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Black
Black is the companion volume to the author’s acclaimed collection Blue. But while the previous book meditated on the author's history as a black man growing up in Nova Scotia, Black is a brutally honest look at the present and future. Inspired by George’s time as a professor in North Carolina in the late 1990s, the book uses vivid images and surprising juxtapositions to riff on the experiences of a black man living with political and personal outrage. This is not pretty poetry but lacerating, transgressive, and ultimately transforming.
- GenresPoetry
120 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
About the author
George Elliott Clarke
73 books90 followersA seventh-generation Nova Scotian, George Elliott Clarke was born in 1960 in Windsor Plans, Nova Scotia. He is known as a poet, as well as for his two-volume anthology of Black Writing from Nova Scotia, Fire in the Water. Volume One contains spirituals, poety sermons, and accounts from 1789 to the mid-twentieth century; Volume Two collects the work of the Black Cultural Renaissance in Nova Scotia, which, in Clarke's words, "speaks to people everywhere about overcoming hardships and liberating the spirit." Currently on faculty at Duke University, he is now writing both a play and an opera on slavery in Nova Scotia, a reformulation of Shelley's The Cenci. He has won many awards including the 1981 Prize for Adult Poetry from the Writers Federation of Nova Scotia, he was the 1983 first runner-up for the Bliss Carman Award for Poetry at the Banff Centre School of Arts and 1991 winner of the Archibald Lampman Award for Poetry from the Ottawa Independent Writers.
Books: Saltwater Spirituals and Deeper Blues (Pottersfield, 1983); Whylah Falls (Polestar, 1990, 2000); Provencal Songs (Magnum Book Store, 1993); Lush Dreams, Blue Exile: Fugitive Poems, 1978-1993 (Pottersfield, 1994); Provencal Songs II (Above/ground, 1997); Whylah Falls: The Play (Playwrights Canada, 1999, 2000); Beatrice Chancy (Polstar Books, 1999); Gold Indigoes (Carolina Wren, 2000); Execution Poems (Gaspereau, 2001); Blue (Raincoat, 2001); Odysseys Home: Mapping African-Canadian Literature (UofT Press, 2002)
Books: Saltwater Spirituals and Deeper Blues (Pottersfield, 1983); Whylah Falls (Polestar, 1990, 2000); Provencal Songs (Magnum Book Store, 1993); Lush Dreams, Blue Exile: Fugitive Poems, 1978-1993 (Pottersfield, 1994); Provencal Songs II (Above/ground, 1997); Whylah Falls: The Play (Playwrights Canada, 1999, 2000); Beatrice Chancy (Polstar Books, 1999); Gold Indigoes (Carolina Wren, 2000); Execution Poems (Gaspereau, 2001); Blue (Raincoat, 2001); Odysseys Home: Mapping African-Canadian Literature (UofT Press, 2002)
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 28, 2022
HAPPY POETRY MONTH!
april is national poetry month,
so here come thirty floats!
the cynics here will call this plan
a shameless grab for votes.
and maybe there’s some truth to that—
i do love validation,
but charitably consider it
a rhyme-y celebration.
i don’t intend to flood your feed—
i’ll just post one a day.
endure four weeks of reruns
and then it will be may!
**************************
WOOHOO GEORGE ELLIOTT CLARKE!!!
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-sc...
SEE? I LIKE POETRY!!
so i was finally able to get my hot little hands on five more of his books (!) and its just more of the same wonderful wordsmithery. like this; don't even read the words to understand them (well, do, but for now, just focus on the musicality of this man's word choices):
That bang, blackening, of English syllables
In my black-black mouth hurts,
Them syllables hurt,
So I can only vomit up speech -
Half-digested English -
Soiling it with virulent Negro stomach juices.
Ma voice ain't classique!
Grammar is pollution, some poison in my lungs,
So what emerges from my mouth - spit, phlegm -
Looks tuburcular.
My lopsided tongue spoils Her Majesty's English.
The jawbreaker words wad my mouth with blood,
even busted teeth.
I spit out vers - ruddy larvae, red writhing worms-
Like a TB victim hawking scarlet phlegm into a sink.
A "herring-choker" Negro with a breath of brine,
I gabble a garrote argot, gutteral, by rote,
A wanton lingo, taunted and tainted by wine,
A feinting langue haunted by each slave boat.
My black, "Bluenose" brogue smacks lips and ears
When I bite the bitter grapes of Creole verse -
Or gripe and blab like a protestant pope
So rum-pungent Africa mutes perfumed Europe.
so gorgeous. it reminds me of my oft-quoted favorite bit from suttree: "precincts perhaps where dripping lepers prowl unbelled..." such yummy plosives!! i think i will have to space out the other four more slowly... i don't want to waste them. je t'adore, g.e.c....
come to my blog!
april is national poetry month,
so here come thirty floats!
the cynics here will call this plan
a shameless grab for votes.
and maybe there’s some truth to that—
i do love validation,
but charitably consider it
a rhyme-y celebration.
i don’t intend to flood your feed—
i’ll just post one a day.
endure four weeks of reruns
and then it will be may!
**************************
WOOHOO GEORGE ELLIOTT CLARKE!!!
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-sc...
SEE? I LIKE POETRY!!
so i was finally able to get my hot little hands on five more of his books (!) and its just more of the same wonderful wordsmithery. like this; don't even read the words to understand them (well, do, but for now, just focus on the musicality of this man's word choices):
That bang, blackening, of English syllables
In my black-black mouth hurts,
Them syllables hurt,
So I can only vomit up speech -
Half-digested English -
Soiling it with virulent Negro stomach juices.
Ma voice ain't classique!
Grammar is pollution, some poison in my lungs,
So what emerges from my mouth - spit, phlegm -
Looks tuburcular.
My lopsided tongue spoils Her Majesty's English.
The jawbreaker words wad my mouth with blood,
even busted teeth.
I spit out vers - ruddy larvae, red writhing worms-
Like a TB victim hawking scarlet phlegm into a sink.
A "herring-choker" Negro with a breath of brine,
I gabble a garrote argot, gutteral, by rote,
A wanton lingo, taunted and tainted by wine,
A feinting langue haunted by each slave boat.
My black, "Bluenose" brogue smacks lips and ears
When I bite the bitter grapes of Creole verse -
Or gripe and blab like a protestant pope
So rum-pungent Africa mutes perfumed Europe.
so gorgeous. it reminds me of my oft-quoted favorite bit from suttree: "precincts perhaps where dripping lepers prowl unbelled..." such yummy plosives!! i think i will have to space out the other four more slowly... i don't want to waste them. je t'adore, g.e.c....
come to my blog!
December 18, 2022
I would give this book zero stars if I could.
I decided to burn the book after reading the erotic poem Lust Tussle that began with "I want a young girl who does everything -- All the devious things a diva should do. Lavishly filthyish, drastically gymnastic, A jolting, pretty lightning bolt of a girl."
I decided to burn the book after reading the erotic poem Lust Tussle that began with "I want a young girl who does everything -- All the devious things a diva should do. Lavishly filthyish, drastically gymnastic, A jolting, pretty lightning bolt of a girl."
February 17, 2016
An amazing collection poems!!! Strong, insightful and oh so true...
January 26, 2022
Go ahead and compose a poem on Love:
You'll poison it with the poetry -
Sly darkness without any sweetness.
See, the poet's body whelps carrion-inspects,
Vomits some worms, some ants, some wasps, some bees -
Things malevolent and marvellous at once,
Their horrifically mixed-up months chewing,
Ripping, devastating, your heart.
Poetry eats its lovers alive.
You could get your throat slashed for this -
This ominous obsession.
But you have no shame:
No, you have the face of a crushed horse,
And capering therein a million maggots
Usurping every prickle of light.
* * *
A pen chisels its way cross paper
And all my thoughts scrape out.
Skinny, lanky, buck-toothed, four-eyed bookworm:
I write the bottle dry.
Sing rickety, groggily,
Blues scrawled with troubledd pencils.
Clarinets skyward like dandelions.
Wine gets illegally drunk.
Gypsy gals hum, "Peace, Order, Good Government":
Dreaming marks the distance twixt dark and dawn.
Verse is opera, history a museum.
Let pages swim with cusses.
What will poets say
When my music's gone at last?
* * *
Now I must say goodbye olive trees,
goodbye rosemary, goodbye pasticceria,
goodbye gelateria, goodbye white-black butterfly
with the brown stripe, goodbye Villa Serbelloni -
with crooked doors and crack-radiant paintings,
goodbye to that book of Chinese characters
with its watercolour plates shimmering
green plants and yellow or pink flowers,
ciao to all the extraordinary women,
and goodbye to grappa & negroni & limoncello,
goodbye to the blistering roses,
goodbye to the great books, the greatest books,
and goodbye to that black scorpion.
* * *
That lamp floating by was a woman's face,
And you do remember, you do remember,
Her sonnets were nettles, how they stung,
How at you she flung tarantula tentacles.
You kissed like you were screaming, "Fire!"
Twinned tongues streamed like kerosene.
Clenched like Professor Humbert & Lolita,
You grappled and drowned in hot wetness.
You were so certain you two could equal
The XXX conversation of the Great Poets
In blues oozed by broke-necked singers,
But she was too much like you, to life you.
A horse, black, charges, searing at scripture,
Through snow: Augean cock plunging into
Stygian - or Sisyphian - pussy, sapping.
Ink copulates with Intellect; Poetry cries out.
* * *
Are you helpless before what you love?
Do you kneel and howl,
cringe, slaver, drool?
Do you mope and lope about on all fours?
Do you whine and crawl?
Do you slobber and sniffle?
Do you dream of suicide,
then homicide?
Are you so helpless?
* * *
Fascism was popular -
But loud-mouthed and bloody.
Social Credit went bankrupt:
Too much funny money.
Socialism promised Heaven,
But who could afford it?
Hail Capitalism Rex -
Tyrannous and sordid.
* * *
I look at myself, unforgiven, forgotten,
A forty-something, heartless simpleton,
A buck-toothed, loud-laughing, so-called poet:
Ink on my hands like bomb residue.
You'll poison it with the poetry -
Sly darkness without any sweetness.
See, the poet's body whelps carrion-inspects,
Vomits some worms, some ants, some wasps, some bees -
Things malevolent and marvellous at once,
Their horrifically mixed-up months chewing,
Ripping, devastating, your heart.
Poetry eats its lovers alive.
You could get your throat slashed for this -
This ominous obsession.
But you have no shame:
No, you have the face of a crushed horse,
And capering therein a million maggots
Usurping every prickle of light.
- Letter to a Young Poet, pg. 17
* * *
A pen chisels its way cross paper
And all my thoughts scrape out.
Skinny, lanky, buck-toothed, four-eyed bookworm:
I write the bottle dry.
Sing rickety, groggily,
Blues scrawled with troubledd pencils.
Clarinets skyward like dandelions.
Wine gets illegally drunk.
Gypsy gals hum, "Peace, Order, Good Government":
Dreaming marks the distance twixt dark and dawn.
Verse is opera, history a museum.
Let pages swim with cusses.
What will poets say
When my music's gone at last?
- Beginning, circa 1975, pg. 33
* * *
Now I must say goodbye olive trees,
goodbye rosemary, goodbye pasticceria,
goodbye gelateria, goodbye white-black butterfly
with the brown stripe, goodbye Villa Serbelloni -
with crooked doors and crack-radiant paintings,
goodbye to that book of Chinese characters
with its watercolour plates shimmering
green plants and yellow or pink flowers,
ciao to all the extraordinary women,
and goodbye to grappa & negroni & limoncello,
goodbye to the blistering roses,
goodbye to the great books, the greatest books,
and goodbye to that black scorpion.
- À Bellagio (II), pg. 66
* * *
That lamp floating by was a woman's face,
And you do remember, you do remember,
Her sonnets were nettles, how they stung,
How at you she flung tarantula tentacles.
You kissed like you were screaming, "Fire!"
Twinned tongues streamed like kerosene.
Clenched like Professor Humbert & Lolita,
You grappled and drowned in hot wetness.
You were so certain you two could equal
The XXX conversation of the Great Poets
In blues oozed by broke-necked singers,
But she was too much like you, to life you.
A horse, black, charges, searing at scripture,
Through snow: Augean cock plunging into
Stygian - or Sisyphian - pussy, sapping.
Ink copulates with Intellect; Poetry cries out.
- Seduction, à la manière de Bob Dylan, pg. 80
* * *
Are you helpless before what you love?
Do you kneel and howl,
cringe, slaver, drool?
Do you mope and lope about on all fours?
Do you whine and crawl?
Do you slobber and sniffle?
Do you dream of suicide,
then homicide?
Are you so helpless?
- Helpless?, pg. 91
* * *
Fascism was popular -
But loud-mouthed and bloody.
Social Credit went bankrupt:
Too much funny money.
Socialism promised Heaven,
But who could afford it?
Hail Capitalism Rex -
Tyrannous and sordid.
- 20th-Century History, pg. 103
* * *
I look at myself, unforgiven, forgotten,
A forty-something, heartless simpleton,
A buck-toothed, loud-laughing, so-called poet:
Ink on my hands like bomb residue.
- Autobiography (II), pg. 129
June 9, 2009
This is a great book of poetry. Clarke knows how to play with language to tackle some heavy topics. "Black is the future of Blue..."
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews