Customer Reviews (2)

Repost from Sycamore Review Article
You Don't Miss Your Water, is a compact collection of twenty-one prose poems exploring his "ornery and cantankerous" father's illness and death. Beyond writing elegy, beyond"hospital deathbed" and "funeral home" poems, Eadyattempts to untangle his father's less-than-angelicpast--infidelities, bitterness toward a darker-skinned son,lies, secrets about a half-sister previously unknown to the family--whileat the same time dealing with the uncomfortable errands of theimmediate present...

Evenn while dealingwith the confusion, anger and bitterness surrounding his father's death,Eady tempers these beautiful poems with honesty and affection...Throughout the book he weaves memory with the immediate discomforts of grief, writinghis way clearly and without ornament through the lies andbitterness of his father's life. In doing so, Eady pulls off a fine book of poems, proving, as he closes the book, that "every hymn isa flare of longing, that the key to any heaven is language."

Eady's beautifully told account of his relationship w/ dad.
Cornelius Eady writes beautiful prose and poetry, subjects ranging from the hardships he faced while growing up to his love of dance. "You Don't Miss Your Water" is the tale of Eady exploring his past as hewatches his father slowly die. Of all his published works this is the mostwell written and touching accounts from his personal history. ... Read more

Product Description
Cornelius Eady’s new 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 newfound 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. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Fantastic Overview of a Fantastic Poet
If you're not familiar with Eady's work, this book is a great introduction, as it collects poems from several of his previous books (plus a section of new poems). The real standouts here are from his book Brutal Imagination, which is a series of poems in the voice of a black man who Susan Smith invented to blame for the disappearance of her two children (when in fact she had drowned them in her car). Like several of Eady's poems collected in the book ("Why Do So Few Black Study Creative Writing?" jumps to mind), the premise of the Brutal Imagination poems is a scathing assessment of race relations in this country, but whereas a lesser writer might use such premises as uninteresting screeds, Eady's poems always seek out voices of profound understanding and empathy, the end result being that they pack even more punch. Many of the poems in the book are actually quite funny, though, and Eady's distinctive humor and voice shines through throughout. You don't have to have an MFA to understand these poems, but the serious student of poetry will find a lot going on under the surface of these poems. ... Read more

Product Description
Brutal Imagination is the work of a poet at the peak of his considerable powers. Its two central sections--which could be called song cycles--confront the same subject: the black man in America.The first, which carries the book's title, deals with the vision of the black man in white imagination. Narrated largely by the black kidnapper that Susan Smith invented to cover up the killing of her two sons, the cycle displays all of Mr. Eady's range: his deft wit, inventiveness, and skillfully targeted anger, and the way in which he combines the subtle with the charged, street idiom with elegant inversions, harsh images with the sweetly ordinary.The second cycle, "Running Man," presents poems Mr. Eady drew on for his libretto for the music-drama of the same name, which was a l999 Pulitzer Prize finalist. Here, the focus is the black family and the barriers of color, class, and caste that tear it apart. As the Village Voice said, "It is a hymn to all the sons this country has stolen from her African- American families." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Outstanding!
This collection is made up of two cycles of poems, both dealing with the black man in white America. The first is a cycle of poems narrated by the Imaginary black man Susan Smith invented to cover the killing of her two children. This collection is deep! It's so moving and so vivid it leaves you angry and pulls the heart strings.Eady paints such a picture you can see the tail lights slowly slipping into the water.
The second cycle is about a black family and the barriers of color. I had the pleasure of listening to Eady read from this collection as well as his work in progress. He is very moving. And like he said" The best thing about this is....there is no black man on death row right now for murder because of the imaginary black man she created".This is more than a collection of poetry. Brutal Imagination is the brilliant, stunning creation from one gifted writer.

Dawn
Mahogany reviewer

A Must-Read for Poetry Lovers
This is one of the jewels of my poetry collection. The poems--particularly the ones in which Eady takes the persona of the black man Susan Smith claimed kidnapped her children--are haunting, intelligent, and vivid.

I was lucky enough to hear Cornelius Eady read from this book in 2001--he has a great presence, and made the poems even more electrifying. Even if you can't get to an Eady reading, though, if you enjoy poetry--especially imaginative and/or sociopolitical poetry--you need to buy this book!

Stark and Bitter Truths--
When Susan Smith murdered her young children, she blamed the crime on a black man.When Charles Stuart murdered his wife, he did the same.In the first half of this powerful collection, Cornelius Eady gives voice to this imaginary black man who so often acts as our collective scapegoat. The premise is brilliant, and the poems themselves are powerful--starkly musical and plainspoken.

Thought-provoking poems
I love to read, but poetry isn't usually my first choice...or my second, or my third.In fact, I usually don't like to read poetry written by anybody over the age of 12, because it so often strikes me as pretentious and tiresome.In spite of this, I decided to take a class in African-American poetry just to see if I could gain a better appreciation for this form of art.I have, and Cornelius Eady is a huge part of this.Right before the last section of the semester, which included this book, and "On the Bus with Rosa Parks" by Rita Dove, I had become disillusioned by the poetry of such people as Audre Lorde.I felt that I just wasn't getting something, and was missing what it was that made poetry appeal to so many other people.

These feelings changed when I read the first section of "Brutal Imagination".It was like, "YES"!! Finally.Finally I not only understood what the poet was saying, but I also liked the way he was saying it.I don't pretend to be knowledgeable about the different movements in American/African-American poetry, but I feel like I'm 100% with whatever school Cornelius Eady represents.The first section of poems, which was written from the point of view of the mythical black man created by Susan Smith to explain the disappearance of her children, just touched me.I could so identify with this man, who was correctly identified as a person about whom others would believe the worst, because I know so many people who he could be.It's frightening to think of how little our "social advancements" in the area of interracial relations mean in the face of challenges by people like Susan Smith and Charles Stuart.

This book of poems is not just for black people, or Americans, or any one group of people; I even recommend it to those who don't even like poetry.Go ahead and read it, you might surprise yourself.

eady makes you become another person
Contrary to the first reviewer, I find the subject matter of this book ingenious. If the subject of race (and gender) is old and overdone, then why are black males wrongly accused on a daily basis of committing crimes they didn't commit? Why the constant suspicion of those who are different from us?

Even more important than the subject matter is the fact that this invisible, even non-existent, man's voice is convincingly and beautifully rendered. By writing about a man whom no one understands, who is conjured up at will from the darkest regions of white America's consciousness, I, as a white woman am able to relate on a visceral level, to recognize my own blindness and knee-jerk reactions, and also to identify with the character who has been marginalized.

This book is amazing for its refusal to judge evil. Instead of offering solutions, Eady gives us the opportunity to become other people, to live their lives and their truths. By the end of the book, my world seems a much bigger place than it did before I started reading. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

The Subjectivity of a Jukebox
The title of "The Autobiography of a Jukebox" calls to mind a jukebox telling its life story through its songs.In this way Eady's title hints at the way his book will examine a subject--a house, a narrative, a photo--through the medium of itself.This technique can be highly effective, as in "Money Won't Change It (but time will take you on)."In this poem, the speaker reflects on the jealousy and destructive competition of a community by reconstructing the conflicts among neighbors: "'You're rich, lady,' hissed the young woman at/ My mother as she bent in her garden."Eady's technique of letting jealousy and competition tell their own story evokes (through his layering of subject and object) the claustrophobia of the neighborhood.

But in the political section of Eady's work (titled "Rodney King Blues"), Eady's technique collapses into polemics.In "Nobody's Fault But Mine" the speaker simply attacks the defense team's interpretation of the beating; Eady's political position is understandable, even admirable, but this is a subject best confronted head-on by the prosecution, not a poet.Nonetheless, Eady possesses quite a talent for descriptive narration.If there's a slow-spun, endearing quality to some of these poems, it is balanced by an equally charming use of the occasional cliche.

vitally thoughtful narrative
I found this to be a very direct book, a very accessible book of poetry I would, in many cases, be hard-pressed to distinguish from prose.This is especially apparent in the "Rodney King Blues" section, where four of the seven poems look and read almost like prose poems.Its similarity to prose I would attribute to three techniques:informal diction, a direct, very narrative tone, and interesting line breaks (or lack thereof).

Eady uses words wonderfully in juxtaposition.For example, in "Anger" "spin doctors do their stuff" and the "op ed page" appears, as does "haughty anger" and a "dark sunglassed angel repository".Common speech coexists with poetic diction; I enjoyed this very much and would strive for it in my own work for the sake of the variety and shock value it lends the poems.Eady's poems, especially the prose-poem-like ones, are written as if the speaker is just talking to the reader, telling stories of family, pain, music and lyric, love, even his hair.I really enjoyed the personal element that this informal language and narrative tone brought to the poems.They seem to capture experience without mediation and present it very honestly while avoiding plainness.I notice, though, that despite Eady's conversational tone and speech-like word choices he makes each word work, as in "Johnny on the Mainline":"This man, who I am quickly learning I don't know well at all anymore, is a broken heart, and a heartbreaker" (note the very long line).His skill with words is something I admire and strive for in my own work.

Formally, Eady's poems are intriguing, particularly as regards their lineation.He usually (in this book) alternates between very short, fairly rhythmic lines of two or three beats without many stanzaic divisions and verse paragraphs without any line distinction whatsoever.The 'metered' poems recall song lyrics to mind in the manner in which they sound more formal but maintain the direct conversationaly connection with the reader.I like his style very much:it is the trained speech of a skilled storyteller who can concisely engage his audience.His poetry, I believe, would be a good example of "formal, free, and fractal verse" (see Alice Fulton's 1985 [?] essay on form in contemporary poetry).

I also found his division of the book into sections to be particularly effective.His writing is very thematic - I sometimes wonder if he's exploring an issue thoroughly or beating a dead horse - and fits well within the sections.The section titles I love."Small Moments" I found delightful:the poems show just that, small moments, but they sparkle and are exactly the sort of thing I find intriguing as a reader and about which I would like to write.

As with perhaps any book, the more I read Eady's 'Autobiography of a Jukebox' the more I like it.Its voice begins to sound like that of a friend - a very real, powerful, wryly aware and devilishly hilarious friend. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

DANCE, DANCE, DANCE: THE DANCE OF LIFE!
What a wonderful book.As he did in The Autobiography of a Jukebox, Eady envelops us in a world we will all recognize and yet he makes us look at it with a new set of eyes.This book is devoted to exploring the dance oflife, many times in the form of anaphora.This lends a musical grace tothese poems.You find yourself returning to these poems again and again. The poems themselves take us from a piano concert to a sort of ode to aballet dancer to a couple planning their new house and beyond.Atranscendent book of poetry.In The Woman Who Dances With God, he writes"Let's assume that when we die/Our souls go to heaven/That places ahigh premium/On asthetic values."Let's hope Eady's poems meet us aheaven's gate! ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document, covering the life and work of Cornelius Eady, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thompson Gale. The length of the entry is 1179 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
• Education
• Professional associations and honors
• Employment
• Writings, including books and periodicals
• A description of the author's work
• References to further readings about the author

Product Description

Product Description
This digital document is an article from American Scholar, published by Phi Beta Kappa Society on June 22, 2001. The length of the article is 320 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: How To Do.(Poem)
Author: Cornelius Eady
Publication: American Scholar (Refereed)
Date: June 22, 2001
Publisher: Phi Beta Kappa Society
Volume: 70Issue: 3Page: 30

Article Type: Poem

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Product Description
BOMB 79, Spring 2002, featuring: Interviews with Steven Holl by Joseph Masheck, Stephen Mueller by Joe Fyfe, Janet Cardiff by Atom Egoyan, Laurie Sheck by Susan Wheeler, Cornelius Eady by Patricia Spears Jones, Victor Pelevin by Leo Kropywiansky, Mohsen Makhmalbaf by Liza Bear, and Bill Frisell by Marc Ribot. Essays on Liz Larner by Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, Ivelisse Jimenez by Shirley Kaneda and Saul Ostrow, Laura Newman by Judith Linhares, and Jim Hodges by Stuart Horodner. Poetry and fiction by Romulus Linney, Laura Migdal, Benjamin Weissman, Derek Webster, Michael Morse, Alberto Ruy Sanchez, Jamey Dunham, Alexandra Enders, and Diane Mehta. ... Read more