Dear John, Dear Coltrane
Poems
Paper – $18
978-0-252-01193-1
Publication Date
Paperback: 01/01/1985
About the Book
For anyone interested in the auspicious beginnings of "one of the finest poets of our time" (San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle), this book is a small treasure.Dear John, Dear Coltrane was Michael S. Harper's first book of poems and a nominee for the National Book Award. Of it the Virginia Quarterly Review observed: "Harper's is a poetry of classically unadorned statement, a direct, unflinching record of a man alive in his time. When he is at his best, in both his public and his private voice, he creates a language humming with emotion and ennobled by a deeply felt human dignity."
In each of his subsequent books over the past fifteen years, Harper has more than vindicated that early praise. He continues to write poetry that resonates with passion, power, honesty, and craft. Always deeply rooted in the black experience, it nevertheless has been a poetry that speaks to all readers.
About the Author
Michael S. Harper won the Poetry Society of America's 1978 Melville Cane Award for Images of Kin. Dear John, Dear Coltrane and Images of Kin were nominees for the National Book Award; History Is Your Own Heartbeat won the Black Academy of Arts and Letters award for poetry. He has been cited by the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the Massachusetts Council on the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation. His other books include Nightmare Begins Responsibility, Chant of Saints, ed. (with Robert B. Stepto), and most recently Healing Song for the Inner Ear. He is an Israel J. Kapstein Professor of English at Brown University, where he has taught since 1970.Also by this author
Awards
• Stephen Henderson Award, African American Literature and Culture Society (AALCS), 2013• Author is recipient of the Frost Medal for Lifetime Achievement, Poetry Society of America, 2008
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