The Essential Etheridge Knight / Edition 1

by Etheridge Knight

Overview

Winner of the 1987 American Book Award The Essential Etheridge Knight is a selection of the best work by one of the country’s most prominent and liveliest poets. It brings together poems from Knight’s previously published books and a section of new poems.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822953784
Publisher:	University of Pittsburgh Press
Publication date:	12/05/1986
Series:	Pitt Poetry Series
Edition description:	1
Pages:	124
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Etheridge Knight (1931-1991) is widely regarded as one of America's most prominent and lively poets.

Editorial Reviews

This book presents about a dozen new poems by a foremost American poet in the black oral tradition. The bulk of these poems appeared in Born of a Woman ( LJ 6/15/80), a superior volume with many more poems and a sensitive preface that illustrates the full range of Knight's stunning ability with the vernacular. Knight can move from pathos and a near-tragic vision of the destructiveness of imprisonment and prejudice to tenderness and a lusty, incisive wit. His new poems have less substance and are fewer than one would expect from someone with his talent, but the work as a whole bears testimony anew to his authentic ``blues'' voice, deep feeling, and concern for communication between the races.Frank Allen, Assoc. Dean, Continuing Education, Allentown Coll., Center Valley, Pa. Tate, James. Reckoner.

Library Journal

To read Knight is not to escape from or to transfigure America. It really isn't a 'comfortable' experience. He is too aware of the violent spaces between races and individuals to attempt grandiloquescence. Equally he is too screwed into the mundane to attempt sleight of hand tricks. His poetry is clarified on the oilstone of experience. The sad, funky yet celebrative sound of his 'blues' is experience being honed on the quartz grains of a grindstone.

The Iowa Review

Etheridge Kight is the kind of poet who can sound a song on a page.

Post-Intelligencer

Wonderful in its ability to combine love and anger, irony and sweetness. Knight is a street-smart poet with an ear for the Black American idiom and experience, and his poems reflect a life lived largely at the cutting edge edge of that experience: poverty, racism, prison, drug addiction, and rehabilitation. Whether in the form of incantatory blues, narrative poems, or his distinctly individual urban haiku, Knight's is a compelling voice.

Seattle Times/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

A foremost American poet in the black oral tradition, can move from pathos and a near-tragic vision of the destructiveness of imprisonment to tenderness and a lusty, incisive wit. . . . the work as a whole bears testimony anew to his authentic ‘blues’ voice, deep feeling, and concern for communication between the races.”
—Library Journal


“Wonderful in its ability to combine love and anger, irony and sweetness. Knight is a street-smart poet with an ear for the Black American idiom and experience, and his poems reflect a life lived largely at the cutting edge edge of that experience: poverty, racism, prison, drug addiction, and rehabilitation. Whether in the form of incantatory blues, narrative poems, or his distinctly individual urban haiku, Knight’s is a compelling voice.”
—Seattle Times

From the Publisher