Steel Umbrellas
by David Hunter Sutherland

Poetry. African American Studies. David Sutherland has received a Rhysling Award, a Small Press Writer’s Award, and was a recent nominated for a Pushcart Prize in Poetry. In his introduction to this volume, Paul Kloppenborg calls STEEL UMBRELLAS a brilliant collectoin of striking poems written with language at full stretch… redefining language within its emotional and conceptual brackets and breaking out beyond the plain inferences of words into broader perceptions symbolic of human feeling. Clearly, Sutherland means to take on and redefine the tradition. In one poem, he encants Ezra Pound: Ezra I ring no glow, cast no light off your high cantos,/ Neither take stock of your fundamental passions with impetus….// Venus abides beneath burnt dock lights,/ Li Po hides in the heat of gridlock and jealous gods of you/ Act ply the timber of your craft — as all too soon/ The wood is carved (from Pound). David Sutherland’s verse comes at you like a twelve foot tidal wave. His words engulf you, plunge you into a deep state of hal