Drive [Hardcover]

Hettie Jones (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1998

Poetry. African American Studies. "Jones is known best for her resonant memoir about the beat milieu and her marriage to Amiri Baraka (formerly LeRoi Jones), How I Became Hettie Jones (1990), but this collection of poems, her first, will establish her as a potent and fearless poet. The provocative multiplicity of meanings embodied by the title bears beautiful fruit, beginning with a strikingly original set of poems about cars and the road, including 'Hard Drive' in which Jones saucily introduces herself as both 'woman enough to be moved to tears / and man enough / to drive my car in any direction.' She does drive in any and all directions over the course of the book, writing both deeply personal and strongly political poems, all of which are utterly free of sentimentality yet warm with compassion. Jones writes 'I love / everyone today, as usual,' and it is her embracing of life, and its mirror image, death, that revs each poem up to speed, liberating us, for a sweet moment, from inertia"--Donna Seaman, Booklist.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Jones is known best for her resonant memoir about the beat milieu and her marriage to Amiri Baraka (formerly LeRoi Jones), How I Became Hettie Jones (1990), but this collection of poems, her first, will establish her as a potent and fearless poet. The provocative multiplicity of meanings embodied by the title bears beautiful fruit, beginning with a strikingly original set of poems about cars and the road, including "Hard Drive" in which Jones saucily introduces herself as both "woman enough to be moved to tears / and man enough / to drive my car in any direction." She does drive in any and all directions over the course of the book, writing both deeply personal and strongly political poems, all of which are utterly free of sentimentality yet warm with compassion. Jones writes "I love / everyone today, as usual," and it is her embracing of life, and its mirror image, death, that revs each poem up to speed, liberating us, for a sweet moment, from inertia. Donna Seaman

Review

5:00 Pm, Eastern Standard Time, November
Adultery -- Kandahar, Afghanistan 1996
Aftertune
Albert Ayler's Flowers
All The Beautiful Days
As If
Atlanta Death 1981
Birthday Presents 1989 (for Joyce Johnson)
By The Beautiful Sea
Civil War
A Day At A Time
Dresses: Four Of Mine For Naima Balahi
Elegy For Allen
Emine And Hamide
The Empty Nest Syndrome
Finally Narcissa
For My Daughters
Forgiving The Traveler
Freddie, In Memoriam
Freddie, In Memoriam
From Four Hetties
Good Old Paint
Hard Drive
Having Been Her
A History Of War In Five Acts: 1
A History Of War In Five Acts: 2
A History Of War In Five Acts: 3. Justice Is Just Ice
A History Of War In Five Acts: 4. Alpha Against Apartheid
A History Of War In Five Acts: 5. Sarajevo 1995
Homage To Frank O'hara's Personal Poem
Home: Deep, To The
Hotter Than July, 1982
In Answer To Your Question
In Memoriam
In The Eye Of The Beholder
A Little Light Verse For Helene
Look At How We Live, Look At How We Die
Lottie And Oscar
Lunch Poems: 1
Lunch Poems: 2. Gray Direct
Manhattan Special
Mother America (for Chuck Wachtel)
Mother Moon
Ode To My Car
On The Fifth Of December A Rose
One Hundred Love Poems For Lisa
Paleface
The Pause That Refreshes / Or Climbing Back On The Roof
Poem For Rashid
Rabbits Rabbits Rabbits 2/1/80
Racing With The Moon
Ruby My Dear
Saladin Crossing The Desert
Self-portrait
The Semipermanent Gate List
Seven Songs At Sixty
She
Sin Songs: 1. Complacency
Sin Songs: 2. Envy
Sin Songs: 3. Avarice
Sin Songs: 4. Mendacity
Sonnet
Subway Poem
They're Not Heavy, They're My Sisters
The Third Poem
This Kind Of Kaddish
This Man I Met, He Said
Three Little Love Songs
Two Portraits
Welcome To Our Crowd
What My Uncles Taught Me
The Woman In The Green Car
Words
You Are What You Eat
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 104 pages
• Publisher: Hanging Loose Press (January 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1882413512
• ISBN-13: 978-1882413515
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.7 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,063,082 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How to Write Good Free Verse, May 23, 2011

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Charles B. Taylor "Chuck Taylor" (College Station, Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Drive: Poems (Paperback)

Dang but this writer is good. She is a much overlooked talent. I had no idea that women developed such complex and loving feelings toward the junkers they drove, those cars with character. I thought it was a guy thing, but she out guys guys in writing poems about her cars in the opening section. You've got great love poems here, great friendship poems, great political poems, all written in vers libre, the hardest form of all to do well, and every one of these poems are a fresh as the day they were finished.