Voodoo Libretto

In a language that is both frank and emotionally charged, this book wrestles with issues of family, race, religion, sexuality, and more generally, the journey from innocence to hard-hearted experience. The poems, at times, disagree with one another in terms of tone and perspective, but this further clarifies the complexity of coming to grips with all that's inscribed in the American story. To grow up in a particular neighborhood, city, or country is to be all but blind to the many defining characteristics of the place, which seem natural as the sky. This collection chronicles the intimate and intricate twists and turns of a person-a black man in this case-discovering himself while simultaneously coming to a complex and unflinching understanding of the world into which he was born. It is the imaginative agility of the figures who inhabit this work that fuels its revelations--