| Description |
209 pages ; 24 cm |
| Contents |
Cover Photograph -- Wild Pansies -- My Second Birth -- The Lost Daughter -- A Strange Beautiful Woman -- Mama's Promise -- I Decide Not to Have Children -- Mama I Remember -- Mama's Murders -- The Dangerous Carnival -- Bali Hai Calls Mama -- Dinosaur Spring -- Women's Locker Room -- Twist the Thread -- For Mary, Fourth Month -- The Marriage Nightmare -- Levitation with Baby -- Emily Dickinson's Defunct -- Confessional Poem -- The Fortunate Spill -- Epithalamium and Shivaree -- Light Under the Door -- I Imagine Driving Across Country -- Tuskegee Airfield -- Freeman Field -- Lonely Eagles -- Star-Fix -- Porter -- Recurrent Dream -- The Dream's Wisdom -- Churchgoing -- My Grandfather Walks in the Woods -- How I Discovered Poetry -- I Am You Again -- Sisters -- It's All in Your Head -- The Century Quilt -- I Send Mama Home -- The House on Moscow Street -- Diverne's House -- To Market -- Diverne's Waltz -- Balance -- Chosen -- Daughters, 1900 -- Chopin -- Hurrah, Hurrah -- The Ballad of Aunt Geneva -- High and Haughty -- Juneteenth -- Armed Men -- Aunt Annie's Prayer -- Thus Far by Faith -- The Life of a Saint -- Psalm -- Dusting -- I Dream the Book of Jonah -- Letter to a Benedictine Monk -- The Prayer of Silence -- The Fruit of Faith -- Abba Jacob and Miracles -- Fish and Floor-Dust Bouquet -- Abba Jacob and the Businessman -- Abba Jacob and the Theologian -- Abba Jacob and St. Francis -- Abba Jacob and the Angel -- Blessing the Boats -- Abba Jacob's Aside on Hell -- Men in the Kitchen -- Abba Jacob's Seven Devils -- Clown Nose -- Abba Jacob at Bat -- I Knew That -- At Prayer -- The Simple Wisdom -- Abba Jacob Gets Down -- Don't Throw Out Wine Bottles -- Laughter as the Highest Form of Contemplation -- Leaving the Hospice -- Aches and Pains -- Post-Prandial Conversation -- May Your Love Convert Lucifer -- Lovesong -- Abba Jacob in the Well -- A Canticle for Abba Jacob -- The Plotinus Suite -- The War of the Heart -- Memento -- As Simple as That -- April Rape -- Is She Okay? -- Boys in the Park -- Impala -- Beauty Shoppe -- Ape-Gods -- Photographs of the Medusa -- No No, Bad Daddy -- No Worst -- Woman Kills and Eats Own Infant -- Like Father, Like Son -- Rilke's Third Elegy -- The Death of Polyxena -- Hecuba Mourns -- Propositions -- The Sacrament of Poverty -- La Peste -- Minor Miracle. |
| Summary |
"In The Fields of Praise, Marilyn Nelson claims as subjects the life of the spirit, the vicissitudes of love, and the African American experience and arranges them as white pebbles marking our common journey toward a "monstrous love / that wants to make the world right."" "Nelson is a poet of stunning power, able to bring alive the most rarified and subtle of experiences. A slave destined to become a minister preaches sermons of heartrending eloquence and wisdom to a mule. An old woman scrubbing over a washtub receives a personal revelation of what Emancipation means: "So this is freedom: the peace of hours like these." Memories of the heroism of the Tuskegee Airmen in the face of aerial combat abroad and virulent racism at home bring a speaker to the sudden awareness of herself as the daughter "of a thousand proud fathers.""--Jacket. |
| Subject |
Poetry.
|
|
Poetry. (OCoLC)fst01067691
|
| ISBN |
0807121746 (alk. paper) |
|
9780807121740 (alk. paper) |
|
0807121754 (pbk. ; alk. paper) |
|
9780807121757 (pbk. ; alk. paper) |
|
