Overview

Emmett Wheatfall shows us how the roots of love grow deep in the soil of sacrifice. He illustrates the intensely complex relationship between idealism and realism. His poems hurt in just the right way. And it's no small feat opening one's own racial and cultural wounds for the world to see. It takes courage. It takes trust that a country will recognize itself, and its complicity, in those wounds. And Wheatfall trusts us to witness along with him. He proves himself ready and willing, even eager, to, as the titular poem in this collection demands, ""build a new world"" together. -John Sibley Williams, from the Foreword

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9781594980640

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Reviews

In the tradition of Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, and other writers who surrender to the swinging rhythms of jazz with words, Emmett Wheatfall delivers poems to chant, to recite in time to drum, sax, and guitar, to chalk onto the sidewalk so children and their parents may pause and consider what this country is, what our times require, and how we might speak with more invention and grace. His poems call on us to celebrate even as we challenge one another, to be festive with our speech even as we demand greater honesty. In a style that reaches from winsome jump-rope rhyme to lyrical love ballad to personal anthem of a citizen, this book will call you to a full spectrum of patriotisms--to country, to family, to romance, to music, to all the loyalties we need to make our stumbling world get the beat and sing as one. Kim Stafford, Poet Laureate of Oregon Emmett Wheatfall has gone deep within himself to create a fine book that touches on the political condition and the human condition. Our Scarlet Blue Wounds speaks truth to power, but does so with tremendous heart, empathy, and poetic skill. It is a book forged of our time that deserves to be read by as many people in it. Robert Lashley, Poet The Homeboy Songs and Up South Emmett Wheatfall's poetry is richly subversive, not in a secretive way but with a wild openness that defies the reader to categorize or channel his work into predictable byways. Woven into his own voice, allusions range from current news to long established cultural and pop culture landmarks--the United States Constitution, poetry of Wallace Stevens, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, the daily insults of divisive politics. Tones of both Whitman and Langston Hughes and perhaps even Brecht resonate in Wheatfall's demands for a more just and loving world, but the voice here is definitely his own, and you will always know where this citizen poet of our present times stands. Barbara Drake, Poet Peace at Heart: An Oregon Country Life (Oregon Book Award Finalist, 1999)

Author Information

Emmett Wheatfall lives in Portland, Oregon, where he reads, writes, and performs poetry. Emmett has published six poetry collections and four recordings, including As Clean as a Bone (2018), Fragments (2015), Bread Widow (2013), The Meaning of Me (2012), We Think We Know (2011), and He Sees Things (2010). He served in 2014 and 2016 on the nomination committee for the selection of Oregon's Poet Laureate. John Sibley Williams is the author of As One Fire Consumes Another (Orison Poetry Prize, 2019), Skin Memory (Backwaters Prize, University of Nebraska Press, 2019), Summon (JuxtaProse Chapbook Prize, 2019), Disinheritance, and Controlled Hallucinations. He has also served as editor of two Northwest poetry anthologies, Alive at the Center (Ooligan Press, 2013) and Motionless from the Iron Bridge (barebones books, 2013). A nineteen-time Pushcart nominee, John is the winner of numerous awards, including the Laux/Millar Prize, Wabash Prize, Philip Booth Award, Janet B. McCabe Poetry Prize, American Literary Review Poetry Contest, Phyllis Smart-Young Prize, The 46er Prize, Nancy D. Hargrove Editors' Prize, Confrontation Poetry Prize, and Vallum Award for Poetry. He serves as editor of The Inflectionist Review and works as a freelance poetry editor, writing coach, and literary agent. Previous publishing credits include: Yale Review, Midwest Quarterly, Southern Review, Colorado Review, Sycamore Review, Prairie Schooner, Massachusetts Review, Poet Lore, Saranac Review, Atlanta Review, TriQuarterly, Columbia Poetry Review, Mid-American Review, Poetry Northwest, Third Coast, and various anthologies. John holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Rivier University and an MA in Book Publishing from Portland State University. He teaches poetry for Literary Arts as part of their Writers in the Schools program and for The People's Colloquium. He is currently constructing a digital poetry workshop platform, Caesura Poetry Workshop. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his partner and boisterous twin toddlers, Kaiya and Gabriel.

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