Magnified
5/5
()
About this ebook
Finalist for Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry, given by The Publishing Triangle, 2022
This collection of love poems draws us into the sacred liminal space that surrounds death. With her beloved gravely ill, poet and activist Minnie Bruce Pratt turns to daily walks and writing to find a way to go on in a world where injustice brings so much loss and death. Each poem is a pocket lens "to swivel out and magnify" the beauty in "the little glints, insignificant" that catch her eye: "The first flowers, smaller than this s." She also chronicles the quiet rooms of "pain and the body's memory," bringing the reader carefully into moments that will be familiar to anyone who has suffered similar loss. Even as she asks, "What's the use of poetry? Not one word comes back to talk me out of pain," the book delivers a vision of love that is boldly political and laced with a tumultuous hope that promises: "Revolution is bigger than both of us, revolution is a science that infers the future presence of us." This lucid poetry is a testimony to the radical act of being present and offers this balm: that the generative power of love continues after death.
Oh Death
Someone sang, Oh death! Oh death! Won't you
pass me over for another day? Someone said, I
dreamed of you last night. I dreamed you
were telling me your whole life story.
Whole. Whorled. Welkin, winkle, wrinkle.
The loop of time holds us all together.
The pile of laundry on the bed. You
folding socks one inside the other. We
have had this day, and now this night.
The clothes are put away, and from the bed we see
the moon folding light into darkness, not death.
Minnie Bruce Pratt
Minnie Bruce Pratt (1946–2023), was a LGBTQ writer and activist originally from Alabama. Pratt was the author of ten books of poetry, creative nonfiction and political theory. She received a Lambda Award for Lesbian Poetry, the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry from The Publishing Triangle, and was appointed Ambassador for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Committee of the New York Public Library– among many honors.
Related to Magnified
Related ebooks
Crime Against Nature Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5We Won't Be Here Tomorrow: And Other Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Quiet is Loud Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBegin the World Over Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Maroons: A Grievers Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIslands of Decolonial Love Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5nedí nezų (Good Medicine) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Sorrow Proper Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052–2072 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Who's Jim Hines? Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Being Black in the Ivory: Truth-Telling about Racism in Higher Education Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGrievers Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5More Home Cooking: A Writer Returns to the Kitchen Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAny Other City Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dyke (geology) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Y'all Means All: The Emerging Voices Queering Appalachia Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTwo-Spirit Acts: Queer Indigenous Performances Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Praline Woman Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRehearsals for Living Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Prefiguring Postblackness: Cultural Memory, Drama, and the African American Freedom Struggle of the 1960s Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAcid West: Essays Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOn Strike Against God: A Love Story Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Honeyman Festival: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Between Certain Death and a Possible Future: Queer Writing on Growing up with the AIDS Crisis Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe White Bone: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Big Reveal: An Illustrated Manifesto of Drag Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHim, Me, Muhammad Ali Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Story of Mary MacLane Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Poetry For You
The Odyssey: (The Stephen Mitchell Translation) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Iliad of Homer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Canterbury Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Iliad: The Fitzgerald Translation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dante's Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Prophet Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Beowulf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5For colored girls who have considered suicide/When the rainbow is enuf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Love Her Wild: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tao Te Ching: A New English Version Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Gilgamesh: A New English Version Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Leaves of Grass: 1855 Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You Better Be Lightning Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bedtime Stories for Grown-ups Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Complete Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Inward Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Daily Stoic: A Daily Journal On Meditation, Stoicism, Wisdom and Philosophy to Improve Your Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dante's Inferno: The Divine Comedy, Book One Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Way Forward Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Odyssey Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Weary Blues Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Twenty love poems and a song of despair Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Edgar Allan Poe: The Complete Collection Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Letters to a Young Poet (Rediscovered Books): With linked Table of Contents Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems of John Keats (with an Introduction by Robert Bridges) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Magnified
1 rating0 reviews