Incendiary Art

Patricia Smith is the author of eight books of poetry, most recently Incendiary Art (Triquarterly, USA, 2017; Bloodaxe Books, UK, 2019), winner of the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, the 2017 Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the 2018 NAACP Image Award, and finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize. Her other collections include Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah, winner of the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets; Blood Dazzler, a National Book Award finalist; and Gotta Go, Gotta Flow, a collaboration with award-winning Chicago photographer Michael Abramson. Her other books include the poetry volumes Teahouse of the Almighty, Close to Death, Big Towns Big Talk, Life According to Motown; the children's book Janna and the Kings and the history Africans in America, a companion book to the award-winning PBS series. She co-edited The Golden Shovel Anthology – New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks and edited the crime fiction anthology Staten Island Noir. She is a Guggenheim fellow, a Civitellian, a National Endowment for the Arts grant recipient, a finalist for the Neustadt Prize, a two-time winner of the Pushcart Prize, a former fellow at both Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony, and a four-time individual champion of the National Poetry Slam, the most successful poet in the competition’s history. Patricia is a professor at the College of Staten Island and in the MFA program at Sierra Nevada College, as well as an instructor at the annual VONA residency and in the Vermont College of Fine Arts Postgraduate Residency Program.

Incendiary Art is the fire this time. An epic in five movements where history becomes tragedy, becomes farce, becomes fable. Where the reader becomes complicit, where outcomes burn into forgotten memories, and where nobody gets off the hook.

• I. IncendiaryThat Chile Emmett in That CasketEnigma of the Shadowbox SwineIncendiary ArtBlessBlessedIncendiary Art: MOVE, Philadelphia, 1985Emmett Till: Choose Your Own AdventureThe Then WhereIncendiary Art: Chicago, 1968Reemergence of the NooseEmmett Till: Choose Your Own AdventureReBirthdayIncendiary Art: Birmingham, 1963Runaway10-Year-Old Shot Three Times, but She's FineEmmett Till: Choose Your Own AdventureHey, who you got in here?Incendiary Art: Los Angeles, 1992Black, Poured Directly into the WoundNo Wound of ExitIncendiary Art: Tulsa, 1921See What Happen When You Don't Be CarefulMammy Two-Shoes, Rightful Owner of Tom, Addresses the Lady of the HouseIncendiary Art: Ferguson, 2014XXXLEmmett Till: Choose Your Own AdventureHow to Bust into a Black Man's House and Take a Boy OutII. When Black Men Drown Their DaughtersThe Five Stages of DrowningSentencingWhy the Verdict Just Don't Sound Right; or, The Bobbing Baby BluesThis is no movieOn every inch of me, there are rumors of fathersMeanwhile, the MotherWhen Black Men Drown Their DaughtersBlurred Quotient and TheoryIII. AccidentalSagas of the Accidental SaintThe Mother Dares Make Love Again, AfterIV. Shooting into the MirrorSometimesElegyThe First 23 Minutes of the First Day WithoutRequiemAnd He Stays DeadEmmett Till: Choose Your Own AdventureIncendiary Art: The BodyAcknowledgments