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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 811.6
EAN: 9780974635330
ISBN: 0974635332
Label: Wave Books
Manufacturer: Wave Books
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 128
Publication Date: 2005-10-01
Publisher: Wave Books
Studio: Wave Books

"It is exhilarating to be invited into a world so large and muscular, so rooted in history, a world where so much is at stake."-Brigit Pegeen Kelly, National Poetry Series judge

A biography in poems, leadbelly examines the life and times of the legendary blues musician from a variety of intimate perspectives and using a range of innovative poetic forms. A collage of song, culture, and circumstance, alive and speaking.

Tyehimba Jess' numerous awards include fellowships from the NEA and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. A native of Detroit, he is a proud alumnus of the Chicago Green Mill Slam teams and Cave Canem. His first nonfiction book is African American Pride: Celebrating our Achievements, Contributions, and Enduring Legacy (Citadel Press, 2003).

Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Inhabit Leadbelly
Review: I came across one poem on the web and had to read it all--and I'm so glad I did. Jess knows Leadbelly's world and is able to share it in this book length study of emotion, biography, and raw energy. This is a book that's well worth reading if you like, like I do, poetry and American roots music. Simply one of the best books I've read in years.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: In one sitting . . .
Review: I read "leadbelly" by Tyehimba Jess in one sitting, after dinner one evening. I don't tell you this to brag, but to tell you that the poems there were enthralling enough to hold me. This volume of poetry, which won the 2004 National Poetry Series prize, and was subsequently published in 2005, is a thoroughly researched series of surreal, un-capitalized poems based on the life of a Texas/Louisiana blues musician probably as famous for his pardons from prison as for his twelve-string guitar-playing. Though the stylistic concern of the poems remains true through the book, the individual poems include from short and touching lyrics, blocky prose poems, and experimental formats juxtaposing Leadbelly lyrics with Jess's lines.

The book begins with the voices of Leadbelly's parents bemoaning a somber foreshadowing their son's hard life to come as a poor black man in the South, then proceeds into a very humane treatment of the men he killed, his prison time, the songs that won him a gubernatorial pardon, and his eventual rocky relationship with Alan Lomax, the legendary folk music collector who "discovered" Leadbelly and others. With constantly shifting voices, Jess's poems cover varying perspectives on the life of a complex man who has contributed massively to our national character.

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