- Paperback: 33 pages
- Publisher: Carnegie-Mellon University Press (January 2004)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0887484166
- ISBN-13: 978-0887484162
- Product Dimensions: 23.3 x 14.2 x 0.4 cm
- Shipping Weight: 113 g
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
This is a small book of tremendous power and grace. In 21 poems, Eady (The Gathering of My Name) illuminates experiences evoked by his father's dying, making quick, startling leaps of connection with the precisely chosen details of a born storyteller. Like a high-wire walker moving steadily along an almost invisible tension, Eady writes with simplicity and apparent ease. As he depicts his and his mother's responses to the difficult, belittling and secretive father, a convincing and moving portrait of the three emerges. Blues, rock, pop songs and hymns give these poems titles and context, linking the vernacular with the universal. "I think that every hymn is a flare of longing, that the key to any heaven is language." Eady's joy in language engenders our trust in the music that his art has made of love and pain.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
Eady, winner of the coveted Lamont award for his second book, Victims of the Latest Dance Craze (Ommation Pr., 1986), is quickly emerging as one of the most skilled and sensitive African American writers. In 21 haunting prose poems, he meditates on his father's death and black American familial realities (the unmarried mother, the girl in school with the same last name) and comes to terms with specific childhood memories. The poems are related through image, not chronology, and the tone ranges from confessional to ironic. Emotions are similarly tumultuous and conflicting. But mobility and tension, stress and stupor give this volume its prowess. It is disconcerting to see six pages of blurbs fleshing out 33 pages of poetry, but that cannot undermine this honest and heartfelt dirge, especially when the "silly boy" who (in his father's eyes) never did real work explains near the end, "They're paying me to write about your life."?Rochelle Ratner, formerly Poetry Editor, "Soho Weekly News," New York
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.5 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Repost from Sycamore Review Article, Aug 5 1999
By A Customer - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: You Don't Miss Your Water: Poems (Paperback)
You Don't Miss Your Water, is a compact collection of twenty-one prose poems exploring his "ornery and cantankerous" father's illness and death. Beyond writing elegy, beyond "hospital deathbed" and "funeral home" poems, Eady attempts to untangle his father's less-than-angelic past--infidelities, bitterness toward a darker-skinned son, lies, secrets about a half-sister previously unknown to the family--while at the same time dealing with the uncomfortable errands of the immediate present... Evenn while dealing with the confusion, anger and bitterness surrounding his father's death, Eady tempers these beautiful poems with honesty and affection...Throughout the book he weaves memory with the immediate discomforts of grief, writing his way clearly and without ornament through the lies and bitterness of his father's life. In doing so, Eady pulls off a fine book of poems, proving, as he closes the book, that "every hymn is a flare of longing, that the key to any heaven is language."
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Eady's beautifully told account of his relationship w/ dad., Jun 14 1999
By A Customer - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: You Don't Miss Your Water: Poems (Paperback)
Cornelius Eady writes beautiful prose and poetry, subjects ranging from the hardships he faced while growing up to his love of dance. "You Don't Miss Your Water" is the tale of Eady exploring his past as he watches his father slowly die. Of all his published works this is the most well written and touching accounts from his personal history.
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