The perseverance / Raymond Antrobus.
Record details
- ISBN: 9781951142421
- ISBN: 195114242X
- ISBN: 9781951142438
- ISBN: 1951142438
- Physical Description: 81 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm
- Edition: First US edition.
- Publisher: Portland, Oregon : Tin House, 2021.
- Copyright: ©2021
Content descriptions
Bibliography, etc. Note: | Includes bibliographical references. |
Formatted Contents Note: | Echo -- Aunt Beryl Meets Castro -- My Mother Remembers -- Jamaican British -- Ode to My Hair -- The Perseverance -- I Move Through London like a Hotep -- Sound Machine -- Dear Hearing World -- 'Deaf School' / by Ted Hughes -- After Reading 'Deaf School' by the Mississippi River -- For Jesula Gelin, Vanessa Previl and Monique Vincent -- Conversation with the Art Teacher (a Translation Attempt) -- The Ghost of Laura Bridgman Warns Helen Keller About Fame -- The Mechanism of Speech -- Doctor Marigold Re-evaluated -- The Shame of Mabel Gardiner Hubbard -- Two Guns in the Sky for Daniel Harris -- To Sweeten Bitter -- I Want the Confidence of -- After Being Called a Fucking Foreigner in London Fields -- Closure -- Maybe I Could Love a Man -- Samantha -- Thinking of Dad's Dick -- Miami Airport -- His Heart -- Dementia -- Happy Birthday Moon. |
Search for related items by subject
Subject: | Sound poetry. Communication > Poetry. Grief > Poetry. Deaf > Poetry. English poetry > 21st century. |
Genre: | Poetry. Poetry. |
Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Status | Due Date |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Homer Public Library | 821.92 ANT (Text) | 000160779 | Nonfiction | Available | - |
Publishers Weekly Review
The Perseverance
Publishers Weekly
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
"All good words in sign are said with the thumb," a sign language teacher declares in Antrobus's moving debut. Exploring his early experience of deafness, Antrobus invites the reader to feel the frustration and emotional complexity of navigating through the world: "I was a broken speaker, you were never a broken interpreter." Language and communication become touchstones of the collection; poems like "Aunt Beryl Meets Castro" evoke Jamaican patois ("Listen listen, you know I/ met Castro in Jamaica in/ '77 mi work with/ government under Manley"). Equally memorable is Antro-bus's consideration of his embattled identity: "There is such a thing as a key confidently cut/ that accepts the locks it doesn't fit." However, it's his evocations of his late father, a Jamaican immigrant who battled alcoholism and faced British policemen "who didn't believe he belonged/ unless they heard his English,/ which was smooth as some uptown roads," that gives the collection its heart. What might be gimmicky or sentimental--the poem "Thinking of Dad's Dick," for instance--becomes moving and memorable: "He knew he wouldn't live/ to see me grown... He had to give,/ while he could, the length of his life to me." In these pages, Antrobus's evocative, musical honesty is unforgettable. (Mar.)