Ash

by Strange, Sharan

• ISBN13: 9780807068632
• ISBN10: 0807068632
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-04-18
• Publisher: Beacon Press

Summary

Sharan Strange's poetry brings to life the lush mysteries and brutalities of growing up in a rural Southern town. At once a portrait of a community and the poet, Ash traces that alchemy by which the life stories of those around us are transmuted into our own.

Author Biography

Sharan Strange grew up in Orangeburg, South Carolina, was educated at Harvard College, and received the M.F.A. in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College. She is a contributing and advisory editor of Callaloo and cofounder of the Dark Room Collective. Her poetry has appeared in Agni, The American Poetry Review, Callaloo, The Best American Poetry 1994, The Garden Thrives, In Search of Color Everywhere, and in exhibitions at the Whitney Museum in New York and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston.

Table of Contents

Introduction	xi
Sonia Sanchez
Acts of Power	1	(4)
Childhood	5	(22)
Zodiac: For Julie	6	(1)
How to Teach Them	7	(4)
Froggy's Class	11	(2)
The Bicycle Wizard	13	(1)
Grandmother's Clothes	14	(2)
The Crazy Girl	16	(2)
Jimmy's First Cigarette	18	(1)
Dorothy	19	(1)
Barbershop Ritual	20	(2)
Mule	22	(1)
February 19, 1994	23	(4)
Snow	27	(22)
Outhouses	28	(2)
Promise, in a Southern Town	30	(2)
Miz Mattie	32	(1)
Streetcorner Church	33	(1)
Streetcorner Church II	34	(1)
Matador	35	(1)
Last Supper	36	(2)
Words during War	38	(2)
The Unintended Life	40	(1)
The Widow	41	(2)
The Factory	43	(1)
Night Work	44	(2)
Portraiture	46	(3)
First Sight	49	(18)
Looking	50	(1)
Transits	51	(2)
Seduction	53	(1)
The Apprentice Dreams of Promotion	54	(1)
Natural Occurrences	55	(1)
Hunger	56	(2)
The Stranger	58	(2)
Taking a Train	60	(2)
The Body	62	(1)
Ash	63	(1)
Still Life	64	(1)
Offering	65	(2)
Acknowledgments	67