Research Catalog

Title

Picnic on the moon : poems / by Charles Coe.

Author

Coe, Charles, 1952-

Publication

Wellfleet, Mass. : Leapfrog Press, 1999.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

79 pages; 22 cm

Summary

• Known for his powerful readings and unusually warm and compassionate voice, Charles Coe's poems speak to the heart and mind as well as the ear. Combining subjects as diverse as Afro-American history myth, jazz, and family as well as surprising observations of those unexpected moments of joy to be found in a work-a-day inner city life, Coe offers us poems as personal as the tale of a sister who opened his life to literature and closed her own with dope; as quietly momentous as the story of Rosa Parks.
• Here are poems for Ella Fitzgerald and Charlie Mingus alongside a haunting homage to the 'guests' of a battered women's shelter. Above all, Coe's poems touch upon what is essential in us all and speak of life as a gift that is far from perfect but all we have.

Subject

• African American men > Poetry

Contents

Praying in the Dark -- Blues for Mister Glasper -- On Working with Slate Roofing Shingles -- In the House of Echoes -- Elizabeth by the Sea -- For the Traveler, Far Away -- The Weight of Words Unspoken -- Get On Up! -- One for the Old School -- My Sister Read to Me -- If What You Say is So -- It is a Wind -- Picture This -- Something in the Air -- Crossing Vineyard Harbor -- Sisyphus -- Surplus Populations -- Meditation on the Loss of Empire -- Over the Hump -- Boston Common Haiku -- April Snow Haiku -- Winter Lake Haiku -- Opening the Refrigerator Door -- News from the Front -- Yo, Poets! -- Picnic on the Moon -- For Rosa Parks -- She Knows -- Poem for a New Widow -- Gathering Strawberries for Ice Cream -- The Alchemist -- For a Russian Soldier -- On the #1 Bus -- Long Live the Queen -- When Charlie Mingus Played His Bass -- She Awakens -- Possibility.

ISBN

0965457826

LCCN

98032361

OCLC

ocm40398064

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries