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Suck on the Marrow
Suck on the Marrow is a historical narrative, revolving around six main characters and set in mid-19th century Virginia and Philadelphia. The book traces the experiences of fugitive slaves, kidnapped Northern-born blacks, and free people of color, exploring the interdependence between plantation life and life in Northern and Southern American towns and illuminating the connections between the successes and difficulties of a wide range of Americans, free and slave, black and white, Northern and Southern. This neo-slave narrative treats the truths of lives touched by slavery with reverence but is not afraid to question the ways the old stories have too often been told. In addition to creating new stories, Suck on the Marrow develops new ways of telling those tales.
88 pages, Paperback
First published January 15, 2010
2 people are currently reading
174 people want to read
About the author
Camille T. Dungy
28 books314 followersCamille T. Dungy (born in Denver in 1972) is an American poet and professor.
She is author of the essay collection Guidebook to Relative Strangers, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, and three poetry collections, including, Smith Blue (Southern Illinois University Press, 2011) and Suck on the Marrow (Red Hen Press, 2010). Dungy is editor of Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry (UGA, 2009), co-editor of From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great (Persea, 2009), and assistant editor of Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem’s First Decade (University of Michigan Press, 2006). Her poems have appeared in literary journals and magazines including The American Poetry Review, Poetry, Callaloo, The Missouri Review, Crab Orchard Review, and Poetry Daily.
Her honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Virginia Commission for the Arts, and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Cave Canem, the American Antiquarian Society, and the Sewanee Writers' Conference, and she is recipient of the 2011 American Book Award, a 2010 California Book Award silver medal, a two-time recipient of the Northern California Book Award, and a two-time NAACP Image Award nominee. Dungy graduated from Stanford University and the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, where she earned her MFA. Recently a professor in the Creative Department at San Francisco State University (2011-2013), she is currently a Professor in the English Department at Colorado State University.
She is author of the essay collection Guidebook to Relative Strangers, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, and three poetry collections, including, Smith Blue (Southern Illinois University Press, 2011) and Suck on the Marrow (Red Hen Press, 2010). Dungy is editor of Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry (UGA, 2009), co-editor of From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great (Persea, 2009), and assistant editor of Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem’s First Decade (University of Michigan Press, 2006). Her poems have appeared in literary journals and magazines including The American Poetry Review, Poetry, Callaloo, The Missouri Review, Crab Orchard Review, and Poetry Daily.
Her honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Virginia Commission for the Arts, and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Cave Canem, the American Antiquarian Society, and the Sewanee Writers' Conference, and she is recipient of the 2011 American Book Award, a 2010 California Book Award silver medal, a two-time recipient of the Northern California Book Award, and a two-time NAACP Image Award nominee. Dungy graduated from Stanford University and the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, where she earned her MFA. Recently a professor in the Creative Department at San Francisco State University (2011-2013), she is currently a Professor in the English Department at Colorado State University.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
September 4, 2017
A narrative tour de force, compiled in poems and prose of the story that must always be read, consistently told until this nation heals.
Camille Dungy harnesses the Chaos and with bit-in-mouth makes the Darkness sing for 88 brutal pages. Reading as witness, learning via the pathos of pain through the written word.
Thank you, Red Hen Press (and all other independent publishers) that are committed to bringing works like this to us. Light the Darkness.
May 3, 2018
Highly recommend the whole book. These are some powerful poems, strong and subtle. Dungy has a clear command of voice. Here's an example of an especially moving poem - this led to some good discussion of a poetry group I belong to.
Pussy
by Camille T. Dungy
I was once small as a shell among many shells,
black as a cowrie's inner curve.
If I allowed the wrist-churn and tongue-lash
to break me, I would be no more than sand,
so much grit to wash off, ground to walk upon.
Soon enough they would find a way
to burn me up and look right through me.
These men, angular as filed teeth,
they would convert me to some thing
I would hate to recognize if I let them claim me,
that small and that expensive, as their own.
And so I made myself a stronger thing, a taut flash
of muscle wrapped bone. I am lean and quiet,
common as a mouser. These fools believe
they own me, because I paw through their houses
and eat what they can't stand.
Pussy
by Camille T. Dungy
I was once small as a shell among many shells,
black as a cowrie's inner curve.
If I allowed the wrist-churn and tongue-lash
to break me, I would be no more than sand,
so much grit to wash off, ground to walk upon.
Soon enough they would find a way
to burn me up and look right through me.
These men, angular as filed teeth,
they would convert me to some thing
I would hate to recognize if I let them claim me,
that small and that expensive, as their own.
And so I made myself a stronger thing, a taut flash
of muscle wrapped bone. I am lean and quiet,
common as a mouser. These fools believe
they own me, because I paw through their houses
and eat what they can't stand.
August 16, 2011
Suck on the Marrow
(88 pages/Red Hen Press 2010)
Suck on the Marrow's subject, the lives of U.S. slaves between 1831-1850, is potentially fraught with poisonous emotion. Yet Camille Dungy approaches it with lyric, narrative poetry that channels the unwritten, unspoken, unexpressed daily lives-- not of ciphers, caricatures, shorthand archetypes, or sentimental portraits-- but of real women and men. The language is deeply her own, and at the same time collective on an experiential level:
"she marked the failing of a sick buck when it died
then stowed her traveling dress beneath the carcass
in three days she'd made a stench skirt
to slow the hounds"
Dungy disappears into the work, allowing the imagined past to speak, not in justification or condemnation, but lived as present time. Dungy's art comes from not imposing an interpretation, but trusting that the reader comes laden already, so the past needs no intercessor, only a clear voice. Her language is direct, beautiful, internal in the way unselfconscious thoughts are, and as poet she never allows herself the conceit of “speaking for.”
Suck on the Marrow is ambitious, complex, unflinching, and ultimately welcoming, so that the ugliness, the pain and suffering that can't be avoided in this history can actually be experienced fully by a reader who is not being called to war, but as witness to human experience.
(88 pages/Red Hen Press 2010)
Suck on the Marrow's subject, the lives of U.S. slaves between 1831-1850, is potentially fraught with poisonous emotion. Yet Camille Dungy approaches it with lyric, narrative poetry that channels the unwritten, unspoken, unexpressed daily lives-- not of ciphers, caricatures, shorthand archetypes, or sentimental portraits-- but of real women and men. The language is deeply her own, and at the same time collective on an experiential level:
"she marked the failing of a sick buck when it died
then stowed her traveling dress beneath the carcass
in three days she'd made a stench skirt
to slow the hounds"
Dungy disappears into the work, allowing the imagined past to speak, not in justification or condemnation, but lived as present time. Dungy's art comes from not imposing an interpretation, but trusting that the reader comes laden already, so the past needs no intercessor, only a clear voice. Her language is direct, beautiful, internal in the way unselfconscious thoughts are, and as poet she never allows herself the conceit of “speaking for.”
Suck on the Marrow is ambitious, complex, unflinching, and ultimately welcoming, so that the ugliness, the pain and suffering that can't be avoided in this history can actually be experienced fully by a reader who is not being called to war, but as witness to human experience.
April 3, 2018
There are some good poems in this collection, which is a compliation of different slave perspectives and narratives. "At Madame Jane's" is worth rereading a few times. The poet plays with structure and form throughout the course of the work, switching styles consistently. Not all of the poems made a connection, they are poems consistently dour in tone, so mood will instruct your reactions to the poems.
April 11, 2015
A remarkable read! This collection of poems that delve into the lives of slaves in the 1800's reads much like a story. Dungy's language and choice of structures bring these characters alive. Highly recommend this short read.
December 22, 2011
Superbly organized; to be read in its entirety to feel the full reality of these characters, a part of our history.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews