| Description |
1 online resource |
| Series |
The Georgia Poetry Prize Series |
| Contents |
BRIDE -- Bride: Barbara Ann Gardner -- Worten -- Isac Worten -- Google Search for My Ancestor "John Best," "Plantation," and "North Carolina" -- A 70% Probability That You Will Have the Same Attachment Style as Your Mother (or, Six Generations Removed from Enslavement) -- Very Used Queen-Sized Mattress -- The Future as Written by 16-Year-Old Girls -- As Told by 16-Year-Old Girls -- A Windowless Room -- A Glass Argument -- Suddenly, It's Dusk -- I've never known -- Tryna Get Right with God -- So Wildly Bad (Blue-Black Girl) -- GROOM -- Groom: Lionel Blue -- Benjamin Blue -- Lionel Blue as According to U.S. Census Data (or, Many U.S. Schools Taught Spelling by Phonics; or, the Spelling of a Name Was Up to the Census Taker; or, Your Grandfather's People Were Never Taught to Read) -- Skraw -- Rocky Mount Mills -- State v. Will, 18 N.C. 121 (1834) -- "Poli -- " -- Weighing Cotton -- He Said He Had A Child -- Ka chi fo! -- Mending in the Pediatric Ward -- My Grandmother Was Igbo -- Recipe for Jollof Rice -- An Inisolable Portrait -- Blue -- After Years -- WITNESS -- A Body of Water -- Bible Study -- Jehovah's People -- Sometimes (Frequently) -- I try not to think about it -- I am exhausted from the shock -- I dreamt the poem that -- I have the words I need to heal myself -- A Name -- What the Children's Names Mean -- Chima -- Chioma -- Ngozi -- Nkechi -- A List of Things That Give Me Pleasure (or, Redirecting My Body toward Pleasure) -- I know I hold on to a lot -- The Revolution Will Not Go Well with Coke & Other Notes from My Grandmother -- In The Moonlight -- In The Fantasy -- When We Were Younger |
| Summary |
Beautiful and lyrical, Chioma Urama's A Body of Water is a poetic exploration of ancestry in the American South. These poems are the result of a conversation Urama opened with her ancestors, whose documented and oral histories have been fragmented by a history of enslavement. Urama's examination of generational trauma collapses linear time and posits that the traumas of the past are present within the consciousness of our bodies until we transmute the energy surrounding them. The work ebbs and flows between pared-down poems where erasure and white space take on substance and roiling lyric essays that fold in divergent voices from historic documents, music, and film. This collection is both vulnerable and political; a meditation on love and grief; an exploration of loss and connectivity. These poems embrace imagination as a tool to emotionally traverse spaces within history that we are told we cannot enter. A Body of Water is an act of remembering, engaging with the idea that "all water has a perfect memory," and nothing is ever truly lost |
| Notes |
Online resource; title from PDF title page (EBSCO, viewed December 17, 2020) |
| Subject |
American poetry.
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African Americans.
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African American.
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African American.
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POETRY.
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American poetry
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| Genre/Form |
Electronic books
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poetry.
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Poetry.
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Poésie.
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| Form |
Electronic book
|
| ISBN |
9780820358581 |
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0820358584 |
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