Kontemporary Amerikan poetry : poems / John Murillo.

On confessionalism -- Variation on a theme by Elizabeth Bishop -- Upon reading that Eric Dolphy transcribed even the calls of certain species of birds, -- On metaphor -- Dolores, maybe. -- On magical realism -- Poem ending and beginning on lines by Larry Levis -- Dear Yusef, -- On negative capability -- Mercy, mercy me -- A refusal to mourn the deaths, by gunfire, of three men in Brooklyn -- Contemporary American poetry -- On epiphany -- After the dance -- Variation on a theme by Gil Scott-Heron -- On lyric narrative -- Distant lover -- On prosody -- Variation on a theme by the notorious B.I.G.

"A writer traces his history-brushes with violence, responses to threat, poetic and political solidarity-in poems of lyric and narrative urgency. John Murillo's second book is a reflective look at the legacy of institutional, accepted violence against African Americans and the personal and societal wreckage wrought by long histories of subjugation. A sparrow trapped in a car window evokes a mother battered by a father's fists; a workout at an iron gym recalls a long-ago mentor who pushed the speaker "to become something unbreakable." The presence of these and poetic forbears-Gil Scott-Heron, Yusef Komunyakaa-provide a context for strength in the face of danger and anger. At the heart of the book is a sonnet crown triggered by the shooting deaths of three Brooklyn men that becomes an extended meditation on the history of racial injustice and the notion of payback as a form of justice. "Maybe memory is the only home / you get," Murillo writes, "and rage, where you/first learn how fragile the axis/upon which everything tilts.""-- Provided by publisher.