Log in to track your reading progress.
Synopsis
Review Clearly sincere and heartfelt...James assure[s] us that the loss of Assoto Saint and Essex Hemphill has left us bereft, but not abandoned. -- Lambda Book ReportSoothing, sensual and soulful. -- Between the LinesThe work of a major African-American voice. -- A Different Light Bookstore, NYC Product Description Introducing poet G. Winston James and Lyric, the newest offering from GrapeVinePress. This first collection adds James' name to the distinguished list of writers involved with and nurtured by Other Countries, the New York-based gay Black artists collective, whose authors have included such notables as Melvin Dixon, Craig G. Harris, Essex Hemphill, Assotto Saint, and Donald Woods. Lyric: Poems Along A Broken Road arises from this more than thirteen-year tradition of passion and excellence, and is one of the few full-length collections of poetry from an African-American gay male in nearly a decade. Lyric stirs the soul. Using images grounded in nature, it unveils and celebrates the wonderful in the everyday. Provocative and varied, it allows readers to travel along the "broken road" from exile to empowerment, loneliness to love, and loss to salvation. Not simply a random collection, but an honest and alchemic journey, Lyric weds the spiritual and the sensual, leading readers to a new place of understanding. It sings/speaks to all people who possess the capacity to hear the truth and to love. From the Publisher Lyric is the second offering from GrapeVinePress, whose inaugural publication, Low-Hanging Fruit by G.B. Mann, was released in 1997. The Los Angeles based press focuses on works which challenge fixed and lazy notions of what it means to be African-American. From the Author I began writing Lyric several years ago in an effort to explore life as a black gay man-learning to love myself and help heal my brothers. One night, though, at a reading, a lesbian sister I'd never met grabbed me, hugged me and sobbed on my shoulder. She said, "I missed you, brother. And I didn't even know it." At that moment, I knew that I wanted Lyric to be about more than just men, but about family and love. Her words became my own and an echo in one of the collection's poems, "Sister Love". The themes of reconciliation and common experience appear throughout the collection. In the end, I was hoping to show how all the aspects of our lives--loneliness, joy, loss, love--combine to make us the people we are. I wanted to give a sense of how we can draw strength from all of it and from one another. As I write in the title poem of the collection, Lyric is about keeping a history of this time (still in the midst of the AIDS crisis and amidst the schisms in our community) "so that in the end, God will remember how we happened." From the Back Cover G. Winston James pours his poetry onto paper like literary lava that scintillates as it sizzles, and burns its way into the depths of your soul. Its incandescent brilliance and fierce tenderness are a testament to the power of the written word. This wonderful book is a flaming debut from a poet who is destined to take his place amongst the foremost writers of our time. (Dorothy Randall Grey. Author, Soul Between the Lines) Lyric is poetry--seasonal, sacred and subtle. G. Winston James joins the voices of my brothers Donald, Craig, and Assotto. I feel blessed to witness such healing words found in struggle. It's a joy knowing that with so many fallen there are still some trees standing, comforting, shading and bearing the fruits of our lives. (B.Michael Hunter. Editor, Sojourner, Black Gay Voices in the Age of AIDS) These naked baby poems speak with lost innocence and costly experience. Taken together, this collection of flute-like poems is an act of magic by which the exile conjures not just a new home for himself, but an empire of the soul conceived in reflection, founded on honesty, and built of imagination. (Michael Lassell. Author, A Flame for the TouchBook Details
Published
May 1, 1999
Publisher
Grapevine Pr
Pages
96
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780965511711