Moving to Neptune: New and Selected by Earl S. Braggs
Braggs confronts us with a combination of hard realism and musical lyricism, painting unforgettable images in unforgettable language. This is American poetry at its finest: as spacious as Walt Whitman, as frank as the Beat Poets, and as alive with witness as the poetry of the Black Arts Movement. Braggs is a master storyteller, brings a wide range of characters and social circumstances to life on the page. Prophetic, American as the blues, Braggs’ poems take the outrages of recent history into a vision where the heart and humor, irony and vulnerability enable poet and community to survive and sometimes sing. There is breathtaking bravery and edge to the voice here, Joycean stream of consciousness that refuses to be censored or subdued.
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From: “Moving to Neptune”
And before you knock, Blue Train, John Coltrane will
answer the door. And before you enter, Etta James or
Ella Fitzgerald or Nina Simone, one of which will whisper
ever so softly, “I’ve been expecting you.” So come in into
the relax of a good red wine year. Pour for yourself, a glass.
Gouda and good green olives will pour, for you, the next
set designed not in Hollywood but, still
triangled in mid-century style conversations with Art Deco
and Marilyn Monroe, a vintage couch, a chair,
a coffee table, a white fireplace, burning
in the soft-wind-falling float of melodies soaring like kites
ascending ceiling height,
just above the cruising altitude of love and forgiveness.
Me and my Uncle Lee, who invited us in? We are having
another sip of red, tasting the room temperature of things
yet to be heard. Listen, but with your ears, listen not,
for only the heart’s wall can hear the jazz soaring
into the slow moon dance of “Where the Wind Comes From”