Made to Explode: Poems

Beasley, Sandra

ISBN 10: 1324036001 / ISBN 13: 9781324036005

Published by W. W. Norton & Company, 2022

Gently used with minimal wear on the corners and cover. A few pages may contain light highlighting or writing, but the text remains fully legible. Dust jacket may be missing, and supplemental materials like CDs or codes may not be included. May be ex-library with library markings. Ships promptly! Seller Inventory # DBV.1324036001.G

Synopsis:

Made to Explode offers volatile poems for our volatile times

In her fourth collection, acclaimed poet Sandra Beasley interrogates the landscapes of her life in decisive, fearless and precise poems that fuse intimacy and intensity. She probes memories of growing up in Virginia, in Thomas Jefferson’s shadow, where liberal affluence obscured and perpetuated racist aggressions, but where the poet was simultaneously steeped in the cultural traditions of the American South. Her home in Washington, DC, inspires prose poems documenting and critiquing our capital’s institutions and monuments.

In these poems, Ruth Bader Ginsberg shows up at the Folger Shakespeare Theatre’s show of Kiss Me Kate; Albert Einstein is memorialised on Constitution Avenue, yet was denied clearance for the Manhattan Project; as temperatures cool, a rain of spiders drops from the dome of the Jefferson Memorial. A stirring suite explores Beasley’s affiliation with the disability community and her frustration with the ways society codes disability as inferiority.

Quintessentially American and painfully timely, these poems examine legacies of racism and whiteness, the shadow of monuments to a world we are unmaking, and the privileges the poet is working to untangle. Made to Explode boldly reckons with Beasley’s roots and seeks out resonance in society writ large.

About the Author: Sandra Beasley is a recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment of Arts and the author of three previous poetry collections, including the Barnard Women Poets Prize–winning I Was the Jukebox.

Bibliographic Details

Title: Made to Explode: Poems
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Publication Date: 2022
Binding: Soft cover
Condition: good