Tracie Morris

In her original author’s note to the 1999 edition, Akilah Oliver writes,“What I am trying to do in these poems is investigate the non-linear synapses between desire, memory, blackness (as both a personal identity and a non-essentialist historical notion), sexuality and language.” the she said dialogues: flesh memory proves to be not only still timely twenty years later, but essential reading for understanding intersectional politics and poetics in our current moment.

She is widely recognized as one of the most innovative and consequential performance poets of the last half century. A visionary, a medium, a storyteller possessed of extraordinary perlocutionary powers, capable of locating and seizing upon a listener's every exposed nerve ending, Tracie Morris is a word magician who can make virtually every utterance into music and manifesto. -- Robin D.G. Kelley, professor of History and Black Studies at UCLA, author of several books, including Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination.