Summoning Our Saints: The Poetry and Prose of Brenda Marie Osbey

(Hardback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Summoning Our Saints: The Poetry and Prose of Brenda Marie Osbey celebrates and illuminates the poetry and prose of one of the Souths and the nations most notable writers. A native of New Orleans and a former poet laureate of Louisiana who served magnificently in that function during the dark days after Hurricane Katrina, Osbey has summoned up a magical, beguiling, sometimes chilling and appalling portrait of the myriad chapters of New Orleans, Southern, and hemispheric history. Her dazzling narratives offer apertures into desire, death and remembrance, often through the voices of neglected and abused citizens. The essays in this collection examine Osbeys essays and poetry collections, situating them within greater traditions of African American womens writing, blues music, and West African religious traditions and Catholicism. The chapters are punctuated throughout with Osbeys own reflections on her work and bring a long-needed and appreciative critical focus to a great artist, elucidating her contributions to our common cultural heritage. The book examines Osbeys meditations on topics such as colonization, the African diaspora, the circumCaribbean, and contemporary parallels between Europe and the United States to showcase the ways in which they add valuable new insights to transnational studies.

Reviews

What a delightful treat! This collection of eleven essays from some of the most important critics working in African American literary and cultural studies enters into lively conversation with the poetry and prose of Brenda Marie Osbey. In essays that alternately explore Osbeys technical mastery, innovative approaches to line, stanza, and phrase, as well as her gift for interweaving history and verse into a hybridized musical journey through time and space, we are ushered into Osbeys poetic world as it stages a refusal to the lingering effects of European colonialism and American slavery, where spirits not only walk among us, but order our steps. Spanning the length and breadth of Osbeys career, these essays confirm that her unique melding of spirituality and history, her explication of the spatial relations governing life on the Gulf Coast, belong in the foreground of American poetry and poetics. -- Herman Beavers, Professor of English and African American Studies, University of Pennsylvania
John Lowe has done the deft work of introducing new readers to Brenda Marie Osbeys poetry and clarifying it to others all at once. Indeed, Lowes work is a summoning in its own right. He calls forth the best of our writers and critics to reveal the beauty of one of our most revered poets. -- Dana Williams, Howard University
As Lowe makes clear in his comprehensive and informative introduction, Brenda Marie Osbeys poetry and essays are rooted in West African, Caribbean, and French cultural traditions, practices, and beliefs that intersect in New Orleans. To read her poetry is to undergo a pleasurable possession that allows readers to commune with the dead and to rethink how history was made. This collection stands as a supplement to Osbeys work. In addition to an introduction that is both biographical and analytical, Lowe is joined by a cadre of poets and scholars whose essays parse out the complex nuances and rich contours of Osbeys poetry. -- Tara T. Green, University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Author Bio

John Wharton Lowe is Barbara Methvin distinguished professor of English and Latin American and Caribbean studies at the University of Georgia.