In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Callaloo 25.1 (2002) 199


[Access article in PDF]

Wild American
for Bob

Cornelius Eady

A tricky tongue, one you shouldn't trust.
Never convinced whether to fuck, or pray,
Or to grind your imagination, for a buck.
What does it sound like?
Kid, take a walk.
This is New York City,
We got flowers busting out of
Concrete here. Look up: glass
And clouds,
Get it? Gets stuck in the throat,
Between the teeth, Tussles and
Migrates,
Flatters and stabs. That buzz,
Always in your ear? That 5/4,
Flying over the barbed wire,
That man slumped in the stairwell,
The rude police swearing
Over his wreck like choirboys?
That's some of it. Some folk
Dismiss it as babble; other folk
Toss it down, and gargle.
You hear what he's saying?


 

Cornelius Eady is the author of six books of poetry: Kartunes (Warthog Press, 1980); Victims of the Latest Dance Craze (Ommation Press, 1986), winner of the 1985 Lamont Prize from the Academy of American Poets; The Gathering of My Name (Carnegie-Mellon University Press, 1991), nominated for the 1992 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry; You Don't Miss Your Water (Henry Holt and Co., 1995); The Autobiography of a Jukebox (Carnegie-Mellong University Press, 1997); and Brutal Imagination (G.P. Putnam & Sons, 2001). He is the recipient of an NEA Fellowship in Literature (1985), a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry (1993), a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowshipto Bellagio, Italy (1993), and The Prairie Schooner Strousse Award (1994). A co-founder,with poet Toi Derricotte, of the Cave Canem summer workshops for African-Americanpoets, he will spend the next two years at the Vineyard Theatre (site of a production ofBrutal Imagination) working under the auspices of a TCG/Pew playwriting fellowship.

...

pdf

Share