Status
Publication
Description
"An examination of a brutal America through the voices of its most vulnerable sons. In his debut collection, Fantasia for the Man in Blue, Tommye Blount orchestrates a chorus of distinct, unforgettable voices that speak to the experience of the black, queer body as a site of desire and violence. A black man's late-night encounter with a police officer - the titular "man in blue" - becomes an extended meditation on a dangerous, erotic fantasy. The late Luther Vandross, resurrected here in a suite of poems, addresses the contradiction between his public persona and a life spent largely in the closet: "It's a calling, this hunger / to sing for a love I'm too ashamed to want for myself." In "Aaron McKinney Cleans His Magnum," the convicted killer imagines the barrel of the gun he used to bludgeon Matthew Shepherd as an "infant's small mouth" as well as the "sad calculator" that was "built to subtract from and divide a town." In these and other poems, Blount viscerally captures the experience of the "other" and locates us squarely within these personae"--… (more)
User reviews
My two favorite poems here are outliers in his themes:
Icarus Does the Dishes, about a 20-something man who has brought his severely ill father home to care for him, and who realizes he is in over his head. Possibly autobiographical?
Portrait of My Father, per the notes all of the text with a few alterations was lifted from (Blount's father's?) autopsy report.
I do enjoy Blount's writing--it is easy enough to understand, but that does not mean it is simple. It si thoughtful and well planned, and he definitely likes wordplay. I did not love this collection, but I don't think I am his intended/expected audience. I would love to see him write a collection with family as a main theme.