Hemming the Water

by Yona Harvey

Overview

Channeling the collection’s muse, jazz composer and pianist Mary Lou Williams, Hemming the Water speaks to the futility of trying to mend or straighten a life that is constantly changing. Here the spiritual and the secular comingle in a “Fierce fragmentation, lonely tune.” Harvey inhabits, challenges, and explores the many facets of the female self—as daughter, mother, sister, wife, and artist. Every page is rich with Harvey’s rapturous music.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781935536321
Publisher:	Four Way Books
Publication date:	04/09/2013
Series:	Stahlecker Selections
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	88
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

YONA HARVEY is a literary artist living in Pittsburgh, and the recipient of a 2012 Individual Artist Grant from The Pittsburgh Foundation.

Table of Contents

THE GATE TO THE WATER • Sound - Part 1: Girl with Red Scarf • Blessing Blue Crabs • To Describe My Body Walking • Discovering Girdles • Rose Lassi • ALL MERCHANDISE SOLD AS IS: NO REFUNDS, RETURNS, EXCHANGES, GUARANTEES • Sound- • Chatterblue • Turquoise • Mother, Love • [Zodiac Suite] • SWIMMING LESSONS • Sound-Part 2: Hearing My Daughter’s Heartbeat the First Time Thumbelina, I Wrote a Song about You • Ocean Song • Hurricane • Even Disasters • “The Antelope as Document” • Schottelkotte • Report from the Daughter of a Blue Planet • Gingivitis, Notes on Fear • The Riot Inside Me • Communion with Mary Lou Williams • THE SHAPE THE WATER TAKES • Sound-Part 3 (Ostinato): All the World’s Wars Commence in the Head • Mary J. (Upswing) • Neruda • One Impression • Devil Music • Theory of the Unheld • Brilliance • Black Winged Stilt • Mediation on Your Escape • Open-Toed Shoes • The Shape Compassion Takes • In Toni Morrison’s Head • Sound-Part 4: Notes on Polyphony

What People are Saying About This

Toi Derricotte

“There is no rest in this extraordinary debut book by Yona Harvey. It is a book in which the devastation is still very much alive.”

Carol Muske-Dukes

“Hemming the Water . . . is something unheard of—never quite ‘seen’ before. It is original . . . we are spun into lyrical music, stunning ‘inscapes’ of language.”

Editorial Reviews

"If I am a dove/ & you are the wind/ together we have some business," says Cave Canem Fellow Harvey, defining her debut's quest for identity. Referencing jazz great Mary Lou Williams while making her own distinctive music, Harvey finds herself as a woman and a daughter ("My mother's concerns for me were body odor &/ virginity—how to smell like a flower without being plucked"), a sexual being and an artist.—BH

Library Journal