Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #342939 in Books
• Published on: 2002-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 72 pages

Synopsis
David Dabydeen's 'Turner' is a long narrative poem written in response to J.M.W. Turner's celebrated painting Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead & Dying. Dabydeen's poem focuses on what is hidden in Turner's painting, the submerged head of the drowning African. In inventing a biography and the drowned man's unspoken desires, including the resisted temptation to fabricate an idyllic past, the poem brings into confrontation the wish for renewal and the inescapable stains of history, including the meaning of Turner's painting. 'Turner' was first published in 1994. In addition to 'Turner', this collection includes selections from two earlier books: Slave Song (1984) and Coolie Odyssey (1988).

Customer Reviews

Turner
This is a wonderfully brave, visionary poem. Rather then bewailing his unspeakable fate, the narrative voice (a jettisoned slave; a birthing mother; her still-born child) seeks a self through the smooth space of the sea, creatively reminiscing towards a new identity.
I use this poem in the classroom to show the constructive force a post-colonial, post-modern poem can have; each reading moves me - and the class.