Seeing into Tomorrow
Haiku by Richard Wright
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
A remarkable celebration of Richard Wright, poetry, and contemporary black boys at play.
From walking a dog to watching a sunset to finding a beetle, Richard Wright's haiku puts everyday moments into focus. Now, more than fifty years after they were written, these poems continue to reflect our everyday experiences. Paired with the photo-collage artwork of Nina Crews, Seeing into Tomorrow celebrates the lives of contemporary African American boys and offers an accessible introduction to one of the most important African American writers of the twentieth century.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Crews pairs sweeping photocollages with a dozen haiku written by Native Son author Wright during the final year of his life (he wrote some 4,000 haiku in total, 800 of which were later published, explains Crews in biographical notes). Candid images show African-American boys in fields and forests, docks and porches, in scenes that echo Wright's musings. "As my delegate,/ My shadow imitates me/ This first day of spring," he writes as a boy chases his shadow across snow-spattered grass. Elsewhere, a boy and an elderly man observe a patchwork freight train: "Empty railroad tracks:/ A train sounds in the spring hills/ And the rails leap with life." The clustered, overlapping photographs scatter and dissipate at the edges of the spreads, subtly reflecting the evanescence of the moments Wright describes. Ages 5 10.
