Brown: Poems - Hardcover
Synopsis
James Brown. John Brown's raid. Brown v. the Topeka Board of Ed. The prize-winning author of Blue Laws meditates on all things "brown" in this powerful new collection.
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.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author
KEVIN YOUNG is the director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and poetry editor for The New Yorker. He is the author of twelve books of poetry and prose, including Blue Laws: Selected & Uncollected Poems 1995-2015, longlisted for the National Book Award; and Book of Hours, a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and winner of the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets. Young's book Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News, a New York Times Notable Book, was longlisted for the National Book Award and appeared on many "best of" lists for 2017. His collection Jelly Roll: A Blues was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poetry. His nonfiction book The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness won the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize and the PEN Open Book Award, and was a New York Times Notable Book and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. He is the editor of eight other collections and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2016.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
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.
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- PublisherKnopf
- Publication date2018
- ISBN 10 1524732540
- ISBN 13 9781524732547
- BindingHardcover
- LanguageEnglish
- Number of pages176
- Rating
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Brown : Poems
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ISBN 13: 9781524732547
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