Brutal Imagination: Poems [Paperback]

Finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry

Brutal Imagination is the work of a poet at the peak of his considerable powers, confronting a crucial subject: the black man in America.

“A hymn to all the sons this country has stolen from her African-American families.”—The Village Voice

This poetry collection explores the vision of the black man in white imagination, as well as the black family and the barriers of color, class, and caste that tear it apart. These two main themes showcase Cornelius Eady’s range: his deft wit, inventiveness, and skillfully targeted anger, and the way in which he combines the subtle with the charged, street idiom with elegant inversions, harsh images with the sweetly ordinary.

Includes poems that inspired the libretto for Eady’s music-dramaRunning Man, a 1999 Pulitzer Prize finalist.

1
How I Got Born
My Heart
Who Am I?
Sightings
My Face
Susan Smith's Police Report
Where Am I?
The Lake
The Law
Why I Am Not A Woman
One True Thing
Composite
Charles Stuart in the Hospital

2
Uncle Tom in Heaven
Uncle Ben Watches the Local News
Jemima's Do-Rag
Buckwheat's Lament
Stepin Fetchit Reads the Paper

3
The Unsigned Confessions of Mr. Zero
What I'm Made Of
What the Sheriff Suspects
Next of Kin
What Is Known About the Abductor
Interrogation
My Eyes
What Isn't Known About the Abductor
Press Conference
Sympathy
Confession

4
Birthing

The Running Man Poems:
When He Left
Hold the Line
The Train
Piss
Armor
Mamie
Failure
Home
Miss Look's Dream
Baby Sister & the Radio
My Sister Makes Me Up While I Sleep
First Crimes
Liar
Sex
Revenge
What I Do
Replaced
Truth
What Happened
Gossip/Denial
Hunl3;