The Black Maria
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)
Taking its name from the moon's dark plains, misidentified as seas by early astronomers, The Black Maria investigates African diasporic histories, the consequences of racism within American culture, and the question of human identity. Central to this project is a desire to recognize the lives of Eritrean refugees who have been made invisible by years of immigration crisis, refugee status, exile, and resulting statelessness. The recipient of a 2015 Whiting Award for Poetry, Girmay's newest collection elegizes and celebrates life, while wrestling with the humanistic notion of seeing beyond: seeing violence, seeing grace, and seeing each other better.
"to the sea"
great storage house, history
on which we rode, we touched
the brief pulse of your fluttering
pages, spelled with salt & life,
your rage, your indifference
your gentleness washing our feet,
all of you going on
whether or not we live,
to you we bring our carnations
yellow & pink, how they float
like bright sentences atop
your memory's dark hair
Aracelis Girmay is the author of two poetry collections, Teeth and Kingdom Animalia, which won the Isabella Gardner Award and was a finalist for the NBCC Award. The recipient of a 2015 Whiting Award, she has received grants and fellowships from the Jerome, Cave Canem, and Watson foundations, as well as Civitella Ranieri and the NEA. She currently teaches at Hampshire College's School for Interdisciplinary Arts and in Drew University's low residency MFA program. Originally from Santa Ana, California, she splits her time between New York and Amherst, Massachusetts.
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Aracelis Girmay. (2016). The Black Maria. BOA Editions Ltd.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Aracelis Girmay. 2016. The Black Maria. BOA Editions Ltd.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Aracelis Girmay, The Black Maria. BOA Editions Ltd, 2016.
MLA Citation (style guide)Aracelis Girmay. The Black Maria. BOA Editions Ltd, 2016.
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Aracelis Girmay was honored with a 2015 Whiting Award for Poetry. She is the author of two poetry collections, Teeth (Curbstone, 2007) and Kingdom Animalia (BOA Editions, 2011), which won the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is also the author/illustrator of the collage-based picture book changing, changing (Braziller, 2005). Most recently, Girmay's poetry and essays have been published in Granta, Black Renaissance Noire, and PEN America, among other places. She has received grants and fellowships from the Jerome, Cave Canem, and Watson foundations, as well as Civitella Ranieri and the NEA. She is on the faculty of Hampshire College's School for Interdisciplinary Arts and Drew University's low residency M.F.A. program. Originally from Santa Ana, California, she splits her time between New York and Amherst, Massachusetts.
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Taking its name from the moon's dark plains, misidentified as seas by early astronomers, The Black Maria investigates African diasporic histories, the consequences of racism within American culture, and the question of human identity. Central to this project is a desire to recognize the lives of Eritrean refugees who have been made invisible by years of immigration crisis, refugee status, exile, and resulting statelessness. The recipient of a 2015 Whiting Award for Poetry, Girmay's newest collection elegizes and celebrates life, while wrestling with the humanistic notion of seeing beyond: seeing violence, seeing grace, and seeing each other better.
"to the sea"
great storage house, history
on which we rode, we touched
the brief pulse of your fluttering
pages, spelled with salt & life,
your rage, your indifference
your gentleness washing our feet,
all of you going on
whether or not we live,
to you we bring our carnations
yellow & pink, how they float
like bright sentences atop
your memory's dark hairAracelis Girmay is the author of two poetry collections, Teeth and Kingdom Animalia, which won the Isabella Gardner Award and was a finalist for the NBCC Award. The recipient of a 2015 Whiting Award, she has received grants and fellowships from the Jerome, Cave Canem, and Watson foundations, as well as Civitella Ranieri and the NEA. She currently teaches at Hampshire College's School for Interdisciplinary Arts and in Drew University's low residency MFA program. Originally from Santa Ana, California, she splits her time between New York and Amherst, Massachusetts.
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Starred review from March 21, 2016
Girmay (Kingdom Animalia), winner of a 2015 Whiting Award, crafts a moving collection of lyrical, image-thick poems that balance on the knife edge separating vulnerability and unapologetic strength. The lives of Eritrean refugees and immigrants serve as the collection’s thematic foundation, though Girmay also thoughtfully dissects and examines blights of America’s current sociopolitical climate, particularly police brutality and the murders of such young black women and men as Renisha McBride and Jonathan Ferrell. The ideas of diaspora, alienation, and separation—whether borne by the devastating legacies of slavery or the heartbreaking necessities of political asylum—are viewed as the repetitious and stubborn waves of history: “memory has long skin, it counts// the invasions, the factories & ports & rails.” However, these ideas are never treated as the heritage or sole narrative of particular peoples, but rather an indictment of colonialism and nationalism. In “Prayer & Letter to the Dead,” the sea operates as a metaphor for lives squandered and lost under the banner of imperialism. Girmay’s ruminations on King Leopold I of Belgium address the devastation he inflicted upon the Belgian Congo and its people, further revealing how racism is not a series of discrete incidents, but a pervasive web of relations. Girmay effortlessly slips between collective history and personal memory, tackling the subject of black pain without victimizing herself or exploiting the voices of the marginalized.
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Starred review from April 1, 2016
Whiting Award winner Girmay (Kingdom Animalia) recalls the larger African diaspora as she commemorates the more than 20,000 people who have died sailing from North Africa to Europe in a bid for a better life: "our passages/ above which, again, / we are the shipped." Using bold, sharply lyric language, she addresses the drowned as "you," encircling them in community and giving them a humanity and individuality death statistics belie. The sea--and, by extension, all water--of course figures largely here ("the fishermen drop their veils// into your grave"), with the title referencing the black patches on the moon initially mistaken as seas (mare in Latin). As Girmay clarifies in the title poem, being thus "mis-seen" defines life for people of color, with the very act of naming an estrangement she explores further in daring, divergent poems. VERDICT Beautiful, brilliant, and palpably angry; an important book all readers can appreciate. [See Prepub Alert, 12/7/15.]
Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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April 15, 2016
Lunar maria, dark, basaltic plains on the moon's surface, take their name from the Latin word for seas, identified as such by mistaken astronomers. This fascinating confusion fuels Girmay's (Kingdom Animalia, 2011) third poetry collection, which co-opts the sailing-obsessed tales of Odysseus, adopts African slave Abram Gannibal, ancestor of renowned Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, and testifies on behalf of the wrongfully accused Black Panther George Jackson, among many others. The opening poems move fluidly from opalescent jellyfish ( Systolic & Slow, go / the long-legged / hauling of the agonies ) to lavish Venetian iconology ( a world crowned by pomegranates in damask / & identical angels wearing socks ). The second half of the book presents a jarring series of estrangements: In Chicago, my mother's hometown, / the death toll climbs like a serpent up the red graph. The pairing is astoundingly effective, and this bright, ambitious work deserves several rereadings. A self-described inheritor of Eritrean, Puerto Rican, and African American traditions, Girmay is a dazzling, wildly dynamic poet.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)
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Taking its name from the moon's dark plains, misidentified as seas by early astronomers, The Black Maria investigates African diasporic histories, the consequences of racism within American culture, and the question of human identity. Central to this project is a desire to recognize the lives of Eritrean refugees who have been made invisible by years of immigration crisis, refugee status, exile, and resulting statelessness. The recipient of a 2015 Whiting Award for Poetry, Girmay's newest collection elegizes and celebrates life, while wrestling with the humanistic notion of seeing beyond: seeing violence, seeing grace, and seeing each other better.
"to the sea"
great storage house, history
on which we rode, we touched
the brief pulse of your fluttering
pages, spelled with salt & life,
your rage, your indifference
your gentleness washing our feet,
all of you going on
whether or not we live,
to you we bring our...- sortTitle
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CONTENTS
elelegy 5
prayer & letter to the dead 7
to the sea (any) 15
"& when it happens" 16
"you are going now" 17
"hands for pleasure, hands for mending" 18
to the sea (any) 19
"black, full of language" 20
"Odysseus, his lungs full" 21
"Claim, I, to be the poet making talk" 22
"the febrile & opal" 23
to the sea near lampedusa 24
luam to the dead 25
luam/ asa luam 26
luam, who says to the dead 27
"inside the sea, there is more" 28
"The black-eyed woman" 29
"to be near sea is to gleam" 30
luam in the sea, to the survivors 31
luam remembers massawa 32
luam to her sibling 33
luam cleaning house 34
the luams speak of god 35
luam, new york 36
luam, asmera 37
luam, umbertide, asmera, new york 38
"Look! In another poem you are" 40
luam mending clothes 41
luam, new york 42
luam, monterchi, italy 43
to the sea 44
"Why not, in addition, tell" 45
"strange earth, strange" 46
to the sea 47
to the sea 48
"praise the water, now" 49
[collective messages] 50
"I love the azucena so bring them to you" 51
the luams 52
on poetry & history 53
the black maria 54
The Black Maria 55
Third Estrangement, With an Ending Loosely After Jonathan Ferrell 56
The Woodlice, Fourth Estrangement 57
The Figeaters, Fifth Estrangement 58
First Estrangement 59
Moon for Aisha 60
Cooley High, Fifth Estrangement 62
The Beauty of the World, Tenth Estrangement 64
Second Estrangement 65
Third Estrangement 66
Fourth Estrangement, With a Petition for the Reunion of Jonathan & George Jackson 67- bisacCodes
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