What a delightful treat! This collection of eleven essays from some of the most important critics working in African American literary and cultural studies enters into lively conversation with the poetry and prose of Brenda Marie Osbey. In essays that alternately explore Osbeys technical mastery, innovative approaches to line, stanza, and phrase, as well as her gift for interweaving history and verse into a hybridized musical journey through time and space, we are ushered into Osbeys poetic world as it stages a refusal to the lingering effects of European colonialism and American slavery, where spirits not only walk among us, but order our steps. Spanning the length and breadth of Osbeys career, these essays confirm that her unique melding of spirituality and history, her explication of the spatial relations governing life on the Gulf Coast, belong in the foreground of American poetry and poetics. -- Herman Beavers, Professor of English and African American Studies, University of Pennsylvania John Lowe has done the deft work of introducing new readers to Brenda Marie Osbeys poetry and clarifying it to others all at once. Indeed, Lowes work is a summoning in its own right. He calls forth the best of our writers and critics to reveal the beauty of one of our most revered poets. -- Dana Williams, Howard University As Lowe makes clear in his comprehensive and informative introduction, Brenda Marie Osbeys poetry and essays are rooted in West African, Caribbean, and French cultural traditions, practices, and beliefs that intersect in New Orleans. To read her poetry is to undergo a pleasurable possession that allows readers to commune with the dead and to rethink how history was made. This collection stands as a supplement to Osbeys work. In addition to an introduction that is both biographical and analytical, Lowe is joined by a cadre of poets and scholars whose essays parse out the complex nuances and rich contours of Osbeys poetry. -- Tara T. Green, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
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