Blue Front
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Book Overview
A stunning account of racism, mob violence, and cultural responsibility as rendered by the poet Martha Collins
the victim hanged, though not on a tree, thiswas not the country, they used a steel arch
with electric lights, and later a lamppost, this
was a modern event, the trees were not involved.
--from "Blue Front" Martha Collins's father, as a five-year-old, sold fruit outside the Blue Front Restaurant in Cairo, Illinois, in 1909. What he witnessed there, with 10,000 participants, is shocking. In Blue Front, Collins describes the brutal lynching of a black man and, as an afterthought, a white man, both of them left to the mercilessness of the spectators. The poems patch together an arresting array of evidence--newspaper articles, census data, legal history, postcards, photographs, and Collins's speculations
about her father's own experience. The resulting work, part lyric and part narrative, is a bold investigation into hate, mob mentality, culpability, and what it means to be white in a country still haunted by its violently racist history.
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:155597449X
ISBN13:9781555974497
Release Date:May 2006
Publisher:Graywolf Press
Length:88 Pages
Weight:0.39 lbs.
Dimensions:0.3" x 6.5" x 9.2"
Related Subjects
PoetryCustomer Reviews
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Relays the horror that Collins' father witnessed as a five-year-old boy
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 18 years ago
The fifth volume of poetry by author Martha Collins, Blue Front:Poems relays the horror that Collins' father witnessed as a five-year-old boy, while selling fruit in front of the Blue Front Restaurant of Cairo, Illinois in 1909. Along with an estimated 10,000 spectators, Collins' father saw the vicious lynching of a black man, and afterward, a white man, both of whom were abandoned to the frenzied violence of the participants. The free-verse poetry narrative varies its rhythm, style, and meter from page to page, and explores human hate, mob mentality, culpability, and what it means to be white in a nation with a racist history. Once picked up, Blue Front cannot be put down. He wanted to know / everyone in the end / he was a kind // man did errands / for old people younger / than he helped kids // with school met people / in stores on the street / please may I help // And the last day / he said You know / this world could be // a better place just / promise me that you / will help he waited // he made change may / I help you please / make change
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