Description
Book SynopsisA beautiful portrait of how joy is an act of resistance. “My poems brought me to Oxford, Mississippi a.k.a. the velvet ditch: / a place you can fall into, get comfortable among confederate rebels,” writes January Gill O’Neil in her stunning new collection,
Glitter Road. The poems in this book look back at the end of a marriage, a heartbreaking loss, and a new relationship against the backdrop of a Mississippi season. O’Neil reflects on the history and legacy of Emmett Till, how his story is intertwined with her own, and wades through the incredible grief she feels for herself, her children, and the Black children who won’t come home tonight. These poems reclaim the vulnerable, intimate parts of a life in transition and celebrate womanhood through awakenings, landscapes, meanders, and possibilities. She declares, with both self-love and conviction, “I am done telling the kinder story. I am a myth of my own making.”
Trade Review"In
Glitter Road, the brilliant and beautiful collection of poems by January Gill O’Neil, we are taken from truth to tenderness, old love to new love, the Northeast to the deep South, and everywhere in between. O’Neil is an engaging lyric storyteller who moves us seamlessly from Tina Turner to the legacy of Emmett Till to cartwheels, a Hallmark card that hasn’t been invented yet, and into John Grisham’s bed. O’Neil writes, I’ll take my miracles however they appear/these days—and how can we not praise the wounded world with her? Whether writing about Blackness, body, family, nature or nurture, love or loss, O’Neil always keeps a sense of hope and humor.
Glitter Road sparkles and dazzles me, then wrings out my heart in the very best way. And as O’Neil writes, If at 4 a.m. you find yourself awake and alone, /curled up in your half-empty bed under a flashlight’s white light reading a poem…regret nothing, I will tell you—you won’t—as these are the poems you need on your nightstand because this is the book you won’t be able to put down. Rich with history and herstory, these stunning and striking poems are intimate, honest, and always engaging. I cannot say or recommend this collection enough;
Glitter Road is O’Neil’s most powerful book yet."
* Kelli Russell Agodon, author of 'Dialogues with Rising Tides' *
"The alluring poems in
Glitter Road delve into past heartbreaks and the exquisite joy of family and new found love in a constantly changing world. In sure and talented hands like O’Neil’s, vibrant landscapes whirl, take root, and break bread with ghosts. It's clear these heart-filled poems will have a full and magnificent life of their own." * Aimee Nezhukumatathil, author of 'Oceanic' *
Table of ContentsI
Autopsy
What’s Left
Narcissi in January
I Take Off My Black Dress
“What’s Love Got to Do with It”
On What Would Have Been Our 20th Wedding Anniversary
Begin Again
On the Edge of a Field in Sumner, Mississippi
Rebel Rebel
Low Delta Country
Bathtub Graveyard
II
Elegy for the End of the World
Jazzfesting in Place
Black Women
After Daunte Wright’s Murder, I Teach a Poetry Class to High Schoolers on Zoom
No Joke
Proving a Theory
Cartwheel
Regret Nothing
At the Rededication of the Emmett Till Memorial, Glendora, MS
Bryant’s Grocery & Meat Market
Rowan Oak
I Slept in John Grisham’s Bed
III
In the Blue Hour
Elation
Woman Swallowed by Python in Her Cornfield
The Beyond Place
The Morning Before the Rains Came
Cheaters
Harvest
Postbellum
Three white Ole Miss students use guns to vandalize a memorial to lynching victim Emmett Till
Driving through Mississippi after the Capitol Hill Riot
Robert Johnson’s Grave
IV
The Great Hello
Boyfriend Pantoum
Dark Matter
Axilla
Dragonfly
Clit Ode
From Memory
Bloom
On Hearing Mississippi’s Governor Declare April “Confederate Heritage Month”
The River Remembers
Mississippi Season
The Map
V
For Ella
Inheritance
Sheltering in Place
Manifesto
Aubade
Glitter Road
Notes
Acknowledgments
