Arc & Hue - Softcover

Betts, Tara

4.54

39 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 098192087X ISBN 13: 9780981920870

Publisher: Aquarius Press/Willow Books, 2009

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

Poetry. Foreword by Afaa Michael Weaver. ARC & HUE explores the paradoxes of life in America's past and present through the eyes of a biracial woman pondering the complexities of the world. This collection is also rich in musicality, a chorus of strong voices such as Billie Holiday, Tina Turner, and Pablo Neruda. ARC & HUE was nominated for an American Book Award, a Pushcart Prize, an Anisfield-Wolf Award, and a Hurston Wright Legacy Award.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author:

Tara Betts is a lecturer in creative writing at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. She is a Cave Canem fellow who has received her residencies from the Ragdale Foundation, Centrum, Caldera and an Illinois Art's Council Artist fellowship. Tara is also a poetry editor for November 3rd Club. Tara's work has appeared in Obsidian III, Callaloo, PMS, Columbia Poetry Review, Ninth Letter, HANGING LOOSE, and Drunken Boat. Her work is anthologized in several collections, including Gathering Ground (University of Michigan Press), Bum Rush the Page (Three Rivers Press), The Spoken Word Revolution (Sourcebooks), Power Lines (Tia Chucha Press), These Hands I Know (Sarabande), Hurricane Blues (Southeast Missouri University Press), and Letters to the World (Red Hen Press).

Review:

Tara Betts deftly crafted stanzas are infused with a relentless lyricism and a Chi-town girl's sensibility. This debut collection solidifies her status as a defiant and singular voice, joyous indication of a fresh new direction in poetry. --Patricia Smith, National Book Award Winner and author of Blood Dazzler

The poems in Tara Betts's debut collection, Arc and Hue, are a montage of identity politics, sexuality, music, and experiential knowledge. The joy of reading these poems is that it's the knowledge--yes, even more than the music-- that makes these poems sing. Irrespective of how familiar the scene may seem on the surface, whether the focus is a reverie on relationships--some familial, some romantic--or a projection of a subjunctive future, the acute attention to detail and keen point of view guides Betts' work to conclusions that surprise and illuminate. --A. Van Jordan, author of Quantum Lyrics

It's all here, all the nuances of body and voice, as bold and sensitive poetic attitude. How flow became form then flow again, the creative-growth-process of living writing line breath before line break, a risk in every room. Tara Betts makes silence plea then whips some crazy and some natural on the confessional. Often sassy, often black-a-demic, her non-discriminating eye is never without a fully focused art-sense of self, community and nation. So many of the poems in Arc and Hue aim for the spirit level of insight, our need-some-more-saturation souls. No bragging, no cussin folks out or refried allegorical posturing, Arc and Hue respects the currency of creativity and the unbought lives it honors. --Thomas Sayers Ellis, The Maverick Room

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.