Kirjahaku

From Cornelius Eady, one of America's most engaging voices, comes an exciting collection of poetry that at once delineates the arc of the poet's universe and highlights the range of his considerable talents. Cornelius Eady's poems show him in full control of his considerable talents and displaying a rich maturity as he enters midlife. His poems are sly, unsentimental, and witty, full of truths that are intimate and profound. Hardheaded Weather ranges widely, reflecting the new found responsibilities Eady has assumed as he transitions from urban renter to nonplussed rural homeowner, as well as the sobering influence of war and the intimation of his own mortality. Yet even at his angriest, the poet has always had a depth of compassion rare in our polarized age, with a sense of humor that is both sophisticated and demotic. These poems will resonate deeply. As exciting as the new poems are, his selected earlier poems dazzle, too, as they demonstrate the arc of Cornelius Eady's maturation and the originality of his voice. Taken together, Hardheaded Weather forms a moving--and sometimes searing--testament to the power of poetry.

A bracing poetic reflection on the deadly power of the white imagination from acclaimed writer Cornelius Eady.This spare and haunting play takes its inspiration from the case of Susan Smith, a white woman who murdered her two young children by strapping them into the back seat of her car and pushing it into a lake. In statements to the police, Smith claimed she had been carjacked by a young Black man. In Brutal Imagination, adapted from his National Book Award-finalist poetry cycle, Eady conjures this imaginary Black man as Mr. Zero, who appears in order to "to get things done" when white people need a scapegoat for the consequences of their own actions. As Smith spins her story into more and more elaborate designs, Mr. Zero begins to rebel against his appointed task, leading Smith, and us, slowly closer to the dark secret at the center of the play. Brutal Imagination implicates not just the small town of Union, South Carolina, but an entire American racial imaginary in which a white woman's story, no matter how ludicrous, is always believed if it implicates a Black man.