Winner of the twelfth annual Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award
"Lee's poems are not quaint exercises in poetic form. They grab you by the throat with their personal intensity, jostle your brain with their intellectual bravery, and startle your heart with their spirit and Insight." (Jack Grapes}
"A tender exploration, embracing both the heavy and the light. Done with such patience and care, one cannot help but listen." (Ruth Forman)
The cover art is Self-Portrait by Malvin Gray Johnson (courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Harmon Foundation)
Monifa A. Love,
Dreaming Underground
ISBN: 0-916418-92-8 83 pgs. (paper) $17.00
"What a gifted poet. Precise. Knowing. So lovely and so incredibly lyrical. Her heart and hands, so well-read and so well-traveled. These poems fly with grace on the wings of so many different forms--the voice shimmering. The human objects of her poetic attention so unforgettable; an uncle as eminent teacher and the musical oxygen of Leontyne Price that lingered long after her mother's funeral. Superb. The poet is drawn to striking deep imagistic tenderness with each stroke. Lightning swift turns and twists of phrase abound. Solid and unpretentious. Unwavering and acoustically reverent. A thoughtful, unforgettable poetic solar system is born here." (Nikki Finney)
This second collection is the winner of the 2003 Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award. Her first volume, Provisions, won rave reviews. Love has also published a prize-winning novel, Freedom in the Dismal, and co-authored two books on the visual art of Ed Love.
Her poems have appeared in such journals as AfricanAmerican Review, American Diaspora, Beyond the Frontier, Drive, International Quarterly, The Massachusetts Review, and The Progressive.
Connected Islands by Naomi Long Madgett ISBN: 0-916418-94-4 99 pgs.(paper)
$17.00
"In her new and selected Connected Islands, Naomi Long Madgett examines and celebrates the bonds of family, friendship, faith and art to show that as much as we are alone, we are together. From the lives of heroes such as Phillis Wheatley and courageous visionaries of her own acquaintance to the dialectal hymns and prayers of hard-working African Americans, Madgett portrays the 'many faces of endurance.' These are poems of clarity and a resolute grace that, like her city seagulls, seek 'sustenance in [what is] discarded' by landing on 'posts of light.' A welcome, satisfying collection from Detroit's Poet Laureate whose elegant and insightful work continues undiminished into her ninth decade."
- Terry Blackhawk
"The poems of Naomi Long Madgett are like slivers of city life. Sirens and streetlights are balanced by blood memories and 'that universal something that makes us want to sing.' Gathered on the front porch at twilight or kneeling at the feet of Jesus, Naomi Madgett reminds us that the poet's most potent weapons are still love and truth and the stubborn inability to look away."
-Pearl Cleage
Octavia: Guthrie and Beyond
by Naomi Long Madgett
ISBN: 0-916418-91-X 81 pgs. (paper) $15.00
Madgett's eighth collection of poems won a Creative Achievement Award from the College Language Association and is the basis of a documentary film (Vander Films) which won a Gold Apple Award of Excellence from the National Educational Media Network. First published by Third World Press as part of Octavia and Other Poems, this is a reprint of the book-length title poem, illustrated with old photographs, an added foreword and updated family information appended. Readers are rewarded by the artistry of the poetry and their sense of participation in the lives of the Long family members during the first two decades of the twentieth century. Octavia and Other Poems was made required reading in all Detroit public high schools.
Detroit Poet Laureate Naomi Long Madgett has won much critical acclaim and recognition for her poetry, beginning with her first book, published in New York when she was only seventeen years old. Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines and journals and approximately 180 anthologies in this country and abroad. Remembrances of Spring: Collected Early Poems was published by Michigan State University Press in 1993 and is still in print. In 1993 Lotus Press, of which she is publisher and editor, established the annual Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award to recognize and publish an outstanding manuscript by an African American.
