Post by shayepoet on Jun 5, 2008 3:25:27 GMT 2
a half-red sea
Evie Shockley
“In a half-red sea, Evie Shockley is ‘dreaming the lives of the ancestors.’ Navigating against prevailing currents, these poems sail on eddy and backflow, taking inspiration from knots and twists of American history and culture. Whether improvising between the lines of a slave narrative in ‘henry bibb considers love and livery,’ amplifying Lady Day’s most devastating blues in ‘you can say that again, billie,’ or going freestyle with ‘double bop for ntozake shange,’ Shockley’s imagination travels every which away. Her gallery of lyric portraits presents a historical continuum of African Americans caught in double binds of culture and identity, from Crispus Attucks, Phillis Wheatley, Sally Hemmings, and Henry Bibb, to Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, and Anita Hill, along with engaging fictional characters such as Trula, Yellow Mary’s enigmatic companion in Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust. In ‘a thousand words’ and other reflections on contemporary events, Shockley’s firm grounding in history adds weight and depth to her observations of the recent past and present.”
—Harryette Mullen
Sample poem:
london bridge
tinyurl.com/53smtd
deep river my home is over jordan
entering the cathedral i hear these (re)moving words
echoing off the tear-stained glass windows
people from a hundred nations wet with london
rain drip from their hair and umbrellas pooling
into puddles the spit of fifty foreign tongues
visa’d by christ the choir mouths open a blues
estuary stems the vernacular tide de-negros de notes
refrains from a spiritual funk imports
my pass(ed) re-fines the raw product the no of my
yesterday onyx pearls lost overboard what the
hell could not hold so many in the same boat
othello came to england during elizabeth’s reign
moored to the stage the noblest of savages he
entertained the idea of robeson st. paul’s
immaculate reception the thames not an ole man to
sing home about but on its shores the solid
opulence of the anglican church a veritable
vault of safety from enemy bombs starvation sale
excommunication the greatest threat not to be
refused the shelter of its thick stone walls
just swallow this wafer of state and be swallowed
open your heart to the god of gladstone dis-
raeli and churchill must jesus bear this cross alone
devil on the deep blue sea just one more bon voyage
across the atlantic the pacific the world awaits you'd
not have thought death had unhomed so many
Reviews for a half-red sea:
"A Profound Book to Read and Uncover. . .
When an extraordinary poet creates a book that both innovates and extends the work of contemporary poetry, she demands a publisher who can innovate and extend with her. A Half-Red Sea, written by Evie Shockley and published by Carolina Wren Press, is a moment where these two have come together with astonishing results. With a half-red sea, Shockley’s debut collection, she has written a tour de force that combines narrative, lyrical, and experimental poetry into a satisfying whole and that in its presentation to the world demands inventive publication, which Carolina Wren Press delivers. A half-red sea is a book that matters from a poet who matters. Profoundly."
-- Julie R. Enszer for Galetea Resurrects
tinyurl.com/4sl6jm
"These stories are enlivened and complicated by the poet’s careful attention to form and by her imaginative use of both free verse and received poetic structures. United by a voice that is both sure and supple, the poems here consider individual and collective American histories through a complex of lenses; matters of sex, race, culture, nationalism, and power are turned in the poet’s hands, revealing smooth planes and sharp edges. The result of Shockley’s attentiveness to language and to a complicated cultural and emotional record is a moving and surprising book that is “prickly with bloodless truths.”
Nancy Kuhl for RainTaxi Online
www.raintaxi.com/online/2007fall/shockley.shtml
"Experience is a fundamental lifeline to the heart of the human narrative. Shockley's poetry radiates with a true interpretation or expression of her experiences, leaving traces or evidence of our shared humanity as well. Her poetry is dynamic and richly manifold. In the vein of moving onward, Shockley explains that the journey home is one we often walk alone, and that the proverbial river of energy and living water is there for us to draw upon...."
On-line review:
-- Michael Parker for MiPOesias tinyurl.com/53vp5f
About the author:
Evie Shockley is the author of a half-red sea (2006) and a chapbook, The Gorgon Goddess (2001), both published by Carolina Wren Press. Her poetry, literary criticism, and short fiction is found or forthcoming in a variety of journals and anthologies, including Beloit Poetry Journal, PMS poemmemoirstory, HOW2, African American Review, No Tell Motel, The Southern Review, Talisman, nocturnes (re)view, Ecotone, Poetry Daily: Poems from the World's Most Popular Poetry Website, Rainbow Darkness: An Anthology of African American Poetry, and Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora. In 2007, she guest-edited ~QUEST~, a special issue of MiPOesias featuring contemporary African American poets and she is currently one of the guest-editors of jubilat. Her creative work has been supported by residencies and fellowships from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, and the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center; her current scholarship -- a study of race and formal innovation (i.e., black aesthetics) in African American poetry -- is supported by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Shockley is an assistant professor of English at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, where she teaches African American literature and creative writing.
Interviews:[/i]
Kicking Wind: tinyurl.com/3vu686
Fishouse: tinyurl.com/4wdaaf
The Dead Mule: tinyurl.com/484oa2/
ISBN: 0-932112-53-6, 82 pages, $15.95 (retail)
Carolina Wren Press, 2006
[glow=teal,2,300]BUY HERE, BUY NOW:[/glow]
www.carolinawrenpress.org/books.html (sells here for $14.35)
Also available at the monopolistic-on-line-bookseller-that-shall-remain-nameless.
I strongly encourage interested readers to buy directly from Carolina Wren.[/font]