Nelson, Marilyn

A Wreath for Emmett Till (Boston Globe-Horn Book Honors (Awards))

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Form Over Content
Beautiful Poem
Ambitious but highly disapointing
From Sisters Nineties Literary Group Book Review Editor
Richie's Picks: A WREATH FOR EMMETT TILL

A Wreath for Emmett Till (Boston Globe-Horn Book Honors (Awards))
Marilyn Nelson
Manufacturer: Houghton Mifflin
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0618397523

Book Description

In 1955, people all over the United States knew that Emmett Louis Till was a fourteen-year-old African American boy lynched for supposedly whistling at a white woman in Mississippi. The brutality of his murder, the open-casket funeral, and the acquittal of the men tried for the crime drew wide media attention. Award-winning poet Marilyn Nelson reminds us of the boy whose fate helped spark the civil rights movement. This martyr's wreath, woven from a little-known but sophisticated form of poetry, challenges us to speak out against modern-day injustices, to "speak what we see."

Customer Reviews:

Form Over Content.......2006-09-27

A fellow teacher is doing a unit on African-American lit and the Civil Rights Movement as a lead-in to Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird". "A Wreath for Emmett Till" was one of the books she shared with the class. I have perused it myself, still unsure whether I should actually purchase it or not. Two things other reviewers have mentioned that I too find appealing about the book are: 1)The sheer complexity of constructing a heroic crown of sonnets and 2)the historical backdrop of the events described. Unfortunately, these aspects have very little to do with the content of the poems themselves. Most of the information about Till is contained in the preface and afterword, not in the poems themselves. Likewise, others reviewers, like I, praise Nelson for giving a tour-de-force in making a heroic crown of sonnets (and her commentaries about the sonnets were enlightening), but to be honest, the poems themselves were not particularly outstanding. I would buy the book more as an example of the structure and form of poetry rather than as an example of good poetry (If that makes sense).

Beautiful Poem.......2006-05-31

This book is in the form of a Heroic Sonnet is a brilliantly written book. It is about giving a wreath to Emmett Till, a young child who was lynched after whistling at a white woman. Till, who normally lived in Chicago, was spending the time at his uncle for the summer. After whistling at a white woman, Briant, Milan and a third person kidnapped Emmett Till. Soon after the kidapping, they lynched him. Later in the Trial, Briant and Milan were found not guilty, though later, it was proven they were guilty. This book was brilliantly written into a heroic sonnet, each of the first lines stating: R.I.P. EMMETT L. TILL. It got me emotionally connected, displeased by the racism people had back then (i.e. allowing Briant and Millan the right to be not guilty just because Till was Black). This book was brilliantly written through the use of similies. It allowed you to invision the racism back then. The only comment I have against it is the World Trade Center reference, mentioning 9/11 hadn't happened yet. Other than that, A Wreath for Emmet Till by Marilyn Nelsen was an excellent work of poetry.

Ambitious but highly disapointing.......2006-04-27

This ambitious poetry book is based on a little known poetic style known as a crown of sonnets, used historically to honor great kings. In this unique book, author Marilyn Nelson tries to apply it to an ordinary kid named Emmett Till whose name became household when he was brutally lynched, and outrage over his murder fueled the early flames of the black civil rights movement.

Nelson is admirable to tackle such a brutal and tough subject matter, however admiration is not enough to cover the fact that her poems are often hard to follow due to the ridged style, in addition to being tangential and lacking in any strong dramatic or emotional punch. She writes about Till's murder as she would weave it into a floral wreath, and sometimes that leaves the reader bored and wondering why we should even care about Nelson's pretty flowers. Her stated goal is to write about Till but he rarely makes an actual appearance in these poems, and her attempt to tie his murder into a larger history of lynching is poorly executed. At one point she ties Till's murder to the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, which comes out extremely contrived and tacked on, since the events, issues, emotions, and circumstances are completely different. She expands considerable ink wishing he had never been killed, which although very admirable, doesn't give her much space to explore the national impact of his death or the good that grew out of his tragedy. In addition, her lengthy and complex notes at the end of the book are absolutely necessary to understand her many intellectual allusions and symbols. I could not imagine giving this book to anyone under 16 and having them get it at all - I'm finishing my undergrad in two weeks and I was overwhelmed. While the poems pick up pathos towards the end, it really is not enough to save the whole set.

The illustrations by Philippe Lardy are nice but unremarkable, and given the poignant and brutal subject matter they are severely disappointing. Many of them are simplistic and pretty paintings of flowers and birds that fit the wreath theme but entirely loose the tragedy and power of Till's death. Like Nelson's poems, you need the complex notes at the back of the book to understand the many symbols in the oft-abstract illustrations. Emmett Till himself is only shown once, and the artist attempts to make him look like an EveryChild (even to the point of giving him no real facial expressions) which makes him look generic and dull. The art shines best when it is the most simple, such as when it is a textured background for the text itself, with simple shapes instead of complex allegories. When the best thing you can say about the illustrations is that they make nice and non-imposing backgrounds, you know the art is in trouble.

A Wreath for Emmett Till asks the reader to "bear witness to the atrocity" and take responsibility for this murder in our collective memory, but otherwise is not a call to any action or awareness. Unfortunately what sticks in the memory is a book that falls short of its lofty goals.

From Sisters Nineties Literary Group Book Review Editor.......2005-08-18

A Wreath for Emmett Till is my first encounter with Marilyn Nelson; a bittersweet introduction. As a member of the Sisters~Nineties Literary Group, this book fascinates me as it is a beautiful example of poetic mastery. When our editor gives us a writing assignment for our publication, I grumble and protest, then I revel in the experience; delighting in the success of learning about the world of poetry and all its various forms. The "sankofet," created by Debra Morrowloving Sisters~Nineties founder, comes to mind as I read this book.*

Ms. Nelson's rhyme scheme is a fourteen-line sonnet on each page linking the previous poem with the next as the last line of the previous poem is the first line of the next poem on the following page. In the world of poetry, this is known as a "crown of sonnets."

Although written for children, I had to read the book twice to "feel" the horrible images that this book so beautifully captures. References to flower, plants, and trees are symbolic and make up the "wreath" for Emmett.
Please read this book and share the experience with your children. The incident is described as the motivating force of the Civil Rights Movement. It is also a wake-up call to all those who continue to live a life of apathy and denial when it comes to standing up for the legacy of the African American struggle.

*Sankofet is a poetic form of three stanzas, each with seven lines. The fourth line of each stanza is the same. The last word of each stanza is the first word of the subsequent verse, and the last line of a Sankofet is the first line in the poem. The format of the Sankofet emulates the call-and-response motif of Afrikan musical tradition with the repetition of the fourth lines. The connecting words at the beginning and end of the stanzas represent the Afrikan cycle of life concept.

Richie's Picks: A WREATH FOR EMMETT TILL.......2005-05-22

I cannot recall if back in 1968 my eighth-grade American history teacher Mrs. Auryansen taught us about the death of Emmett Till. But one of the things I loved most about that year of studying with an enthusiastic teacher who often made American history come alive for me was the series of quarterly independent projects we had to plan and complete. Each marking period we would have to do an American history-related visual piece as well as a written piece and an oral piece.

"BY the flow of the inland river,
Whence the fleets of iron have fled,
Where the blades of the grave-grass quiver,
Asleep are the ranks of the dead:
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day;
Under the one, the Blue,
Under the other, the Gray."
Whence the fleets of iron have fled,
Where the blades of the grave-grass quiver,
Asleep are the ranks of the dead:
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day;
Under the one, the Blue,
Under the other, the Gray."

That's the first of the seven verses of "The Blue and The Gray" by Francis Miles Finch (1827-1907). I memorized and proudly recited those seven verses to my American history class, and that memory has stuck with me.

Having just celebrated my personal half-century mark, I'm all for turning around and returning to eighth-grade. And if I could do so, this is what I would memorize this time around for one of my oral pieces:

"Pierced by the screams of a shortened childhood,
my heartwood has been scarred for fifty years
by what I heard, with hundreds of green ears.
That jackal laughter. Two hundred years I stood
listening to small struggles to find food,
to the songs of creature life, which disappears
and comes again, to the music of the spheres.
Two hundred years of deaths I understood.
Then slaughter axed one quiet summer night,
shivering the deep silence of the stars.
A running boy, five men in close pursuit.
One dark, five pale faces in the moonlight.
Noise, silence, back-slaps. One match, five cigars.
Emmett Till's name still catches in the throat."

That is one of the fifteen sonnets that comprises A WREATH FOR EMMETT TILL by Marilyn Nelson. After reading the book to myself and then reading it aloud to Shari, my thoughts kept wandering off yesterday to brainstorming how I might somehow set up an event down in the City on Sunday, August 28th--fifty years to the day since Emmett was kidnapped--in which someone who would both have known the Civil Rights movement and whose presence could attract a major audience (a Danny Glover or a Bill Russell or someone else of that stature) would read this powerful series of poems aloud to a crowd to commemorate the anniversary of the brutal death of Emmett Till, a death which horrified the world and made clear what had gone on for so long.

I can imagine having a choir and soloist perform at such an event, but definitely not a bunch of droning speakers whose verbosity might take away from the carefully chosen words of Marilyn Nelson's heroic crown of sonnets about Emmett Till. As Marilyn explains in her preface (HOW I CAME TO WRITE THIS POEM):

"A crown of sonnets is a sequence of interlinked sonnets in which the last line of one becomes the first line, sometimes slightly altered, of the next. A heroic crown of sonnets is a sequence of fifteen interlocking sonnets, in which the last one is made up of the first lines of the preceeding fourteen."

Thus, it's like a literary crossword puzzle. Get one word wrong and it simply doesn't fit together. Get all the words exactly right and you've got something worthy of public performances by famous personalities and recitations by today's and tomorrow's American history students.

Marilyn Nelson got it right.

Fortune's Bones: The Manumission Requiem (Coretta Scott King Author Honor Books)

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Seeking one's Fortune
Fortune's remains the Mattatuck Museum

Fortune's Bones: The Manumission Requiem (Coretta Scott King Author Honor Books)
Marilyn Nelson
Manufacturer: Hand Print
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1932425128

Book Description

There is a skeleton on display in the Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury, Connecticut. It has been in the town for over 200 years. Over time, the bones became the subject of stories and speculation in Waterbury. In 1996 a group of community-based volunteers, working in collaboration with the museum staff, discovered that the bones were those of a slave named Fortune who had been owned by a local doctor. After Fortune's death, the doctor dissected the body, rendered the bones, and assembled the skeleton. A great deal is still not known about Fortune, but it is known that he was baptized, was married, and had four children. He died at about the age of 60, sometime after 1797. Marilyn Nelson was commissioned by the Mattatuck Museum and received a grant from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts to write a poem in commemoration of Fortune's life. The Manumission Requiem is that poem. Detailed notes and archival materials provide contextual information to enhance the reader's appreciation of the poem.

Customer Reviews:

Seeking one's Fortune.......2005-07-10

There are as many ways of honoring the long forgotten as there are ways of mucking that honor up. I came to "Fortune's Bones" with just a bit of trepidation, I admit. Though I knew author Marilyn Nelson had created this book to honor a man long dead in the best way she knew how, I was still recovering from a similar, and foul, title called, "Journey To the Bottomless Pit" which also came out in 2004. In both books, a man who was a slave during his lifetime is honored with a children's book of fiction. In "Journey", the book was a simplistic version of a complicated man's life. I prayed that "Fortune's Bones" would not be the same. Those prayers were answered tenfold. Marilyn Nelson tells the story of Fortune in a manner respectful of his life, then accompanies this retelling with a requiem written in his honor. Though I would have enjoyed further factual information on the topic, this is a worthy addition to any poetry collection or non-fiction collection, for children, teens, or grown adults, anywhere.

There once was a man named Fortune. Born a slave in the 1700s, he and his wife and his children all belonged to a Dr. Preserved Porter. Later tests on Fortune's bones show that his life was not an easy one. His back was once broken and though he had a healthy skeleton, he died at the age of 60. When he did, Dr. Porter took Fortune's death as an opportunity to study human anatomy. He removed Fortune's skeleton, tapped the bones, and made himself a complete human skeleton. Every bone was carefully marked and studied by Porter and his ancestors. Years later, Fortune's name was lost and the skeleton was mislabeled "Larry" and given to the Matttatuck Museum. In the 1990s historians did research on it and found Fortune's true name once again. Now the only question that remains is what to do with Fortune's bones. Do we bury them and put him to rest at long last, or do we learn more from them about 1700s slaves and slavery? The question remains unanswered, but author Marilyn Nelson has done what she can. In this book she writes a requiem in Fortune's memory. Filled with free verse poetry, a Kyrie of the Bones, and a Sanctus at the end, "Fortune's Bones" is a text of respect.

One of the many things I loved about this book was the fact that as an author/poet, Nelson tells us why she wrote what she did. One poem is entitled, "Not My Bones", in which Fortune states clearly, "I am not my body", to anyone who cares to listen. This phrase comes from the Vietnamese Buddhist leader Thich Nhat Hahn, a fact that could well have gone uncredited by a less careful author. Each poem in this book is accompanied by factual information pertaining to Fortune's story, along with photographs, papers, tapestries, maps, and other important documents of the period. As a whole these poems speak beautifully together, forming a single Requiem. I especially liked "Dinah's Lament" in which Fortune's wife speaks of the cruel injustice of being forced to dust the bones that once would, "hold me when I cried; to dust where his soft lips were, and his chest what curved its warm against my back at night". Nelson, the accomplished voice behind her other great book, "Carver: A Life In Poems", is at her best here.

Admittedly, there were aspects of this book left unspoken that I (and I'm sure others) would have liked to have heard more about. The book is a Requiem and doesn't dwell on the fascinating process scientists took to discover Fortune again. There's a small series of three pictures on one page that shows three stages of facial reconstruction of Fortune, taken from his bones. That's something that would have made for a fascinating story in and of itself. Or how did the researchers and historians eventually discover who Fortune really was? Who did they talk to? What did they read? Sadly, such information will have to wait for another book. It's not answered here.

"Fortune's Bones", will obviously be snatched up by any child and/or teen assigned to read a book of poems since it's a mere 32 pages altogether. This is a great good thing. In spite of its scant length, this is a title that will teach a lot of information to a lot of kids in a wonderfully stirring way. The poems are mindful of the past and give the greatest of respect to a man of whom we know so little. A wonderful publication

Fortune's remains the Mattatuck Museum.......2004-12-04

Fortune's skeleton is not on display. The exhibit about Fortune at the Mattatuck Museum includes a photographic illusion allowing visitors to see an image of Fortune's skeleton transform into a painting of Fortune as he may have looked in life. Fortune's actual bones have been carefully placed in archival museum storage, awaiting a community decision about whether to bury the remains or preserve them for future study.

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Carver's Life in Sanpshots of Poetry
Carver's poetic life
excellent!
Entrepreneurial Alchemyýs Best and Greatest Advocate
Thought-provoking!

Carver: A Life in Poems
Marilyn Nelson
Manufacturer: Hand Print
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1886910537

Book Description

This collection of poems assembled by award-winning writer Marilyn Nelson provides young readers with a compelling, lyrical account of the life of revered African-American botanist and inventor George Washington Carver. Born in 1864 and raised by white slave owners, Carver left home in search of an education and eventually earned a master's degree in agriculture. In 1896, he was invited by Booker T. Washington to head the agricultural department at the all-black-staffed Tuskegee Institute. There he conducted innovative research to find uses for crops such as cowpeas, sweet potatoes, and peanuts, while seeking solutions to the plight of landless black farmers. Through 44 poems, told from the point of view of Carver and the people who knew him, Nelson celebrates his character and accomplishments. She includes prose summaries of events and archival photographs.

Customer Reviews:

Carver's Life in Sanpshots of Poetry.......2003-06-17

This biography that won both a Newbery Honor and a Coretta Scott King Honor is an awe inspiring book. Nelson tells the story of George Washington Carver's life through a series of poems that act like snapshots in a photo album. She begins with a poem about Carver and his mother being stolen from their owner when they were slaves. John Bentley is sent after them but can only find baby George who he returns to the Carvers who raise him with his brother Jim. The poems go on to tell of Carver's search for education, his resourcefulness, and his spirituality. Different poems describe his artistic abilities, his studies of botany, his appreciation for all of nature, his artistic nature, and his dedication to his students and all of his people. The book traces his life from its beginning in slavery to his years in college and as an instructor at the Tuskegee Institute. Nelson's poems describe the life of an amazing genius who is too often overlooked as simply the inventor of peanut butter. Each poem acts as frame in the film of Carver's life. The poems work together to tell the story, but each poem can also stand on its own as a photograph of a moment from an amazing life. The historical footnotes in the text help to clarify the poems and the photographs of Carver, his family and friends, his creations, etc. help to create a better understanding of this incredible man.

Carver's poetic life.......2003-05-16

First I have to say that Marilyn Nelson is a wonderful person. And I think she is one of the best poet's of her generation. Her poetry is great, and her book, _The Homeplace_ is one of those books that everyone should own. But even great poets can write mediocre poems. This collection is a series of short poems, usually a dramatic monologue of some sort, that together are supposed to make up the story of George Washington Carver's life (it includes pictures and little biographical footnotes). Pretty much the same thing she did for The Homeplace. It worked in The Homeplace, but not here. The problem isn't so much Nelson's skill as a poet (few are better than her), rather it is Carver's life. It just doesn't make good poetry, or at least not 60 poems. I understand Marilyn wants to tell us about Carver, but perhaps prose would have been a better way to go about it (that and this book seems to be marketed for young children--I don't think they can fully appreciate the nuances of Nelson's poetry or Carver's life). That said, there are several good poems in the book, "Clay" and "Cafeteria Food" being my personal favorites. Well, not every collection is going to be great (look at Frost's later books), so I eagerly await the next book from Marilyn Nelson, be it poetry, essays, or fiction.

excellent!.......2002-11-05

i really enjoyed this collection of poems by george washington carver! i have plans to be a teacher when i finish college and i think that i will use this book in my teaching plans! the poetry is basic at times so that most any student will be able to understand and yet it has a deepness that will require some thought on behalf of the students. i recommend this book to anyone who enjoys poetry, history, or teaching. i have put this book on my wish list with hope that someone will but it as a christmas gift for me. that is how much i liked carver's work. kudos to mrs. nelson for putting the collection together and getting it published. i can clearly see why carver a life in poems won the newberry award.

Entrepreneurial Alchemyýs Best and Greatest Advocate.......2002-04-12

As a person coming from a hard-core science and engineering background, I never thought that poetry had any `value'. I never once saw in poetry insight into the nature and state of affairs of human beings. So I was very surprised when I read Ms. Nelson's Carver, A Life in Poems. Ms. Nelson presents us with poetry so rich in texture, so layered in meaning that these few lines of prose convey much, much more information than hundreds of pages of dry text. The book skillfully combines anecdotal historical footnotes with powerful poetic prose to tell the story of the most influential man in American agricultural history.

Carver the man overcame severe hardship and the prejudices of others to achieve great things. Living in a time when opportunities were few and far between for American Blacks, and slavery was a vivid recollection, Carver blazed a trail that few have been able to even approach, let alone top, since then. Even though he dealt with his share of racism, not every person not of African-American ancestry was unkind to him. Given the least of all of his peers, black or white, Carver went on to achieve the most in life. In spite of the hardships, the racism, and even the slights and insults of his own people, he left behind a legacy of good work, compassion, and technical accomplishment that stands the test of time. As such, Carver takes a solid place among the great minds of antiquity- from Imhotep, Egypt's greatest builder, to Confucius, China's greatest thinker and statesman.

Although Carver's array of inventions is impressive, his ingenuity and knack for turning what others see as worthless into something valuable, as in the poems `Chemistry 101' and `The Wild Garden' and `God's Little Workshop', is truly astounding. Carver had tremendous impact in a host of scientific disciplines- agronomy, botany, chemistry, and plant pathology to name a few. For me, Carver's life demonstrates the importance of a creative and spiritual base. Carver could not have developed the hundreds of practical uses for the `goober', or peanut-the plant that African slaves brought to the United States, and that White farmers fed to their animals before eating themselves- if he did not have a highly developed creative side. Moreover, his unyielding faith in the Creator, and his reliance on his faith in times of great peril and suffering, enabled him to endure what I and most other people would consider to be the unendurable. Carver's creativity and great spiritual faith gave him the inspiration to make practical use of those things that others considered worthless. In many ways, Carver was the unassailable prototype of the entrepreneurial alchemist- he created something of value out of literally nothing. Professor Carver's many achievements clearly demonstrate the importance of the study of economic botany.

I would like to add that four of his most important contributions to agricultural science- resting the land, crop rotations, application of riparian sediments and the use of legumes to replenish the vital nutrients of intensively cultivated and depleted soils, closely parallel the ecological practices of the great agrarian societies of Asia and Central and South America. The Native Americans, and their Asian compatriots, were well aware of the benefits of these practices, and had developed strong, stable and successful agricultural methods which in turn allowed for the flowering of some of history's greatest civilizations- the Inca, the Maya and the Aztec cultures. In fact, as F H King pointed out in his groundbreaking work, Farmers of Forty Centuries, at the beginning of the 20th century, the farmers of Asia had been using these techniques continuously to maintain and perpetuate the cultivation of the same plots of land, feeding increasing numbers of their people, for over four thousand years. In effect, these ancient farmers had developed sustainable farming practices and projected them four millennia into the present. In this way, I see Professor Carver as not only the Father of the Peanut industry, he is, and rightly so, The Father of Sustainable Agriculture in America.

It is both refreshing and heart-warming to me to know that an African-American man of science can also be a Renaissance Man in the fullest sense of the word. Gifted in the arts and gifted in the sciences, Carver blended art and practicality in a way I can only hope to partially attain. From this book, I humbly receive a new and invaluable hero, a new and awesome role model- Professor Carver, Jack of All Trades, Renaissance Man Extraordinaire- a true man of the people, a true Titan of Science.

Thought-provoking!.......2001-12-24

This group of poems tells so much in so few words...tells of a life (George W. Carver's) lived with integrity and courage. The poems brilliantly paint a portrait of the noble human spirit that shines thru when an individual rises above pettiness, self-centeredness and dishonesty. I believe the author must share some of the good values evidenced in Carver's life - else she could not write as she does. Hopefully, all readers of this treasured book will be empowered to let their OWN good values shine forth.

The Field of Praise: New and Selected Poems

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good collection
A Mother's Insight
Love That Sex
The Agony and the Ecstasy
Selected Praise

The Field of Praise: New and Selected Poems
Marilyn Nelson
Manufacturer: Louisiana State University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Magnificat: Poems
The Cachoeira Tales And Other Poems (L. E. Phillabaum Poetry Award)
The Homeplace
A Wreath for Emmett Till (Boston Globe-Horn Book Honors (Awards))
Fortune's Bones: The Manumission Requiem (Coretta Scott King Author Honor Books)

ASIN: 0807121754

Customer Reviews:

good collection.......2001-09-21

nelson's collection as a whole is pretty good, though it does drop off a bit in the hermitage section. her poems are poems of home and family and spirituality. it's a good selection of her work.

A Mother's Insight.......2000-05-11

Marilyn Neslon's The Fields of Praise is a book about motherhood. She is a refreshing turn from the sexually explicit yet uninterpretable poetry that pervades modern day poetry. The compassionate and romantic pieces in her book are generally directed towards children. Though her poems often express fear and concern, they are not exploding with the dark, depressing diction of utter despair that pervades current poetry. She brings the reader into the real world of a loving heart without beating the reader over the head with fraudulent fervor or suffocating the reader with meloncholy. As a mother hunts down and abolishes anything she feels will harm her family, Marilyn Nelson is quick to criticize perceived social ills. Some of her poetry takes on the appearance of criticism and denunciation and can even be interpreted to be bigoted. In many ways her poetry is of a right wing conservative nature as opposed to the liberal overtones that her contemporaries write with. It is always a pleasure to see someone who strays from the norm, however, her overall imagery and tone are not appropriate for effective social critique. Mrs. Nelson should continue to provide the audience with an attentive watch over her children, but she cannot be both the lobbyist and the mother.

Love That Sex.......2000-05-01

Marilyn Nelson's book The Fields of Praise is an excellent collection of poetry that captures the deep-down curiosity of the reader. Most of her poems have a parental tone and reflect on her life experiences with her mother and with herself as a mother. Also, several selections deal with the deep down nature of humans and the reason for our actions, such as in "Propositions," where she asks the difficult question of where our sexual desires come from. As a religious person, one of my favorites is "Thus Far by Faith." It is about the faith that the oppressed African Americans had while they were held captive by slavery. It actually reached out to me and made me examine some parts of my life and realize that I was worried about nothing. One poem, "Rilke's Third Elegy" still baffles me. I had the privilege of listening to her recite some of her poems, and someone asked her to read this poem, which someone else wrote, but she included it in her book. When someone asked her about the meaning, she said "Well I think it is about masturbation," but I think she was joking. Marilyn Nelson does a good job of capturing the readers imagination and discusses life and decision making in depth. I enjoyed her book and would suggest it to any poetry lover.

The Agony and the Ecstasy.......2000-04-24

In The Fields of Praise, Marilyn Nelson brings her views to life in a series of well-constructed poems. Her poems cover a wide array of topics, to include racism, sexism, religion, motherhood, illicit sex, and poverty. The characters in her poems commit unimaginable crimes and achieve inconceivable feats. Indeed, Nelson's poems cover the entire human spectrum. Nelson writes in a deep, penetrating style. Skipping the nonsense that some writers embrace, she delves to the heart of the matter, analyzing and constantly questioning human motives. Indeed, Nelson is not afraid to confront the sickening evil that lurks within human nature and the events that unfold when the malevolence is unleashed. Her poems on pure, unadulterated evil reflect her fearless stance on describing, and in fact deploring the evil in human nature. Nelson offers an accurate, candid view of the events that unfold around her. On a lighter note, Nelson analyzes with extreme clarity the unconditional love a mother has for her child, and the unbridled purity of the natural world. Nelson celebrates the love and affection that is found within the souls of all human beings. Most of all, however, she analyzes the deep-rooted maternal instincts of mothers. In her poems, Nelson argues that the bond between a mother and her child is indestructible. In many of her works, Nelson describes the intense protectiveness of females toward their offspring. The Fields of Praise is an excellent collection of Nelson's poems that provides deep insight into the positive and negative aspects of human nature. Indeed, Nelson's knowledge and deep comprehension of human tendencies shines through in her works.

Selected Praise.......2000-04-22

The Fields of Praise, a compilation of related poems by Marilyn Nelson, had both very good pieces as well as some mediocre poems. I appreciated Ms. Nelson's attempt to categorize her poems into a few broad categories however I thought the poems in her third section "Hermitage" became redundant with the last stanzas acting almost like punchlines. However like mentioned earlier, their are a few gems that make this collection worth having. My personal favorite piece is the very last one of the book, "A Minor Miracle". I thought the realism (also knowing that it is a true story helps) encapsulated in this piece was amazing. While I have not read every poem in this collection, there are some that I dislike and others that I like. Overall, discovery of an enjoyable poem, like "A Minor Miracle", makes the time spent hunting worthwhile.

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The Ladder
Halfdan Rasmussen
Manufacturer: Candlewick
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Moon Plane
The Red Lemon (Deluxe Golden Book)
The Opposite
The Happy Lion Roars
Silly Billy

ASIN: 0763622826
Release Date: 2006-06-13

Book Description

A curious ladder inadvertently becomes a pathway to the clouds in this droll, interactive translation of an enchanting Danish poem.

So first it did a little dance,
then it did a little prance,
then, as nicely as you please,
it waddled off with stiff red knees.

Once there was a jaunty ladder, abandoned by a mysterious carpenter, that sprung to life and decided to take a trip through the countryside. As time passed, the gentle ladder found itself intrigued by a seriesof encounters with people and animals that climbed it to the top and disappeared into the sky, only to return, one by one, in a triumphant parade at the end. This exquisite edition of THE LADDER, the text of which was originally written by renowned Danish poet Halfdan Rasmussen, combines a translation by award-winning author and poet Marilyn Nelson with simple, striking artwork by Pierre Pratt, featuring several foldouts and partial pages in a charming, whimsical design.

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translation of ethereal poems by contemporary Scandinavian woman poet

The Thirteenth Month
Inge Pedersen
Manufacturer: Oberlin College Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Product Description

Winner of the American-Scandinavian Foundation Translation Prize

Customer Reviews:

translation of ethereal poems by contemporary Scandinavian woman poet.......2006-02-23

Light and sometimes dimness is like a participant and sometimes like a record or register for what happens, which can be any part of life--desire, remembrance, an interchange with someone or just a look at someone, a private moment. From the prose-poem "The First Spring's Shadow"--"A sun that pling, pling leaps out between the dark trees and hits the chrome of the bicycles...What isn't clear is the shadow..."; from "Right There in the Smoke"--"spoons, teacups, knives/drop/out of my hands/and fall into lead white/out of every/fixed meaning..."; and the opening of "The Move"--"Can everything burn, can everything give light..." Not every poem explicitly mentions light, subtly hints at its import, or almost imperceptibly uses it as a metaphor. But in every poem, most evidently in those where light figures, Pedersen sets a tone and finds a careful balance intimating that there are dimensions something like a thirteen month out of ordinary time giving sensible life a special fullness and poignancy.

The Cachoeira Tales And Other Poems (L. E. Phillabaum Poetry Award)

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The Cachoeira Tales And Other Poems (L. E. Phillabaum Poetry Award)
Marilyn Nelson
Manufacturer: Louisiana State University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

The Homeplace
The Field of Praise: New and Selected Poems
Fortune's Bones: The Manumission Requiem (Coretta Scott King Author Honor Books)
Magnificat: Poems
A Wreath for Emmett Till (Boston Globe-Horn Book Honors (Awards))

ASIN: 0807130648

Book Description

Soaring images, rhythmic language, and wry humor come together in these three narrative poems that explore travel from an African American historical and social perspective. A cab ride turns into an amazing encounter with the driver, an amateur physicist whose ideas about space and time travel spark the poet's musings on chutzpah and artistic ambition. A trip to Triolet, a Creole village in the Indian Ocean island nation of Mauritius, leads the poet to ponder the past and present as she reflects on the ironic complexities of the slave trade and its legacy shared by so many peoples. And in "The Cachoeira Tales," longing to take her family on a journey to "some place sanctified by the Negro soul," the poet finds herself in Brazil's Bahia, along with a theater director, a jazz musician, a retired commercial pilot, an activist, a university student, and two mysterious African American women whom they meet along the way. In rhymed couplets, each pilgrim tells a story, and the result is a rollicking, sensual exploration of spirit and community, with a nod to Chaucer and to traditional Trickster tales.

Using her remarkable ability to educate and inspire, Marilyn Nelson demonstrates the power of travel to transform our imaginations. We have long known that travel broadens; in these poems, it also deepens and makes wiser.

Joined skin to skin, we moved like molecules in the great, impossible miracle of atmosphere, swaying to the music, all eyes on the stage, all hearts attuning themselves in beautiful polyrhythmy, one shaking booty. On one side of me a young man danced; I felt his muscled warmth flow into mine, his pure, sexual strength. On my other sides young women danced, whose curves bumped me softly, dancing without reserve, hands waving in the air, releasing scent fragrant as nard. We danced in reverent, silent assent to the praise-song of drums. —from "Olodum" of "The Cachoeira Tales"

Magnificat: Poems
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Magnificat: Poems
Marilyn Nelson , and Marilyn Nelson Waniek
Manufacturer: Louisiana State University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

20th Century | Poetry | United States | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
General | Poetry | United States | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Anthologies | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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Similar Items:

The Field of Praise: New and Selected Poems

The Cachoeira Tales And Other Poems (L. E. Phillabaum Poetry Award)

The Homeplace

Fortune's Bones: The Manumission Requiem (Coretta Scott King Author Honor Books)

Carver: A Life in Poems

ASIN: 0807119229

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one of the best volumes of contemporary poetry

A Story in Poems

The Homeplace
Marilyn Nelson Waniek
Manufacturer: Louisiana State University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

20th Century | Poetry | United States | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
General | Poetry | United States | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Anthologies | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
United States | Single Authors | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

The Cachoeira Tales And Other Poems (L. E. Phillabaum Poetry Award)

The Field of Praise: New and Selected Poems

Magnificat: Poems

A Wreath for Emmett Till (Boston Globe-Horn Book Honors (Awards))

Carver: A Life in Poems

ASIN: 0807116416

Customer Reviews:

one of the best volumes of contemporary poetry.......2002-05-16

There is no doubt in my mind that Marilyn Nelson's poetry will be remembered for generations to come, and this collection, _The Homeplace_ (which was a finalist for the National Book Award), is the primary reason why. Nelson's poetry is good by any standards, but _The Homeplace_ stands head and shoulders above her work, which says quite a bit. I've read her new and selected poems. They were very good. The only complaint is that they weren't divided by volumes, so it wasn't until i picked up _The Homeplace_ and read it that I realized just how good the poems in this volume are. Because _The Homeplace_ isn't a collection of short poems, rather it is one long narrative poem. It's divided into two sections. Section I tells the story of her mother's side of the family, going back five generations to her great-great grandmother, Diverne. The story of this family goes through slavery, the turn of the century, wars, and up to the point where her mother and father meet. It's a heroic and touching story. Section II is the story of her father's time as WWII as a Tuskegee Airman. _The Homeplace_ contains everything good about poetry, and everything that poetry should be: story, form, meaning, love, and a wonderful use of language. This isn't a book you should pass over. It should be read--slowly and again and again.

A Story in Poems.......2002-04-19

In The Homeplace, Marilyn Nelson's third book, the author writes about members of her family. In the first part, poems describe the lives of her maternal ancestors going back five generations. The second part focuses on her father and his colleagues, the first black members of the Air Force. Though individual poems are capable of standing alone, the collection chronicles the history of American race relations, from Diverne, a slave, to Pomp, who lives with the stigma of his mixed blood immediately following the Civil War, to the Tuskegee Airmen, who must repeatedly handle skepticism about their abilities. Individual poems describe anecdotes, little moments in these lives, sometimes told in the first person and sometimes in third. The general sense creates a quilt of such moments, with individual poems contributing to the whole.

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Practical Guide to Neural Nets
Marilyn McCord Nelson , and W. T. Illingworth
Manufacturer: Addison Wesley Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Computer Science | Computers & Internet | Subjects | Books

General | Computers & Internet | Subjects | Books

General | Reference | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0201633787

Authors:

Authors

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