Description
Book SynopsisIn her debut poetry collection, Jasmine Elizabeth Smith takes inspiration from Oklahoma Black history. The collection is a eulogy, a blues, an unabashed love letter, and ragtime to the history of resistance, migration, and community in Black Oklahoma.
Trade Review'Let the sounds I make / lamp pitch and lighten / ears.' So begins the tale of history and wondrous music that is
South Flight, a book-long sequence of poems that is as spellbinding in its narrative as it is beautiful in its lyric tilt and sweep. Jasmine Elizabeth Smith knows what a sense of place is, what history is, how much pain it inflicts-and how a well-told story can lift us up, despite everything. But perhaps even more important, here is a new poet who knows how to sing like no one else. And, by God, she sings like no one else!
South Flight is a powerful, necessary book." - Ilya Kaminsky, author of
Dancing in Odessa and
Deaf Republic"Scintillating letters wholly imprint zeitgeist in a spectacularly documented trail between star-crossed lovers, yearning in this stunning debut. The living depth of Oklahoma's historic Black towns, neighborhoods-Boley, Langston, Greensborough, Greenwood, Udora-long-hand reach to the one who got away, ensconced in a strange new realm in Chicago, Illinois, yet unsafe from love, loss, misery.
South Flight brilliantly unfolds entanglements across space and time, battle-worn. Fiercely posited, searching up ahead/forever eyeballing back, a searing twin-edged feat composed in crossroads musicality is a must have and hold read. In this jurisdiction, there's no going back. Blistering." - Allison Hedge Coke, author of the American Book Award-winning
Dog Road Woman
