Red Clay Suite

by Jeffers, Honoree Fanonne

• ISBN13: 9780809327607
• ISBN10: 0809327600
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-03-26
• Publisher: Southern Illinois Univ Pr

Summary

In her third book of poems, Honoree Fanonne Jeffers expresses her familiarity with the actual and imaginary spaces that the American South occupies in our cultural lexicon. Her two earlier books of poetry,The Gospel of BarbecueandOutlandish Blues,use the blues poetic to explore notions of history and trauma. Now, inRed Clay Suite, Jeffersapproaches the southern landscape as utopia and dystopia--a crossroads of race, gender, and blood. These poems signal the ending movement of her crossroads blues and complete the last four "bars" of a blues song, resting on the final, and essential, note of resolution and reconciliation.

Author Biography

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, an assistant professor of English at the University of Oklahoma, is the author of two other books of poetry, The Gospel of Barbecue and Outlandish Blues.

Table of Contents

Red clay suite	p. 3
Word on earth	p. 7
Passing	p. 9
Giving thanks for water	p. 12
An angel, unaware	p. 14
The compass of moss	p. 16
Let blood go	p. 18
Cotton field sestina	p. 20
Eatonton (two)	p. 22
Driving interstate west through Georgia	p. 24
Blues Aubade (or, revision of the lean post-modernist pastorale)	p. 27
Mister Buzzard and Brother Crow	p. 29
Consider my brother as the rabbit	p. 32
Dirty south moon	p. 33
Here, one of your four women	p. 35
One morning soon	p. 36
Poem for birds	p. 37
Another easter poem	p. 39
I've been up late reading the book of poems you inscribed and mailed to me	p. 40
Their splendid	p. 41
The blues I don't want to remember	p. 43
What is written for me	p. 44
Lexicon	p. 46
The little boy who will be my father	p. 51
Suddenly in grace	p. 53
The subject of gardening	p. 59
Days are plain	p. 55
Eatonton (one)	p. 57
Reunion scripture	p. 59
Why I will praise an old black man	p. 61
What grief is	p. 62
Hawk hoof tea	p. 64
Oklahoma naming	p. 66
Upon learning that my Indian student is a sundancer	p. 68
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