Blues Narratives

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Constructed from memory and imagination, Blues Narratives' portraits of the poet's mother and grandfather burst into language and song, shaped by Sterling Plumpp's extraordinary sense of the rhythms of speech and the poetic line, his dazzling metaphors, and his ability to turn language inside out and upside down by looking within the words and rhythms of what we commonly say without thinking. He brings something new into American poetry both technically and spiritually, for his project involves art, language, and a cultural and individual sense of self. In order to discover and invent his own identity, he reaches back as far as the first ancestor of whom he can know -- the woman Mfua, kidnapped in Africa, enslaved, and brought to America. Twentieth-century Mary and Victor, as they are portrayed in Blues Narratives, not only live their own lives of pain, sorrow, dignity, and love, but also embody aspects of Mfua that they bring down through the years with them and pass on to those in their care. These blues narratives are a form and a dialogue between poet and subject unlike anything else in American poetry: a vital, passionate, haunting poetry that is meant to be read and spoken and sung.