“Words carry the dead like henchmen,” in Joshua Burton's extraordinary debut volume, Grace Engine. These spare and powerful poems are like pallbearers, like eulogists, like survivors, like battered souls hoping and dreaming for a future that may never be. Grappling head-on with the history of lynchings, mental illness, and the endurance of black bodies and psyches against impossible odds, Burton writes, “I spent so many years being afraid to be black, that now / I am only afraid of silence, / / or the silence that it brings.”
Burton experiments with spaces, absences, and forms in navigating the tensions between shame and accountability, guilt and forgiveness, to understand how one finds the ability to cope under the worst of conditions. With patience and ferocity, he delves into generational and familial trauma to question whether black strength is inherent to blackness and to build a mechanism to survive and heal.
| ISBN: | 9780299341640 |
| Publication date: | 21st March 2023 |
| Author: | Joshua Burton |
| Publisher: | The University of Wisconsin Press an imprint of University of Wisconsin Press |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Pagination: | 128 pages |
| Series: | Wisconsin Poetry Series |
| Genres: |
Poetry by individual poets |
“Words carry the dead like henchmen,” in Joshua Burton's extraordinary debut volume, Grace Engine. These spare and powerful poems are like pallbearers, like eulogists, like survivors, like battered souls hoping and dreaming for a future that may never be.
Grace Engine features in the following genres: Poetry by individual poets
Paperback. £11.69, down from the £12.99 cover price. Not Available.
Grace Engine was written by Joshua Burton and published by The University of Wisconsin Press an imprint of University of Wisconsin Press
Grace Engine has 128 pages
Yes it is part of Wisconsin Poetry Series series
£11.69, reduced from £12.99. Not Available.