Golden Ax
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR POETRY
“Outstanding . . . the poetry in these pages is intelligent, lyrical, as invested in the past as the present and future with witty nods to pop culture.” —Roxane Gay, author of Hunger
“I’ve never read anything like it. Truly a sublime experience.” —Jason Reynolds, author of Ain’t Burned All the Bright
A groundbreaking collection about Afropioneerism past and present from Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and New York Times bestselling author Rio Cortez
From a visionary writer praised for her captivating work on Black history and experience comes a poetry collection exploring personal, political, and artistic frontiers, journeying from her family's history as "Afropioneers" in the American West to shimmering glimpses of transcendent, liberated futures.
In poems that range from wry, tongue-in-cheek observations about contemporary life to more nuanced meditations on her ancestors—some of the earliest Black pioneers to settle in the western United States after Reconstruction—Golden Ax invites readers to re-imagine the West, Black womanhood, and the legacies that shape and sustain the pursuit of freedom.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Cortez maps untrodden historical and speculative terrain in poems of stunning breadth and intimacy in this exquisite debut. Cortez, whose family moved from Louisiana to Utah following Reconstruction, coins the terms Afropioneerism and Afrofrontierism, apt expressions for the poetic ground she covers. Early poems in the collection establish the stakes: "I am a child feeling/ extraterrestrial; whose history, untold,/ is not enough." In "The Idea of Ancestry," her use of heavily enjambed, unpunctuated lines creates a sense of continuity between the speaker, her ancestors, and the West they share: "to know that my people/ heard the aspen too/ makes this my sweet place/ even if the world has come/ between us and the canyon/ I know the world/ has placed us here exactly." Later poems move from the speaker's childhood in Utah to her adulthood in New York, reflecting on class, race, and womanhood with wit and lyrical subtlety, as in these lines from "Black Frasier Crane": "Isn't this the hardest/ work? To be happy// when you already/ have everything." Unflinching and generous, this bold collection opens new vistas in contemporary Black poetry.
