her place as one of the indispensable voices of our time. Crave Radiance: New and Selected Poems 1990–2010 gathers twenty pages of new poetry, along with generous selections from her previous work. The result is the definitive volume to date by this American master.Publishers WeeklyAlexander is now widely known as the poet who read her "Praise Song for the Day" at President Obama's inauguration, but as this first retrospective volume attests, that poem was preceded by a substantial and varied body of work composed over the past 20 years. Alexander's two primary themes, which are interwoven into almost all of her poems, are the traumas of African-American history and the microcosm of the family, where those traumas show some of their effects and where their healing begins. Early poems look for heroes among artists and ancestors, as well as political figures, as in "A Poem for Nelson Mandela": "On a rooftop of a prison/ in South Africa Nelson Mandela/ tends garden and has a birthday/ as my Jamaican grandfather in Harlem... / raises tomatoes." In later poems, Alexander delves into black pop culture: "Was the Black Nation whispering to me/ from the Jet magazines stacked on the floor," she asks in "Tending." The book's most powerful sequence is a long series of poems recounting the 1839 rebellion on the slave ship Amistad, whose rebels were sequestered in New Haven (where Alexander lives and teaches), sparking a controversial trial. A selection of new poems, including "Praise Song," closes this volume, which will cement Alexander's status as much more than the inaugural poet. (Oct.)
From The Venus Hottentot (1990)*The Venus Hottentot 3West Indian Primer 8Ladders 9Zodiac 10The Dirt-Eaters 11House Party Sonnet: '66 14Nineteen 15Omni-Albert Murray 16Robeson at Rutgers 22Van Der Zee 23Bearden 25Deadwood Dick 26Painting 27Monet at Giverny 28Farewell to You 29Penmanship 31Letter: Blues 32Boston Year 34A Poem for Nelson Mandela 35Today's News 36From Body of Life (1996)*Stravinsky in L.A. 39The Josephine Baker Museum 40Yolande Speaks 45Fugue 47The Texas Prophet 48Talk Radio, D.C. 49Passage 50Summertime 52Washington ãtude 53Apollo 55What I'm Telling You 56Butter 57Compass 58Frank Willis 61Family Stone 63Six Yellow Stanzas 64Blues 70Affirmative Action Blues 72Haircut 74Judge Gets Grandma to Whip Offender 76For Miriam 77L.A. by Night 79Harlem Birthday Party 80Body of Life 82Blues 86Equinox 87At the Beach 88Cleaning Out Your Apartment 89Tending 90Leaving 91After 92From Antebellum Dream Book (2001)*Fugue 95Elegy 100Overture: Watermelon City 101Early Cinema 103Visitor 105Geraniums 107Islands Number Four 108Nat Turner Dreams of Insurrection 109Race 110Baby 111Crash 112The Toni Morrison Dreams 113"The female seer will burn upon this pyre" 117War 118Peccant 119Opiate 120After the Gig: Mick Jagger 121Postpartum Dream #8 122Postpartum Dream #12: Appointment 123The Party 125Orange 126Visitation 128Feminist Poem Number One 129Gift 130Narrative: Ali 131Neonatology 143From American Sublime (2005)*Emancipation 157Smile 158Tina Green 159When 160Five Elegies 161Stray 166Fried Apples 167The Dream That I Told My Mother-in-Law 168Black Poets Talk about the Dead 170The African Picnic 171Autumn Passage 173Ars Poetica #1,002: Rally 174Ars Poetica #17: First Afro-American Esperantist 177Ars Poetica #28: African Leave-Taking Disorder 178Ars Poetica #23: "Whassup G?" 179Ars Poetica #21: Graduate Study of Literature 180Ars Poetica #92: Marcus Garvey on Elocution 181Ars Poetica #56: "Bullfrogs Was Falling Out of the Sky" 183Ars Poetica #16: Lot 184Ars Poetica #100: I Believe 185Ars Poetica #88: Sublime 186AmistadAmistad 187The Blue Whale 188Absence 189boy haiku 190Poro Society 191Approach 192Connecticut 193Other Cargo 194Education 195The Yale Men 197Teacher 198Translator 199Physiognomy 201Constitutional 203Mende Vocabulary 204The Girls 205Kere's Song 206Judge Judson 207In Cursive 208God 209Waiting for Cinque to Speak 210The Amistad Trail 211Cinque Redux 212The Last Quatrain 213American Sublime 214Tanner's Annunciation 215From Miss Crandall's School for Young Ladies and Little Misses of Color (2007)*Knowledge 219Good-bye 220Study 221We 222Lawyers 223Allegiance 224Water 225Hunger 226Call and Response 227Cat 228End 229Julia Williams 230New PoemsLuck 233In D.C. 234The Black Woman Speaks 235Dream Book 236Toomer 237In the Aquarium 238Bottle Tree 239Hayden in the Archive 240Poised 241Stokely and Adam 242In the FEMA Trailers 244Rally 246Praise Song for the Day 247The Elders 249One week later in the strange 250Notes 253
