Summoning Our Saints

John Wharton Lowe is Barbara Methvin distinguished professor of English and Latin American and Caribbean studies at the University of Georgia.

• Introduction. Mapping a Starry Poetics: The Achievement of Brenda Marie OsbeyJohn Wharton LoweChapter 1. The Origins of Osbey’s Poetics: The Achievement of Ceremony for Minneconjoux and In These HousesJohn Wharton LoweChapter 2. “And I can see to it you stay dead / on a daily basis”: Brenda Marie Osbey’s Culturally Based Poetics (A poet’s perspective)Doris DavenportChapter 3. Desperate MeasuresAldon Lynn NielsenChapter 4. Wild and Holy Women in the Poetry of Brenda Marie OsbeyAndrea Benton RushingChapter 5. Saints of a Darker Hue in Brenda Marie Osbey’s All SaintsReggie Scott YoungChapter 6. Haunted Memories: Disruptive Ghosts in the Poems of Brenda Marie OsbeyTracy WattsChapter 7. Imagining History: Brenda Marie Osbey and the Poetics of ImaginationThadious DavisChapter 8. Crossing the Gulf: Ecopoetic Revisions of the Coast in Brenda Marie Osbey, Natasha Trethewey, and Yusef KomunyakaaDaniel Cross TurnerChapter 9. Feeding the Gulf Dead: An Ofrenda of Response to Brenda Marie Osbey’s All Saints & All SoulsDolores Flores-Silva and Keith CartwrightChapter 10. The Roots and Routes of Brenda Marie Osbey’s Black InternationalismMalin Pereira Chapter 11. Introduction to 1967: On the Semicenternary of the Desegregation of the College of William and Mary Hermine PinsonAppendix: Chronology of the Life and Career of Brenda Marie OsbeyAbout the EditorAbout the Contributors

Including a detailed chronology of its subject, this collection of essays on poet Brenda Marie Osbey (Africana studies, Brown) will be invaluable to those interested in poetry and African American studies. The collection comprises 11 critical essays. Lowe provides a detailed biographical and critical introduction, and his opening essay on Osbey's poetry collections Ceremony for Minneconjoux and In These Houses sets a high standard, one his fellow contributors meet. Thadious Davis examines History and Other Poems with authority, looking at Osbey's writing in Southern and African American traditions. Dolores Flores-Silva and Keith Cartwright, who previously worked together on a study of Jesmyn Ward, place Osbey in the internationality of the Gulf of Mexico with attention to All Saints and All Souls. Daniel Cross Turner considers Osbey in conjunction with fellow poets Natasha Trethewey and Yusef Komunyakaa. In mapping and examining Osbey's poetry and prose, all the contributors recognize the centrality of Osbey's native New Orleans in her writing, with the city's pasts intersecting with the present and its extensive intercultural borders extending beyond the continental US.Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.