What noise against the cane / Desiree C. Bailey ; foreword by Carl Phillips.

Title:

ISBN:

9780300256536

9780300256543

Personal Author:

Bailey, Desiree C.

Publication Information:

New Haven : Yale University Press, [2021]

Physical Description:

xiii, 78 pages ; 25 cm.

Contents:

Chant for the waters and dirt and blade -- Guesswork -- Ma and the snake -- First American years -- La Divina Pastora, Mother of Miracles -- Extra virgin olive oil -- Woman in Dub -- Fleshed cartographies -- Harriet Jacobs grips the silence -- Malady -- Dancing at the shrine in Harlem -- It's risky to love in the season of hunters -- Island -- A retrograde -- Orfeu Negro / Black Orpheus -- Accent -- Ex(ile) -- Flowers pressed to my head -- Chant for the waters and dirt and blade (slight return).

Summary:

What Noise Against the Cane is a lyric quest for belonging and freedom, weaving political resistance, Caribbean folklore, immigration and the realities of Black life in America. Desiree C. Bailey begins by reworking the epic in an oceanic narrative of bondage and liberation in the midst of the Haitian Revolution. The poems move into the contemporary Black diaspora, probing the mythologies of home, belief, nation and womanhood. Series judge Carl Phillips observes that Bailey's "poems argue for hope and faith equally. . . . These are powerful poems, indeed, and they make a persuasive argument for the transformative powers of steady defiance."

Personal Subject:

Bailey, Desiree C.-Criticism and interpretation.

Subject Term:

Women poets

American poetry

Genre:

Poetry

Added Author:

Phillips, Carl, 1959-

Series Title:

Yale series of younger poets ;

Series Sequence: