Turn Me Loose
The Unghosting of Medgar Evers
Published on 1. May 2013
96 pages
978-0-8203-4586-4 (ISBN)
Description
Around the void left by the murder of Medgar Evers in 1963, the poems in this collection speak, unleashing the strong emotions both before and after the moment of assassination. Poems take on the voices of Evers's widow, Myrlie; his brother, Charles; his assassin, Byron De La Beckwith; and each of De La Beckwith's two wives. Except for the book's title,"Turn me loose," which were his final words, Evers remains in this collection silent. Yet the poems accumulate facets of the love and hate with which others saw this man, unghosting him in a way that only imagination makes possible.
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Book
05/2013
University of Georgia Press
€16.60
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Person
FRANK W WALKER is the 2013-2014 poet laureate of Kentucky. He is an associate professor of English at the University of Kentucky and the editor of Pluck! The Journal of Affrilachian Arts & Culture. A Lannan Literary Fellowship for Poetry recipient, he is the author of five collections of poetry, including Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York, which won the Lillian Smith Book Award, and Isaac Murphy: I Dedicate This Ride.
Content
- Cover Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Foreword How Do We Comply?: Answering the Call of Medgar Evers
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Dixie Suite
- What Kills Me
- Ambiguity over the Confederate Flag
- Rotten Fruit
- Humor Me
- The N-Word
- Southern Sports
- Byron De La Beckwith Dreaming I
- I'd Wish I Was in Dixie Too
- Part II Southern Dreams
- Fire Proof
- Listening to Music
- Life Apes Art Apes Life: Byron De La Beckwith Reflects on Birth of a Nation
- White of Way
- Music, Niggers & Jews
- Swamp Thing
- Stand by Your Man
- Husbandry
- Unwritten Rules for Young Black Boys Wanting to Live in Mississippi Long Enough to Become Men
- Part III Look Away, Look Away .
- Byron De La Beckwith Dreaming II
- After Dinner in Money, Mississippi
- World War Too
- Believing in Hymn
- Southern Bells
- Fighting Extinction
- Harriet Tubman as Villain: A Ghost Story
- Legal Lynching
- After the FBI Searched the Bayou
- Haiku for Emmett Till
- No More Fear
- When Death Moved In
- Part IV Gallant South
- Byron De La Beckwith Dreaming III
- After Birth
- Sorority Meeting
- One-Third of 180 Grams of Lead
- Arlington
- Cross-Examination
- Bighearted
- Anatomy of Hate
- What They Call Irony
- On Moving to California
- Part V Bitter Fruit
- One Mississippi, Two Mississippis
- A Final Accounting
- Now One Wants to Be President
- Epiphany
- Last Meal Haiku
- White Knights
- Evers Family Secret Recipe
- The Assurance Man
- Gift of Time
- Heavy Wait
- Time Line
- Bibliography
