First published 2015
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers builds her fourth poetry collection around the blues tradition and its three movements: identification, exploration, and resolution. She examines what happens during the journey toward wisdom in a confusing world. Jeffers uses "gets" as her central metaphor, meaning the returns that life grants us through experience. She navigates the complexities of being a woman through unexpected poetic improvisations. The spirit of deceased poet Lucille Clifton serves as her guide through dangerous territories that other women have crossed and survived but never shared with their daughters. Jeffers draws from her previous three award-winning blues poetry collections, continuing her examination of African American history, Southern culture, and trauma passed between generations. The poems ask difficult questions about finding direction in bewildering circumstances while seeking reconciliation between blues traditions and hard-earned wisdom.
Genres: american-fiction, african-american, poetry, biography-memoir
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, lyrical, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, journey-of-wisdom
Setting: South
Period: 20th-century, 21st-century
84 pages · Kindle Edition · Wesleyan University Press