In this Book
- I Can't Talk About the Trees Without the Blood
- Book
- 2018
- Published by: University of Pittsburgh Press
- Series: Pitt Poetry Series
summary
Winner, 2020 Kate Tufts Discovery Award
For prize-winning poet Tiana Clark, trees will never be just trees. They will also and always be a row of gallows from which Black bodies once swung. This is an image that she cannot escape, but one that she has learned to lean into as she delves into personal and public histories, explicating memories and muses around race, elegy, family, and faith by making and breaking forms as well as probing mythology, literary history, her own ancestry, and, yes, even Rihanna. I Can’t Talk About the Trees without the Blood, because Tiana cannot engage with the physical and psychic landscape of the South without seeing the braided trauma of the broken past—she will always see blood on the leaves.
Table of Contents
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- I. I Can't Talk
- Cross/Bite
- p. 3
- Cottonmouth
- pp. 4-10
- Bear Witness
- pp. 11-12
- Soil Horizon
- pp. 13-15
- Ways to Be Saved
- pp. 24-26
- Dutchman in Reverse
- p. 31
- 800 Days: Libation
- pp. 32-34
- The Ayes Have It
- pp. 35-37
- II. About the Trees
- After Apollo
- pp. 45-46
- After Agon
- pp. 47-48
- After Orpheus
- pp. 49-50
- The Rime of Nina Simone
- pp. 51-68
- III. Without the Blood
- First Tree, at Church Camp
- pp. 73-74
- First Blood
- pp. 75-76
- Self-Portrait as First Kiss
- pp. 77-79
- What the Blood Does
- p. 80
- Where the Fired Body Is Porous
- pp. 81-83
- Self-Portrait as Hannah Peace
- pp. 84-85
- Mother Driving Away After Christmas
- pp. 86-87
- In the Middle of Things . . .
- pp. 88-89
- Freelove in Retrograde
- pp. 90-91
- I Started Praying for You
- pp. 92-93
- After Amistad
- pp. 94-95
- Midnight to 3 A.M.
- p. 96
- Mixed Bitch
- pp. 99-100
- Epilogue
- How to Find the Center of a Circle
- pp. 103-104
- Acknowledgments
- pp. 109-112
Additional Information
ISBN
9780822986164
Related ISBN(s)
9780822965589
MARC Record
OCLC
1061503257
Pages
128
Launched on MUSE
2018-11-20
Language
English
Open Access
No
Copyright
2018