Knopf
Voyage of the Sable Venus: And Other Poems
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Title: Voyage of the Sable Venus: And Other Poems
Author: Robin Coste Lewis
ISBN: 9781101911204
Publisher: Knopf
Published: 2017
Binding: Paperback
Language: English
Edition: Reprint
Number of Pages: 176
Publisher Description: <p><b>This National Book Award-winning debut poetry collection is a "powerfully evocative" (<i>The New York Review of Books</i>) meditation on the black female figure through time. </b> <p/>Robin Coste Lewis's electrifying collection is a triptych that begins and ends with lyric poems meditating on the roles desire and race play in the construction of the self. <p/>In the center of the collection is the title poem, "Voyage of the Sable Venus," an amazing narrative made up entirely of titles of artworks from ancient times to the present--titles that feature or in some way comment on the black female figure in Western art. Bracketed by Lewis's own autobiographical poems, "Voyage" is a tender and shocking meditation on the fragmentary mysteries of stereotype, juxtaposing our names for things with what we actually see and know. <p/>A new understanding of biography and the self, this collection questions just where, historically, do ideas about the black female figure truly begin--five hundred years ago, five thousand, or even longer? And what role did art play in this ancient, often heinous story? Here we meet a poet who adores her culture and the beauty to be found within it. Yet she is also a cultural critic alert to the nuances of race and desire--how they define us all, including her own sometimes painful history. <p/>Lewis's book is a thrilling aesthetic anthem to the complexity of race--a full embrace of its pleasure and horror, in equal parts.</p>
Author: Robin Coste Lewis
ISBN: 9781101911204
Publisher: Knopf
Published: 2017
Binding: Paperback
Language: English
Edition: Reprint
Number of Pages: 176
Publisher Description: <p><b>This National Book Award-winning debut poetry collection is a "powerfully evocative" (<i>The New York Review of Books</i>) meditation on the black female figure through time. </b> <p/>Robin Coste Lewis's electrifying collection is a triptych that begins and ends with lyric poems meditating on the roles desire and race play in the construction of the self. <p/>In the center of the collection is the title poem, "Voyage of the Sable Venus," an amazing narrative made up entirely of titles of artworks from ancient times to the present--titles that feature or in some way comment on the black female figure in Western art. Bracketed by Lewis's own autobiographical poems, "Voyage" is a tender and shocking meditation on the fragmentary mysteries of stereotype, juxtaposing our names for things with what we actually see and know. <p/>A new understanding of biography and the self, this collection questions just where, historically, do ideas about the black female figure truly begin--five hundred years ago, five thousand, or even longer? And what role did art play in this ancient, often heinous story? Here we meet a poet who adores her culture and the beauty to be found within it. Yet she is also a cultural critic alert to the nuances of race and desire--how they define us all, including her own sometimes painful history. <p/>Lewis's book is a thrilling aesthetic anthem to the complexity of race--a full embrace of its pleasure and horror, in equal parts.</p>
