Made to Explode: Poems

Beasley, Sandra

ISBN 10: 0393531600 / ISBN 13: 9780393531602

Published by W. W. Norton & Company, 2021

About this Item

First printing. Fine in fine dust jacket. Dust jacket in protective cover. Signed by the author on the title page. Promo postcard of the poem "Jefferson, Midnight" laid in.

Seller Inventory # 368

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Made to Explode: Poems
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication Date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0393531600
• ISBN 13: 9780393531602
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: New
• Dust Jacket Condition: New
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)

About this title

Synopsis

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 memorialized 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. She lives in Washington, DC.