Book Cover Image of Brutal Imagination: Poems by Cornelius Eady

Brutal Imagination: Poems
by Cornelius Eady

Publication Date: Jan 15, 2001
List Price: $14.00
Format: Paperback, 128 pages
Classification: Poetry
ISBN13: 9780399147203
Imprint: G.P. Putnam’s Sons
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Parent Company: Bertelsmann

Paperback Description:

Brutal Imagination is the work of a poet at the peak of his considerable powers. Its two central sections—which could be called song cycles—confront the same subject: the black man in America.The first, which carries the book’s title, deals with the vision of the black man in white imagination. Narrated largely by the black kidnapper that Susan Smith invented to cover up the killing of her two sons, the cycle displays all of Mr. Eady’s range: his deft wit, inventiveness, and skillfully targeted anger, and the way in which he combines the subtle with the charged, street idiom with elegant inversions, harsh images with the sweetly ordinary. The second cycle, "Running Man," presents poems Mr. Eady drew on for his libretto for the music-drama of the same name, which was a l999 Pulitzer Prize finalist. Here, the focus is the black family and the barriers of color, class, and caste that tear it apart. As the Village Voice said, "It is a hymn to all the sons this country has stolen from her African- American families."



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