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The Black Maria (American Poets Continuum)
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About The Black Maria
Product Description Praise for Aracelis Girmay: "[Girmay's] every lossshe calls them estrangementsis a yearning for connection across time and place; her every fragment is a bulwark against ruin." O, The Oprah Magazine Taking its name from the moon's dark plains, misidentified as seas by early astronomers, the black maria investigates African diasporic histories, the consequences of racism within American culture, and the question of human identity. Central to this project is a desire to recognize the lives of Eritrean refugees who have been made invisible by years of immigration crisis, refugee status, exile, and resulting statelessness. The recipient of a 2015 Whiting Award for Poetry, Girmay's newest collection elegizes and celebrates life, while wrestling with the humanistic notion of seeing beyond: seeing violence, seeing grace, and seeing each other better. "to the sea" great storage house, historyon which we rode, we touchedthe brief pulse of your flutteringpages, spelled with salt & life,your rage, your indifferenceyour gentleness washing our feet,all of you going onwhether or not we live,to you we bring our carnationsyellow & pink, how they floatlike bright sentences atopyour memory's dark hair Aracelis Girmay is the author of three poetry collections, the black maria; Kingdom Animalia, which won the Isabella Gardner Award and was a finalist for the NBCC Award; and Teeth. The recipient of a 2015 Whiting Award, she has received grants and fellowships from the Jerome, Cave Canem, and Watson foundations, as well as Civitella Ranieri and the NEA. She currently teaches at Hampshire College's School for Interdisciplinary Arts and in Drew University's low residency MFA program. Originally from Santa Ana, California, she splits her time between New York and Amherst, Massachusetts. Review A "Best Book of 2016" for The New Yorker, the Boston Globe, the Chicago Review of Books, and Publishers Weekly Publishers Weekly 2016 #1 in Poetry Top 10A Publishers Weekly "Most Anticipated Book of Spring 2016"An O, The Oprah Magazine 2016 "Gem of the Genre"A Library Journal 2016 Poetry Top PickAracelis Girmay, winner of a 2015 Whiting Award for Poetry Winner of the 2016 Bess Hokin Prize "[Girmay's] every loss―she calls them estrangements―is a yearning for connection across time and place; her every fragment is a bulwark against ruin." ― O, The Oprah Magazine "This year, I’ve sought out and found solace in language, both poetry and prose. Aracelis Girmay’s the black maria has left images still planted deep within me." ― Ada Limón, The New Yorker "Crowned by an extraordinary long poem interweaving the childhood of astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson . . . Aracelis Girmay's third book of poetry looks at the crimes committed against African Americans throughout history and now . . . These poems repeat themselves, reuse lines, feel anxious and scattershot, but there is beauty and imperative witness everywhere here.” ― NPR Books " the black maria isn’t just some of the best poetry I read this year, it’s also one of the most powerful and memorable collections I’ve read as an adult." ― Adam Morgan, Chicago Review of Books "The long history of abuse against African Americans threads through this latest excavation by Girmay, whose work always lays bare the importance of history and the vertigo caused by its unknowing." ― Boston Globe "Girmay [weaves] together intimate and communal stories to express the emotional agony of an exploited and paling culture. the black maria has an agenda, but not the one we might expect; rather than issuing a call to action for the Eritrean diaspora, the poet employs personal and ancestral experience to catalyze a unified, remembered loss. Her poetry is therefore a call for the recognition of vulnerability and subjectivity: in the poet’s own words, '& so to tenderness I add my action.' At times, the collection reads like a historical text; occasionally, it feels like angst immortalized in a di
