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Outlandish Blues (Wesleyan Poetry Series) Paperback – April 29, 2003

4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 8 ratings
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Root-wise, soulful poems reinvent the domestic and spiritual spheres.

Winner of the Harper Lee Award (2018)

Fierce and sensual, the poems in Outlandish Blues merge everyday speech with a shimmering lyricism and burst from the page into song. Honorée Fanonne Jeffers sees the blues, what she terms the "shared 'blue notes,''' as an important intersection between the secular and the divine, and between the various African American vernacular traditions, from spirituals to jazz. Part Nina Simone, part Bessie Smith, her poems are filled with a sweaty honesty, moving from the personal to the collective experience. This movement is often accomplished through the use of personae, concentrated here in a stunning series of poems on the Biblical figures of Hagar and Sarah. Whether about a contemporary domestic scene, a slave ship, or Aretha Franklin, these are poems that speak to the soul of experience.

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  1. Print length
    72 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Wesleyan University Press
  4. Publication date
    April 29, 2003
  5. Dimensions
    5.75 x 0.25 x 8.75 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0819565849
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0819565846
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"I am struck by the boldness of this poetry, the musicality, and the sense of historical and spiritual matters. This is a powerful new voice."―Cynthia Hogue, author of The Never Wife

"The Age of Phillis illuminates an unbroken lineage, the way one poet pays homage to another and keeps the continuum for which we are all indebted. This is a necessary and visceral book, that brings to life the fullness of Wheatley."―Matthew Shenoda, author of Tahir Suite

"I am struck by the boldness of this poetry, the musicality, and the sense of historical and spiritual matters. This is a powerful new voice."―Cynthia Hogue, author of The Never Wife

"Outlandish Blues is a book as wide-open-armed and as terrifying as the blues themselves. What violence and grief, and sweetness too! These poems will bring you to your knees with their tough, wild beauty."―Maggie Anderson, author of Windfall: New and Selected Poems

From the Publisher

5 1/2 x 8 1/2 trim.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Wesleyan University Press; First Edition (April 29, 2003)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 72 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0819565849
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0819565846
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 4 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.75 x 0.25 x 8.75 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 8 ratings

About the author

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Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

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Honorée Fanonne Jeffers is a poet, fiction writer, and essayist. Her first novel, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, is forthcoming from Harper in July 2021; in addition, she’s the author of five books of poetry, most recently, The Age of Phillis (Wesleyan, 2020), based upon fifteen years of research on the life and times of Phillis Wheatley (Peters), a formerly enslaved person who was the first African American woman to publish a book. Jeffers’s poems, stories, and essays have appeared in American Poetry Review, Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry (Norton 2013), Callaloo, Common-Place: The Journal of Early American Life, The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race (Scribner 2016), The Kenyon Review, and Virginia Quarterly Review, among others. She is the recipient of fellowships from the American Antiquarian Society, the Aspen Summer Words Conference, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Witter Bynner Foundation through the Library of Congress, and she has been honored with two lifetime achievement notations, the Harper Lee Award for Literary Distinction, and induction into the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame. Jeffers is Critic-at-Large for The Kenyon Review and Professor of English at University of Oklahoma.

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
8 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

julia beckford
5.0 out of 5 stars OOOO WEEEE!
Reviewed in the United States on April 19, 2004
This poet is on fire! I could say a million wonderful things about this book of poetry. First of all...the images she paints pop off the page and stick smack in the middle of my head almost hauntingly, telling me about tucked away family secrets and southern life. She so cleverly and carefully picks her words and does such a good job at showing us all the crazy ish that goes on in the lives of everyday folks. I admire the vast ground that she covers,from the bible, to the slave ship to abusive relationships. Jeffers is a poet that tells it like it is, so eloquently. Buy this book and take a journey into the realm of the Outlandish.
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Melanie
4.0 out of 5 stars Perspective
Reviewed in the United States on April 23, 2004
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers' "Outlandish Blues" is full of historical references and religious allusions. Her poems place you within a cultural, social and temporal context. But even as she gives the sense of specific places and times, time and place seems to be a fluid space new millennium people in settings from the recent past.
While her general topics of religion, culture and history are pretty constant throughout the collection, her focus is mainly on African-American women. She explores how the Black women views herself, her male counterpart, and how she the world she lives in. Jeffers expands on this with a historically-centered perspective that tells of the Black woman's position within the social strata.
Overall, her collection is somewhat illusive. However, what is grasped on the surface meaning only speaks volumes to what is not. Her perspective is an odd mixture of the old and the new which provides a fresh, yet wise analysis of her society.
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WellReadBeard
3.0 out of 5 stars The Battered Blues
Reviewed in the United States on September 11, 2019
Nice little poetry collection. My favorite poem was The Battered Blues ( Four Movements ).
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ZK
4.0 out of 5 stars A cultural Experience
Reviewed in the United States on April 20, 2004
Jeffers brings us to a point where the roots of cultures must explore for themselves. Outlandish Blues explores various topics like jazz, the Blues and the African-American experience. "Fast Skirt Blues" is a great poem that is honest and true to it's blues roots. "Outlandish Blues" also takes you on a vivid biblical ride as it explores intersting characters of Black culture and life.
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Truth Thomas
3.0 out of 5 stars Good Blues
Reviewed in the United States on April 12, 2004
Ladies not only sing the blues, but they fight back in Outlandish Blues, as Honorée Fannone Jeffers paints her verse pictures. In the poem The Battered Blues she writes, "He hit me more times for being still/Misery on my porch and sadness on my steps/I washed off his dust and his sorry pain bought me a switchblade shouting out his name."
There is an exploration of the crazy/outlandish life that is Southern Black life in America. There is also an interesting and thought provoking series of persona poems from offered from the perspective of women in the Old Testament (Lot's Wife, Hagar and Sarai). Depth and passion punctuate her work. I would like to think that part of a writer's mandate is to illustrate the absurd in our existence in order to make it less so. In the pages of Outlandish Blues one will find pieces thoughtfully crafted to ease us down that right road.
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