Synopses & Reviews
The World Is Round, Nikky Finneys third volume of poetry, collects the wisps of memory we carry with us throughout our earthly lives and weaves them into deft and nuanced poems that emphasize understanding the cycles of life. The settings offer a view into the kaleidoscope of human experience: the sweetness and shock of family life, the omnipresent wash of memory, and the ebullience of warm Southern air. The World Is Round carries with it an implicit challenge—to the author as a poet, and to the reader as a fellow human—to see the characters and details and events of our lives with clarity, fearlessness, and love. The result is poems that range the gamut of human reach and resilience, fury and frailty. The poets vision of community requires understanding and tolerance from every breathing soul. Finney illuminates the cruelties of the sometimes gawking, narrow-minded world and makes a plea for compassion inspired by our common humanity.
Synopsis
The World Is Round, Nikky Finneys third volume of poetry, collects the wisps of memory we carry with us throughout our earthly lives and weaves them into deft and nuanced poems that emphasize understanding the cycles of life. The settings offer a view into the kaleidoscope of human experience: the sweetness and shock of family life, the omnipresent wash of memory, and the ebullience of warm Southern air.
About the Author
Nikky Finney holds the Guy Davenport Chair in English at the University of Kentucky. She is editor of the anthology The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South (2007) and the author of a short-story collection, Heartwood (1997). Her fourth collection of poetry, Head Off & Split (Northwestern, 2011), won the National Book Award for Poetry.
Finney has been featured on the cover of Poets & Writers magazine, Russell Simmons DEF Poetry (HBO series), chef Marcus Samuelssons feature The Meaning of Food (a PBS production), and National Public Radio. Finney serves on the boards of Cave Canem and the South Carolina Poetry Initiative and is a founding member of the Affrilachian Poets.
Table of Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTSThe world is round : the breast of the garment measured
— The squatting sun
— Coda
— The new medicine
— Lobengula : her wall-bound child
— Mean Nina
— The running of the bulls
— Elephantine
— The undersea world of Jacques Cousteau
— Ain't too proud to beg
— Hurricane Beulah
— The greatest show on Earth
— Shark bite
— Sign language
— The new cotton
— The girlfriend's train
— Hate
— Easy bake
— Labor strike
— My old Kentucky home : where the darkies are gay
— Afro-Gregorian chant
— Frog legs
— Sex
— The turtle suite poems
— Metallurgy
— Assam
— A hero ain't nothing but a sandwich
— The making of paper
— Fishing among the learned
— Charm.