Research Catalog

Title

American sublime : poems / Elizabeth Alexander.

Author

Alexander, Elizabeth, 1962-

Publication

Saint Paul, Minn. : Graywolf Press, 2005.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Woodberry Poetry Room (Harvard College Library). Collections, repository. poe

Description

93 p.; 23 cm.

Summary

A fourth collection of poems by the author recalls over a century of African American traditions, knitting together a blend of history, biography, personal experience, pop culture, and dreamscape.

Subjects

• Poésie
• Poetry
• American poetry
• poetry
• African Americans > Poetry
• Amistad (Schooner) Poetry

Genre/Form

• Poetry
• poetry.
• American poetry.
• Poésie.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

I. American blue -- Emancipation -- Little slave narrative #1: master -- Ellipsis -- Smile -- Kitchen portrait, 1971 -- Tina Green -- When -- Five elegies -- Morning, Gordontown -- Claustrous euphobia -- The end -- Matrimonio -- Krishna denies eating mud -- Ode -- Stray -- Fried apples -- The dream that I told my mother-in-law -- Black poets talk about the dead -- Notes from -- The African picnic -- First word of the mass for the dead -- Autumn passage -- II: Ars poetica -- Ars poetica #10: crossing over -- Ars poetica #1,002: rally -- Ars poetica #17: first Afro-American esperantist -- Ars poetica #28: African leave-taking disorder -- Ars poetica #3: ablutions -- Ars poetica #85: Modjadji V the rain queen dies in South Africa at 64 -- Ars poetica #23: "whassup G?" -- Ars poetica #21: graduate study of literature -- Ars poetica #227: provenance -- Ars poetica #92: Marcus Garvey on elocution -- Ars poetica #56: "bullfrogs was falling out of the sky" -- Ars poetica #16: lot -- Ars poetica #13: the idea of ancestry -- Ars poetica #2: christening -- Ars poetica #336: rose-colored glasses -- Ars poetica #66: how to -- Ars poetica #37: patriarchy -- Ars poetica #100: I believe -- Ars poetica #88: sublime -- III: Amistad -- Amistad -- The blue whale -- Absence -- boy haiku -- Poro society -- Approach -- Connecticut -- Other cargo -- Education -- The Yale men -- Teacher -- Translator -- Physiognomy -- Constitutional -- Mende vocabulary -- The girls -- Kere's song -- Judge Judson -- In cursive -- God -- Waiting for cinque to speak -- The Amistad trail -- Cinque redux -- The last quatrain -- IV: American sublime -- American sublime -- Tanner's Annunciation.

ISBN

1555974325

OCLC

• 61757563
• SCSB-12035063

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library