Research Catalog

Title

From a person sitting in darkness : new and selected poems / Gerald Barrax.

Author

Barrax, Gerald W.

Publication

Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, 1998.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xiii, 201 pages; 24 cm.

Summary

• With a nod toward the grounding inspiration of Mark Twain and James Baldwin in its opening epigraphs, this collection of free and formal verse - turning on multiple axes of race, religion, history, politics, and social issues - soars in exploration of the dark, troublesome visions of America. Gerald Barrax, "a black poet who makes familiar black attitudes agonizingly fresh" (Library Journal), speaks with ire and passion of those robbed - and those who rob them - of hope, of sight, of faith, of life.
• But Barrax also croons - about the natural world and its creatures, about music, and about human love and relationships. One hundred four poems in all, eighteen penned since his last book. From a Person Sitting in Darkness showcases Barrax's gifts for arresting imagery and compression, crystalline diction and dichotomy, narrative force, and the leavening touches of humor and irony. This collection is the essence of a lyrical, sensual, unpredictable work.

Series Statement

Southern messenger poets

Uniform Title

Southern messenger poets.

Contents

• Efficiency Apartment -- Drought -- The Scuba Diver Recovers the Body of a Drowned Child -- Five-Part Invention -- I Called Them Trees -- Your Eyes Have Their Silence -- January 16, 1967: 5:30 P.M. -- Obits -- Another Way of Dying -- First Carolina Rain -- Earthlog I -- C for Charlie -- Third Dance Poem -- Odysseus at the Mast -- The Quick -- Fourth Dance Poem -- The Dozens -- Earthlog: Final Entry -- In the Restaurant -- King: April 4, 1968 -- The Singer -- Visit -- A Means of Travel -- I Travel with Her -- She Listens to Madrigals -- The Fourth Son -- Something I Know About Her -- Shani -- Ghosts -- Narrative of a Surprising Conversion -- "I had a terror - since September" -- Hubris -- Confession -- Gift -- Between Us and the World -- Another Fellow -- The Passage of Shiva -- Ligustrum -- Black Cat -- Moby Christ -- Near the End of a Savage Winter -- The Buffalo Ghosts -- An Audience of One -- The Conception of Goddeath -- Competitors -- Barriers --
• More or Less -- Who Needs No Introduction -- In This Sign -- One of My Own -- Slow Drivers -- Spirituals, Gospels -- From a Person Sitting in Darkness -- One More Word -- Another Creation -- To Waste at Trees -- Symbiosis -- Poems Like This -- Two Figures on Canvas -- Portraits -- Recital -- Lovers -- Greenhouse -- All My Live Ones -- "School Days" -- If She Sang -- Dara -- Liberation -- God's Button -- The Death of Another Fellow -- Eagle. Tiger. Whale. -- Not Often near Such Water -- Domestic Tranquility -- Whose Children Are These? -- Special Bus -- Strangers Like Us: Pittsburgh, Raleigh, 1945-1985 -- Haunted House -- Yardwork -- What More? -- Two Poems for Miller Williams -- Epigraphs -- Sportsfan -- War Film: Dying Forever -- Uniforms -- Adagio -- Cello Poem -- Counting the Ways -- Sainthood -- Sunday, 24 May 1992, 10:30 A.M. -- "... and tell the girls to pray for me" -- To My Mother, in Heaven -- Trio for Two Voices and Bass Clarinet --
• Reunion Birthday Poem (With a Line After Cummings) -- Reunion: Our Common Language -- The Old Poet Is Taken in Marriage -- Perfect Stranger -- The Guilt -- Jeopardy -- In Their Heaven -- Pittsburgh, 1948: The Music Teacher -- Surreal Dreams: After Watching the Discovery Channel -- Hands Off -- Helen and the Animals -- No Answers.

ISBN

• 0807123137 (alk. paper)
• 0807123145 (pbk. : alk. paper)

LCCN

98037901

OCLC

• 39545958
• ocm39545958

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries