The Architecture of Language [Hardcover]

Quincy Troupe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2006

"Troupe's poems resemble Romare Bearden's collages: muscular and colorful."-North American Review

In the Whitmanic tradition, Quincy Troupe's poetry explodes from the page, capturing the spirit of America.

Inspired by contemporary art, music, literature, and sports, The Architecture of Language dismantles the dangerously clichéd, wooden rhetoric saturating our national discourse and rebuilds the language in poems bursting with beauty, energy, and enough imaginative fire to light the way to the future.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In the best poems in Troupe's latest collection—following 2002's Transcircularities—which is organized into seven thematic sections, this prolific author finds that "magic comes when you least expect it." A group of fervent and timely political poems, as well as a section comprising a series of lush, lyrical poems centered largely in the author's part-time residence in the French West Indies are the collection's strongest pieces. Troupe's trademark use of "eye" in place of "I" can be, at the very least, distracting, and some of the poems dedicated to famous subjects (Richard Pryor, Tiger Woods) become too expository as passion loses out to reverence. The extended title poem that closes the book is a call for "a poetry of openness in america, now," rallying the reader toward a 21st-century linguistic inclusiveness: "the american voice is not white or black, european or asian,/ middle eastern or african, but mestizo, fused with jambalaya." (Oct.)
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About the Author

Featured on two PBS poetry series, Troupe is the author of seven volumes of poetry including Transcircularities, a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year and Minnesotabased Talking Volumes bookclub selection. In addition to children's books on Magic Johnson and Stevie Wonder, Troupe chronicled his friendship with Miles Davis in Miles and Me, soon to be a feature film.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 110 pages
• Publisher: Coffee House Press; First Edition edition (October 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1566891892
• ISBN-13: 978-1566891899
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,266,903 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Enthusiastically recommended poetry, January 4, 2007

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Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Architecture of Language (Paperback)

Quincy Troupe's enthusiastically recommended poetry comprising "The Architecture Of Language" is in the tradition of such American luminaries as Walt Whitman and has as a principle focus how diverse ethnic cultural histories have contributed to and helped to influence America. Troupe draws his inspiration from such diverse elements as art, music, literature, politics, and even sports in verse that is free from cliched rhetoric and staid constructions, infusing his images with energy, vibrancy, and lyrical phrasing. 'The Signatures of Time': binding signatures of time are fading footprints/tracking across wind blown desert floors,//newspapers whipping down cold, empty streets/split apart, become wings sailing light stingrays/swimming through wash of an emerald sea,//history is moments gleaned from unsorted stacks/holding facts, voices steamed clean as mussels/on a plat, disintegrating on worn tapes,/splintering on spools in old tape recorders,//like photos fading out in yellowing newspapers