Second Nature

Häftad, Engelska, 2025

Av Chaun Ballard, Ballard Chaun

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Winner of the 23rd annualA. Poulin, Jr. Poetry PrizeChaun Ballard’s gripping debut collection weaves childhood experiences,historical events, and family stories into a living tapestry of memory thatcelebrates the landscape of Black America, both rural and urban.Riddled with the ghostly voices of family andfriends, Second Nature is fearless inits wrestling with America’s fractured past and troubled present. In thesepoems, W.E.B. DuBois and Fredrick Douglass have a conversation, Michael Brownmeditates on the nature of the cosmos, Johnnie Taylor’s guitar sings insonnets, and the road Walt Whitman set out upon comes alive for a newgeneration.Through innovative re-imaginings of thesonnet, the pastoral, and the contrapuntal, Ballard engages with popularculture while examining the intricacies of all that is wedded together—form andcontent, mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, husband and wife,and a nation long dependent on created binaries that serve to maintainstructures of oppression.Interspersed with quotations and inspired bythe rich legacy of poets who came before him—including poet Matthew Shenodawho provides an insightful Foreword to the collection—Second Nature isa testament to interconnectedness, a love letter to the deep roots that we comefrom, and a reminder of the myriad ways in which one’s identity is shaped bycommunity and country.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2025-05-15
Mått177 x 228 x 12 mm
Vikt276 g
FormatHäftad
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor93
FörlagBOA Editions, Limited
MedarbetareShenoda,Matthew
ISBN9781960145529

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“ChaunBallard’s compelling debut collection, Second Nature, weds formalengagement and innovation with explorations of American history as itintersects with African American lives. An interrogation of archives and what’spreserved there engenders voices of figures like Crispus Attucks. These poemsrooted in those lives—the poet’s family and community—take on broaderimplications when nonhuman beings like the weaver bird, the robin, and fireweedare brought into the conversations. These poems draw on the past for ourpresent and future. Ultimately these poems are, as one of Ballard’s poems putsit, 'stories' that should be 'ringing in the ear of each generation.'” —Sean Hill, author of DangerousGoods“What you hold in your hands is a collection of poemsthat braids together the unencumbered memories of family lineage and AfricanAmerican history. Chaun Ballard explores what it means to be shaped by others,to make a way in the world carrying the pieces of the imperfect men and womenwho brought us to this moment. Ballard’s poems speak to the idea of acontinuum, articulating the life of the poet on his own terms withoutforgetfulness or a simple investment in the fragmented lie of the individual.These are poems of community and history, of the collision of time, of what itmeans to live in ancestry and in the particulars of place.” —Matthew Shenoda, from the Foreword