Brutal Imagination is the work of a poet at the peak of his considerable powers, confronting a crucial subject: the black man in America.
“A hymn to all the sons this country has stolen from her African-American families.”—The Village Voice
This poetry collection explores the vision of the black man in white imagination, as well as the black family and the barriers of color, class, and caste that tear it apart. These two main themes showcase Cornelius 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.
Includes poems that inspired the libretto for Eady’s music-drama Running Man, a 1999 Pulitzer Prize finalist.
Formerly director of the Poetry Center at SUNY/Stony Brook, Cornelius Eady is currently distinguished writer-in-residence at the City College of New York. He has been awarded the Academy of American Poets Lamont Prize, a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship to Bellagio, Italy, and fellowships from the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Foundation and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. Brutal Imagination was nominated for the 2001 National Book Award for Poetry. The author of six previous volumes, he lives in New York City.
Read an Excerpt
Uncle Tom in Heaven
My name is mud; let's get that out
Of the way first. I am not a child.
I was made to believe that God
Kept notes, ran a tab on the blows,
So many on one cheek, so many on
The other.
I watch another black man pour from a
White woman's head. I fear
He'll live the way I did, a brute,
A flimsy ghost of an idea. Both
Of us groomed to go only so far.
That was my duty. I'm well aware
Of what I've become; a name
Children use to separate themselves
On a playground. It doesn't matter
To know I'm someone else's lie,
Anything human can slip, and that's enough
To make grown men worry about
Their accent, where their ambition might
Stray. It doesn't help anything to tell you
I was built to be a hammer,
A war cry. Like him, nobody knew me,
But in my prime, I filled the streets, worried
Into the eardrum, scared up thoughts
Of laws and guns. How I would love
Not to be dubious,
But I am a question whole races spend
Their time trying to answer. My author
Believed in God, and being denied the
Power to hate her,
I watch another black man roam the land,
Dull in his invented hide.
1 How I Got Born My Heart Who Am I? Sightings My Face Susan Smith's Police Report Where Am I? The Lake The Law Why I Am Not A Woman One True Thing Composite Charles Stuart in the Hospital
2 Uncle Tom in Heaven Uncle Ben Watches the Local News Jemima's Do-Rag Buckwheat's Lament Stepin Fetchit Reads the Paper
3 The Unsigned Confessions of Mr. Zero What I'm Made Of What the Sheriff Suspects Next of Kin What Is Known About the Abductor Interrogation My Eyes What Isn't Known About the Abductor Press Conference Sympathy Confession
4 Birthing
The Running Man Poems: When He Left Hold the Line The Train Piss Armor Mamie Failure Home Miss Look's Dream Baby Sister & the Radio My Sister Makes Me Up While I Sleep First Crimes Liar Sex Revenge What I Do Replaced Truth What Happened Gossip/Denial Hunger Denouncement Running Man
