Description
Book SynopsisIncendiary Art confronts the tyranny against the black male body and the tenacious grief of the mothers of murdered African American men. Dynamic sequences, including a compelling chronicle of the devastating murder of Emmett Till, serve as a backdrop for present-day racial calamities and calls for resistance. With impassioned eloquence and a sharpened focus on incidents of national mayhem and mourning, Patricia Smith reinvents the role of witness with an incendiary fusion of forms, including prose poems, ghazals, sestinas, and sonnets. This phenomenal, visionary book addresses what is frightening, and what is revelatory, about history now. Winner of the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and 2018 NAACP Image Award, Incendiary Art was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize and 2018 Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
Trade ReviewIncendiary Art is the fire this time. An epic in five movements where history becomes tragedy, becomes farce, becomes fable. Where the reader becomes complicit, where outcomes burn into forgotten memories, and where nobody gets off the hook. -- Marlon James
As with Smith’s previous books, one encounters an urgent voice on the page that is exuberant, sharp, and questing in its search for understanding of the fatalities that besiege black life in America. The imaginative qualities of these poems and others are what make them captivating. She is a poet of immense originality, and these poems are a testament to her powers. -- Major Jackson
Patricia Smith is a masterful poet, performer, and pundit. And while her chosen field is the form and grace of language, her gift to the world that orbits the Black experience is truth. -- Walter Mosley
Table of ContentsI. Incendiary That Chile Emmett in That Casket Enigma of the Shadowbox Swine Incendiary Art BlessBlessed Incendiary Art: MOVE, Philadelphia, 1985 Emmett Till: Choose Your Own Adventure The Then Where Incendiary Art: Chicago, 1968 Reemergence of the Noose Emmett Till: Choose Your Own Adventure ReBirthday Incendiary Art: Birmingham, 1963 Runaway 10-Year-Old Shot Three Times, but She's Fine Emmett Till: Choose Your Own Adventure Hey, who you got in here? Incendiary Art: Los Angeles, 1992 Black, Poured Directly into the Wound No Wound of Exit Incendiary Art: Tulsa, 1921 See What Happen When You Don't Be Careful Mammy Two-Shoes, Rightful Owner of Tom, Addresses the Lady of the House Incendiary Art: Ferguson, 2014 XXXL Emmett Till: Choose Your Own Adventure How to Bust into a Black Man's House and Take a Boy Out II. When Black Men Drown Their Daughters The Five Stages of Drowning Sentencing Why the Verdict Just Don't Sound Right; or, The Bobbing Baby Blues This is no movie On every inch of me, there are rumors of fathers Meanwhile, the Mother When Black Men Drown Their Daughters Blurred Quotient and Theory III. Accidental Sagas of the Accidental Saint The Mother Dares Make Love Again, After IV. Shooting into the Mirror Sometimes Elegy The First 23 Minutes of the First Day Without Requiem And He Stays Dead Emmett Till: Choose Your Own Adventure Incendiary Art: The Body Acknowledgments
