Ardency : A Chronicle of the Amistad Rebels

by Young, Kevin

• ISBN13: 9780307267641
• ISBN10: 0307267644
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-01-25
• Publisher: Knopf

Summary

A chorus of voices tells the story of the Africans who mutinied on board the slave shipAmistad.Written over twenty years, this poetic epic-part libretto, part captivity epistle-makes the past present, and even its sorrows sing. In "Buzzard," the opening section, we hear from the African interpreter for the rebels, mostly from Sierra Leone, who were jailed in New Haven. In "Correspondance," we encounter the remarkable letters to John Quincy Adams and others that the captives wrote from jail, where they were taught English and converted to Christianity. In lines profound and pointed, the men demand their freedom in their newfound tongue: "All we want is make us free." The book culminates in "Witness," a libretto chanted by Cinque, the rebel leader, who yearns for his family and freedom while eloquently evoking the Amistadsrs" conversion and life in America. As Young conjures this array of characters and their music, interweaving the liberation cry of Negro spirituals and the indoctrinating wordplay of American primers, he delivers his signature songlike immediacy at the service of a tremendous epic built on the ironies, violence, and virtues of American history. Heaven ainrs"t the end- Heaven begins the steady lifting. Things I donrs"t have no word for- bones lining the ocean floor. Hush, child. The rain. My voice all I carried. -from "Choir (Evening)"

Author Biography

Kevin Young is the author of six collections of poetry and the editor of Library of America’s John Berryman: Selected Poems, the Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets anthologies Blue Poems and Jazz Poems, and Giant Steps: The New Generation of African American Writers. His book Jelly Roll was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and won the Paterson Poetry Prize. His collection For the Confederate Dead won the 2007 Quill Award for poetry and the Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement. Dear Darkness won the Southern Independent Bookseller Award and the Julia Ward Howe Prize. The recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, Young is currently the Atticus Haygood Professor of English and Creative Writing and curator of Literary Collections and the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library at Emory University in Atlanta.

Table of Contents

Book-Keeping	p. 3
Buzzard.
Exodus	p. 7
Covey	p. 8
Misericordia	p. 9
Cut-Up	p. 10
Advent	p. 11
Questioning	p. 12
Friendship	p. 13
Sightings	p. 14
Washington	p. 15
Experiment	p. 16
Greeting	p. 17
Blackmarket	p. 18
Tank	p. 19
Eyetooth	p. 20
Findings	p. 21
Easter	p. 22
Maroon	p. 23
Broadway	p. 24
Calling	p. 25
Soundings	p. 26
Revelations	p. 27
Correspondance.
New England Primer	p. 31
Westville	p. 32
Speech	p. 34
New Haven	p. 35
Testimony	p. 37
Farmington	p. 38
Gospel	p. 39
Con	p. 40
Scripture	p. 42
Boston, Mass	p. 43
Sermon	p. 45
Gentleman	p. 46
Toast	p. 48
Freetown	p. 51
Witness. A Libretto
Processional	p. 57
Choir (Evening)	p. 61
Passages	p. 63
Choir (Twilight)	p. 83
Captivity	p. 85
Choir (Dusk)	p. 116
Conversions	p. 118
Choir (Midnight)	p. 144
Merica, a minstrel show	p. 146
Choir (Dark)	p. 157
Manumissions	p. 159
Choir (Dawn)	p. 190
Benedictions	p. 192
Choir (Morning)	p. 226
After Word; or, The Mission & Its Fate.
Logbook Begun at Sea, Westerly, Off the Cape of Good Hope	p. 233
A Last Letter upon Leaving Mende Land	p. 234
Diary of His Final Days with Yellow Fever	p. 235
Sampler Found at the Abandoned Mission, Sewn in an Unknown Hand	p. 236
Progress Report on the New Mission, Hereafter Known as Mo Tappan	p. 237
Deathbed Confession, in Delirium, Written in Dirt	p. 239
Letter from Oberlin College, Ohio, Preparing to Voyage to the Mission	p. 240
Notes	p. 243
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