Soul Culture
Black Poets, Books, and Questions that Grew Me Up
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- $23.99
Publisher Description
Examines firsthand the lives of legendary Black writers who made a way out of no way to illuminate a road map for budding creators desiring to follow in their footsteps
Acclaimed Cave Canem poet and essayist Remica Bingham-Risher interweaves personal essays and interviews she conducted over a decade with 10 distinguished Black poets, such as Lucille Clifton, Sonia Sanchez, and Patricia Smith, to explore the impact of identity, joy, love, and history on the artistic process. Each essay is thematically inspired, centered on one of her interviews, and uses quotes drawn from her talks to showcase their philosophies. Each essay also delves into how her own life and work are influenced by these elders. Essays included are these:
· “blk/wooomen revolution”
· “Girls Loving Beyoncé and Their Names”
· “The Terror of Being Destroyed”
· “Standing in the Shadows of Love”
· “Revision as Labyrinth”
Noting the frustrating tendency for Black artists to be pigeonholed into the confines of various frameworks and ideologies—Black studies, women’s studies, LGBTQIA+ studies, and so on—Bingham-Risher reveals the multitudes contained within Black poets, both past and present. By capturing the radical love ethic of Blackness amid incessant fear, she has amassed not only a wealth of knowledge about contemporary Black poetry and poetry movements but also brings to life the historical record of Black poetry from the latter half of the 20th century to the early decades of the 21st.
Examining cultural traditions, myths, and music from the Four Tops to Beyoncé, Bingham-Risher reflects on the enduring gifts of art and community. If you’ve ever felt alone on your journey into the writing world, the words of these poets are for you.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Poet Bingham-Risher (Starlight & Error) mines the experiences of Black writers in this jovial mix of memoir, essay, and homage to her literary "guiding voices." Lyrical essays elucidate the themes that emerged from interviews she conducted over almost two decades with 10 Black poets. In "Imagining Home," she explains how she found poetry "outside of song" as a fifth grader when a teacher read her class Langston Hughes's "Mother to Son." Soon thereafter, Bingham-Risher wrote her first poem, which won a prize. In "Standing in the Shadows of Love," she bonds with Patricia Smith over a shared "lifelong obsession with music" both for its own sake and as poetry. Lucille Clifton, she notes in "Intimate Tending," highlights that, for Black artists, "living is political whether we want it to be or not" and writes that that's what she is "disappointed not to find in the writing of those without the birth-burden of double consciousness as part of their living and, hence, breath, breadth, and work." The author's own poems appear throughout, including one for her daughter that honors Black women's names. It adds up to a powerful celebration of poets who "paint life with all its many spirals and errors." Lit lovers will be dazzled.
