Turn Me Loose
The Unghosting of Medgar Evers
Title Details
Pages: 96
Trim size: 5.500in x 8.500in
Formats
Paperback
Pub Date: 05/01/2013
ISBN: 9-780-8203-4541-3
List Price: $20.95
Web PDF
Pub Date: 05/01/2013
ISBN: 9-780-8203-4586-4
List Price: $20.95
Related Subjects
Turn Me Loose
The Unghosting of Medgar Evers
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- Description
- Reviews
- Awards
- Contributors
Having labored in the world of the arts and in particular in the vineyards of poetry over the last fifty years, I am seldom surprised, moved or excited about the many voices-new and experienced-who occupy our rather fragile and inclusive world. Frank X Walker is an exception. His unusually perceptive and original voice commands a seat at the table. That which separates most poets is their use of language and their ability to creatively keep us reading and listening to their concept of the world we all love, live, and fight in. Read this poet.
—Haki R. Madhubuti, author of Honoring Genius: Gwendolyn Brooks—The Narrative of Craft, Art, Kindness, and Justice
Searing, brilliantly realized, these forty-nine poems exhume the history of a great American hero, Medgar Evers, whose 1963 death at the hands of white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith lit a powder keg of racial unrest in the nation and ushered in a decade of political assassinations. With their deep links to African American poetic traditions of social commentary and historical excavation, Walker's poems summon ghosts of the southern past to probe the daily horror of dehumanization under the reign of Jim Crow and the terrifying psychological roots of white supremacism, past and present.
—Minrose Gwin, author of Remembering Medgar Evers: Writing the Long Civil Rights Movement and The Queen of Palmyra
[A] powerful tribute.
—Deep South Magazine
Winner
Best Poetry Books of the Year, Tin House
Winner
Best Poetry Books of the Year, Split This Rock
Winner
Best Poetry of the Year, Slate
Winner
NAACP Image Award, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
Commended
BCALA Literary Awards, Black Caucus of the American Library Association
Michelle Hite