me and Nina

by Monica Hand

Overview

"Monica Hand's me and Nina is a beautiful book by a soul survivor. In these poems she sings deep songs of violated intimacy and the hard work of repair. The poems are unsentimental, blood-red, and positively true, note for note, like the singing of Nina Simone herself. Hand has written a moving, deeply satisfying, and unforgettable book."—Elizabeth Alexander

In an intimate conversation with the "High Priestess of Soul," Monica A. Hand surveys the places and moods of alienation through poems that are as musical and stylistically diverse as Nina Simone's work. Hand readily embraces a "mass hypnosis" style, putting "a spell on [us]" with her intensely passionate cries and commitment to embracing both tragedy and exuberance in these insightful poems.

From "Dear Nina":

I am not recession
depression
oppression
compression
crooked line
broken line
polka dot
parking lot
or spot

I am a Gift from God
I know that

I am an

un-kept
solo song

Monica A. Hand is a poet and book artist currently living in Harlem, New York. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Aunt Chloe, Black Renaissance Noire, The Sow's Ear, Drunken Boat, Beyond the Frontier, African-American Poetry for the 21st Century, Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem's First Decade, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in poetry and poetry in translation from Drew University and is a founding member of Poets for Ayiti.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781938584923
Publisher:	Alice James Books
Publication date:	05/30/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	96
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Monica A Hand is a poet and book artist currently living in Harlem, USA. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Aunt Chloe, Black Renaissance Noire, The Sow’s Ear, Drunken Boat, Beyond the Frontier, African-American Poetry for the 21st Century, Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem’s First Decade and elsewhere. She holds a MFA in Poetry and Poetry in Translation from Drew University, and is a founding member of Poets for Ayiti.

Table of Contents

Contents
Sound speaks 3
Regret and Pride speak 7
The Need to Be Touched speaks 8
Colored 9
Everything Must Change 11
Daddy Bop 13
The Curtis Institute speaks 15
Upward Bound 16
Mrs. Massinovitch 17
My grand baby says she is a princess 18
Zuihitsu on the Lover Who It Might as Well Be Spring 19
Black People Sure Can Keep Secrets 21
Snuff 22
dear Nina 23
Eunice Waymon 24
dear Nina 25
Freedom speaks 27
Some Sign of Nature 29
dear Nina 30
Sonnets for Unrequited Love 32
dear Nina 35
Confessions of John Divine Waymon 36
Alone, Naturally 37
Me
Nina Looks Inside 41
Libation 49
X is for Xenophobia 50
Bach Fugue speaks 51
Resistance 52
The grand baby asks if I’m happy 53
From the Language of Ash 54
Black is Beautiful 55
Daughters 56
Things That Stink 57
My grand baby says she’s sad 58
The Spirituals speak 59
This morning she flies from room to room 60
How it Feels to be Free 61
A Red Box For 63
Patches of Black Snow 64
The Gray Sky speaks 65
Worry Beads 66
Jim Crow 67
Alma Thomas speaks with Nina and Lorraine 69
Movement for Three 70
dear Nina 71
Strong Man 72
dear Nina 74
Fodder in the Wings 76
So I’m Gonna Leave You the Blues 77
Bandog (Chained Dog) speaks 78

Editorial Reviews

This first poetry collection by Hand, a Cave Canem Fellow and 2010 winner of the publisher's Kenereth Gensler Award, gives readers poems in concert and communion with soul great Nina Simone—like "two souls in a duet." While Simone's songs are a fusion of gospel, pop, and classical music, Hand's poems are a fusion of free verse, blues, torch songs, and songs of the tortured, many with formal elements and many cases using her own original forms: "Traveling through us she found rage/ inside our breath, a seaquake." Both musician and poet are caught in a tangle of being talented and black in an America where Simone is "too dark and too blue" for classical music training and where, for Hand's narrator, even a black president doesn't help much. These poems deal with hard times, poverty, violence, the abuse of power, and abused dreams. Yet like a blues song—"Some truths some lies I'm telling you/ Some truths some lies I'm telling you"—there is some hope that something could change. VERDICT Highly recommended for all readers of contemporary poetry.—Karla Huston, Wisconsin Acad. of Sciences, Arts, & Letters, Madison

Library Journal