The Autobiography of a Jukebox (Carnegie Mellon Poetry) [Paperback]

Cornelius Eady (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 75 pages
• Publisher: Carnegie-Mellon University Press (August 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0887482376
• ISBN-13: 978-0887482373
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,653,825 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

BIO

Cornelius Eady was born in Rochester, NY, in 1954. He is the author of seven books of poetry; Kartunes, (Warthog Press, 1980), Victims of the Latest Dance Craze, (Ommation Press, 1986), winner of the 1985 Lamont Prize from the Academy of American Poets, The Gathering of My Name, (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1991), nominated for the 1992 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, You Don't Miss Your Water, (Henry Holt and Co., 1995), The Autobiography of a Jukebox (Carnegie-Mellon University Press, 1997), Brutal Imagination (Putnam, 2001), nominated for the National Book Award, and Hardheaded Weather; New and Selected Poems (April 2008, Putnam), nominated for the 2008 NAACP Image Award. He is the recipient of an NEA Fellowship in Literature (1985), a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry, (1993), a Lila Wallace-Readers Digest Traveling Scholarship to Tougaloo College in Mississippi (1992-1993), a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship to Bellagio, Italy, (1993), and The Prairie Schooner Strousse Award (1994). His work appears in many journals, magazines and the anthologies Every Shut Eye Ain't Asleep, In Search of Color Everywhere, and The Vintage Anthology of African American Poetry, (1750-2000) ed. Michael S. Harper. In June 1997, an adapation of You Don't Miss Your Water was performed at the Vineyard Theatre, in New York City. In April 1999, Running Man, a music-theatre piece co-written with jazz musican Diedre Murray was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama and awarded a 1999 Obie for best musical score and lead actor in a musical. He has taught poetry at SUNY Stony Brook, where he directed its Poetry Center, City College. Sarah Lawrence College, New York University, The Writer's Voice, The 92nd St Y, The College of William and Mary, and Sweet Briar College. With poet Toi Derricote, he is co-founder of Cave Canem, a summer workshop/retreat for African American poets. In January 2002, a production of Brutal Imagination (with a score by Diedre Murray) opened at the Vineyard Theatre, where and won the 2002 Oppenheimer award for the best first play by an American Playwright. At present he is Associate Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars vitally thoughtful narrative, March 17, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Autobiography of a Jukebox (Carnegie Mellon Poetry) (Paperback)

I found this to be a very direct book, a very accessible book of poetry I would, in many cases, be hard-pressed to distinguish from prose. This is especially apparent in the "Rodney King Blues" section, where four of the seven poems look and read almost like prose poems. Its similarity to prose I would attribute to three techniques: informal diction, a direct, very narrative tone, and interesting line breaks (or lack thereof).

Eady uses words wonderfully in juxtaposition. For example, in "Anger" "spin doctors do their stuff" and the "op ed page" appears, as does "haughty anger" and a "dark sunglassed angel repository". Common speech coexists with poetic diction; I enjoyed this very much and would strive for it in my own work for the sake of the variety and shock value it lends the poems. Eady's poems, especially the prose-poem-like ones, are written as if the speaker is just talking to the reader, telling stories of family, pain, music and lyric, love, even his hair. I really enjoyed the personal element that this informal language and narrative tone brought to the poems. They seem to capture experience without mediation and present it very honestly while avoiding plainness. I notice, though, that despite Eady's conversational tone and speech-like word choices he makes each word work, as in "Johnny on the Mainline": "This man, who I am quickly learning I don't know well at all anymore, is a broken heart, and a heartbreaker" (note the very long line). His skill with words is something I admire and strive for in my own work.

Formally, Eady's poems are intriguing, particularly as regards their lineation. He usually (in this book) alternates between very short, fairly rhythmic lines of two or three beats without many stanzaic divisions and verse paragraphs without any line distinction whatsoever. The 'metered' poems recall song lyrics to mind in the manner in which they sound more formal but maintain the direct conversationaly connection with the reader. I like his style very much: it is the trained speech of a skilled storyteller who can concisely engage his audience. His poetry, I believe, would be a good example of "formal, free, and fractal verse" (see Alice Fulton's 1985 [?] essay on form in contemporary poetry).

I also found his division of the book into sections to be particularly effective. His writing is very thematic - I sometimes wonder if he's exploring an issue thoroughly or beating a dead horse - and fits well within the sections. The section titles I love. "Small Moments" I found delightful: the poems show just that, small moments, but they sparkle and are exactly the sort of thing I find intriguing as a reader and about which I would like to write.

As with perhaps any book, the more I read Eady's 'Autobiography of a Jukebox' the more I like it. Its voice begins to sound like that of a friend - a very real, powerful, wryly aware and devilishly hilarious friend.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Subjectivity of a Jukebox, March 17, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Autobiography of a Jukebox (Carnegie Mellon Poetry) (Paperback)

The title of "The Autobiography of a Jukebox" calls to mind a jukebox telling its life story through its songs. In this way Eady's title hints at the way his book will examine a subject--a house, a narrative, a photo--through the medium of itself. This technique can be highly effective, as in "Money Won't Change It (but time will take you on)." In this poem, the speaker reflects on the jealousy and destructive competition of a community by reconstructing the conflicts among neighbors: "'You're rich, lady,' hissed the young woman at/ My mother as she bent in her garden." Eady's technique of letting jealousy and competition tell their own story evokes (through his layering of subject and object) the claustrophobia of the neighborhood.

But in the political section of Eady's work (titled "Rodney King Blues"), Eady's technique collapses into polemics. In "Nobody's Fault But Mine" the speaker simply attacks the defense team's interpretation of the beating; Eady's political position is understandable, even admirable, but this is a subject best confronted head-on by the prosecution, not a poet. Nonetheless, Eady possesses quite a talent for descriptive narration. If there's a slow-spun, endearing quality to some of these poems, it is balanced by an equally charming use of the occasional cliche.