Tag Archive for Queer Poets

Wesleyan University Press’ Antiracist Reading Lists!

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To celebrate the continuous struggle for freedom and equality in America, Wesleyan University Press has compiled a few antiracist reading lists in order to amplify BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) voices, experiences, and histories. Below are just a few of the fantastic titles Wesleyan University Press has published by BIPOC authors or about the Black historical legacy. Poetry, music and dance, autobiography, science fiction, historical novels, and more show the breadth of these lyrical, literary, and scholarly contributions. We are dedicated to supporting Black authors and stories, to listening and learning through publishing and reading. This moment is highlighting just how much work there is to be done in order to dismantle systemic racism in our country; these books help show us why that work is so important and how we can begin to integrate it into our daily lives and reading practices. Black lives matter!

To order books and view our full list of titles, please visit https://www.hfsbooks.com/publishers/wesleyan-university-press/ or click on the below cover images to visit a book page directly. And don’t forget to look out for Beyoncé in the World: Making Meaning with Queen Bey in Troubled Times edited by Christina Baade and Kristin McGee– forthcoming in Spring 2021!

The following list includes poetry, science fiction, historical novels, and non-fiction.

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A Hubert Harrison Reader

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Five Black Lives

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African American Connecticut Explored

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100 Amazing Facts About the Negro with Complete Proof

 

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The Little Edges by Fred Moten

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The Book of Landings by Mark McMorris

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Zong! by M. NourbeSe Philip

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Un-American by Hafizah Geter

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The Lazarus Poems by Kamau Brathwaite

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Magic City by Yusef Komunyakaa

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The Peacock Poems by Sherley Anne Williams

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semiautomatic by Evie Shockley

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In the Language of My Captor by Shane McCrae

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To See the Earth Before the End of the World by Ed Roberson

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Butting Out: Reading Resistive Choreographies Through Works by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and Chandralekha by Ananya Chatterjea

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Trophic Cascade by Camille T. Dungy

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The Age of Phillis by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

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Fela: Kalakuta Notes by John Collins

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The Collected Poems of Lorenzo Thomas

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Dub: Soundscapes and Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae by Michael E. Veal

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Why Haiti Needs New Narratives: A Post-Quake Chronicle by Gina Athena Ulysse

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Come home Charley Patton by Ralph Lemon

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Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America by Tricia Rose

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The Logbooks: Connecticut’s Slave Ships and Human Memory by Anne Farrow

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The Einstein Intersection by Samuel R. Delany

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How to Dress a Fish by Abigail Chabitnoy

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Blue Ravens by Gerald Vizenor

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In Mad Love and War by Joy Harjo

A Spicing of Birds

A Spicing of Birds is a unique and beautifully illustrated anthology, pairing poems from one of America’s most revered poets with evocative classic ornithological art from sources including Mark Catesby, John James Audubon, Alexander Wilson, Robert Ridgway, Louis Agassiz Fuertes, and Cordelia Stanwood. Emily Dickinson is known for her posthumous collection of unconventional work that played with unusual punctuation and capitalization. Her unique voice is known among many, but lesser-known is her great love of birds—in her collected poems, birds are mentioned 222 times, sometimes as the core inspiration of the poem. This book contains thirty-seven of Dickinson’s poems featuring birds common to New England. Many lesser-known poems are brought to light, renewing our appreciation for Dickinson’s work.

Even today, we find Emily Dickinson to be elusive and enigmatic. in 1998, Paris Press published Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson’s Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinsonedited by Ellen Louise Hart and Martha Nell Smith, and now available through Wesleyan. The book delves into another underdeveloped facet of Dickinson’s life—her queerness. Including selections of letters from Dickinson’s thirty-six year correspondence with sister-in-law and romantic interest Susan Huntington, Hart and Smith dispel the common depiction of Dickinson as a lonely spinster, revealing letters that Smith calls “pretty sexy.” Smith also pointedly observes the gendered way in which Dickinson is often portrayed as dark and lonely despite this romantic correspondence, saying, “I found myself thinking: If all of this was sent to any man in Dickinson’s life, there wouldn’t be any kind of argument about who was the love of her life.”  The book inspired Wild Nights With Emily, a major motion picture, starring Molly Shannon, that candidly explores Dickinson’s fluid sexuality.

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Dickinson’s letters continue to be a rich source of access to her intensely private life. In A Spicing of Birds, the editors’ introduction draws extensively from Dickinson’s letters, providing fascinating insights into her relationship with birds. Her fascination with, and inspiration from, birds are given the same amount of importance in this book as her romantic yearnings are in previous publications. The illustrations, by late 18th century to early 20th century artists, are often so apt as to seem to have been created with the poems in mind. The editors also discuss the development and growth of birding in the nineteenth century as well as the evolution of field guides and early conservation efforts. Brief biographies of the artists are included in an appendix. A Spicing of Birds is an eloquent tribute to the special place held by birds in our lives and imaginations, adding to the continuing collaborative biography of one of the most important American poets.

 

“1177”

A prompt—executive Bird is the Jay—
Bold as a Bailiff’s Hymn—
Brittle and Brief in quality—
Warrant in every line—
Sitting a Bough like a Brigadier
Confident and straight—
Much is the mien of him in March
As a Magistrate—