The Essential Etheridge Knight (Pitt Poetry Series) - Softcover

Knight, Etheridge

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0822953781 ISBN 13: 9780822953784

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1986

Synopsis

Winner of the 1987 American Book Award

The Essential Etheridge Knight is a selection of the best work by one of the country’s most prominent and liveliest poets. It brings together poems from Knight’s previously published books and a section of new poems.

About this title

Review:

“A foremost American poet in the black oral tradition, can move from pathos and a near-tragic vision of the destructiveness of imprisonment to tenderness and a lusty, incisive wit. . . . the work as a whole bears testimony anew to his authentic ‘blues’ voice, deep feeling, and concern for communication between the races.”
--Library Journal

“Wonderful in its ability to combine love and anger, irony and sweetness. Knight is a street-smart poet with an ear for the Black American idiom and experience, and his poems reflect a life lived largely at the cutting edge edge of that experience: poverty, racism, prison, drug addiction, and rehabilitation. Whether in the form of incantatory blues, narrative poems, or his distinctly individual urban haiku, Knight’s is a compelling voice.”
--Seattle Times

"To read Knight is not to escape from or to transfigure America. It really isn't a 'comfortable' experience. He is too aware of the violent spaces between races and individuals to attempt grandiloquescence. Equally he is too screwed into the mundane to attempt sleight of hand tricks. His poetry is clarified on the oilstone of experience. The sad, funky, yet celebrative sound of his 'blues' is experience being honed on the quartz grains of a grindstone."

—The Iowa Review

From Library Journal:

This book presents about a dozen new poems by a foremost American poet in the black oral tradition. The bulk of these poems appeared in Born of a Woman ( LJ 6/15/80), a superior volume with many more poems and a sensitive preface that illustrates the full range of Knight's stunning ability with the vernacular. Knight can move from pathos and a near-tragic vision of the destructiveness of imprisonment and prejudice to tenderness and a lusty, incisive wit. His new poems have less substance and are fewer than one would expect from someone with his talent, but the work as a whole bears testimony anew to his authentic "blues" voice, deep feeling, and concern for communication between the races.Frank Allen, Assoc. Dean, Continuing Education, Allentown Coll., Center Valley, Pa. Tate, James. Reckoner.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Publication date: 1986
• ISBN 10: 0822953781
• ISBN 13: 9780822953784
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 124