Incendiary Art

One of the most magnetic and esteemed poets in todays literary landscape, Patricia Smith fearlessly confronts the tyranny against the black male body and the tenacious grief of mothers in her compelling new collection, Incendiary Art. She writes an exhaustive lament for mothers of the dark magicians, and revisits the devastating murder of Emmett Till. These dynamic sequences serve as a backdrop for present-day racial calamities and calls for resistance. Smith embraces elaborate and eloquent language her gorgeous fallen son a horrid hidden / rot. Her tiny hand starts crushing rosesone by one / by one she wrecks the caskets spray. Its how she / mournsa mother, still, despite the roar of thorns as she sharpens her unerring focus on incidents of national mayhem and mourning. Smith envisions, re-envisions, and ultimately reinvents the role of witness with an incendiary fusion of forms, including prose Poems, ghazals, sestinas, and sonnets. With Poems impossible to turn away from, one of Americas most electrifying writers reveals what is frightening, and what is revelatory, about history.