Blues: The Story Always Untold - Softcover

Plumpp, Sterling D.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0961464488 ISBN 13: 9780961464486

Publisher: Another Chicago Pr, 1989

Synopsis

Book by Plumpp, Sterling D.

About this title

Reviews

Recipient of the Carl Sandburg Award for The Mojo Hands Call, I Must Go , Plumpp here addresses victims of racism, economic oppression and spiritual decimation: the battered woman, neglected child, alienated teenager, "Nine / teen years old: / the dream / died, resurrected / in shouts never / heard . . . . Nine / teen years old and / trouble, troubles / seem / to always follow / her around. All those / years / the dream moving / in her like a baby and / never able to be held. / Still birth. / Bruised dreams / aging." Strongly influenced by the blues, both contextually and structurally, the poems do not convey fully realized images or concepts. Halting, staccato lines and discursive, interrupted narratives apparently intend to imitate the rhythm and form of the musical style, as well as to indicate the difficulties inherent in articulating complex realities. However, the result of these efforts is a series of peripherally related ideas, strung together to create a fractured, tangential whole.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The poems in this powerful volume are so intensely resonant with the blues that everyone must listen. Created out of the black experience, these works extend beyond themselves with rhythmical lines like these: "Got a little story I like to tell/when the sweet thing done left you/ when your nerve soother done gone/ and you talk about it, can't help yourself." Here the depth of pain offers an aspect of humanity that we must learn to confront. Suggesting the poems of Amiri Baraka and the songs of Billie Holiday--"He/ put moving in my father./ I/ say it ripe as liver/hung/ up/ on hog/ killing day"--this book is a pleasing celebration of the blues as we know them.
- Lenard D. Moore, Writer-in-Residence, Wake Cty. Arts Council, N.C.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Another Chicago Pr
• Publication date: 1989
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0961464488
• ISBN 13: 9780961464486
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 139