Obama's Children - by Earl Braggs (Paperback)

About the Book

Poetry that addresses the universal quest for human dignity and acknowledgement made specific through the Black experience.

Book Synopsis

Obama's Children: Poems, by Earl S. Braggs represents a universal quest for human dignity and acknowledgement made specific through the Black experience.

Steve's Short-Sleeve Shirt

Steve's short-sleeve shirts were almost always cut-off,

winter plaid,

flannel shirts as if he knew a next winter

might not come.

Back in '71, he grew an ugly afro that

he couldn't figure out how to be proud of, too thin to hold

an afro pick. We were riot-night running buddies,

best friends in the best of times, the worst of times.

We rode the same dull pencil-yellow school bus

during those turbulent school-house years. Our English teacher,

Mrs. Davis, we loved

like young boys love pretty teachers, but

Mrs. Davis wasn't pretty. White as composition notebook

pages, she taught the deconstruction of complex sentences

written in black and white and red.

Unfazed by head rags of race war, she stole our attention,

kept it, never intending to give attention back. We didn't

want it back, anyway. She loved Steve, I loved Steve. We all did.

Steve didn't grow up with us. He moved from the country

to the city our freshman year. Project still-life, still, somewhat,

new. The comprehension of such, I don't think he ever, fully,

wanted to figure out how to measure. Steve was beyond.

...

Review Quotes

"If poetry is music, Earl Braggs is its composer. And what he composes is jazz-smoky, sensual, serpentine stanzas of jazzy poetry at its improvisational best: staccato-trumpeting lines, tempo-driven voices, melodic repetitions, lowdown bluesy fragmentations of logic and sensibility... pouring into the corners of our consciousness, ragtiming us into booty-shaking highs and tenor-saxing us into deep deep downs. Such is jazz. Such is poetry. Such is jazz and poetry together. And such is this jazz-riffing collection."

-George Drew, author of Drumming Armageddon and Fancy's Orphan

"Like notes of jazz played between notes of jazz music," Obama's Children is a headlong riff on the motifs of race, history, legacy and love. These vital poems reverberate with elements of improvisation and pastiche and are galvanized by exultant word play and an ecstatic vividness of spirit. Of Earl S. Braggs' many collections, Obama's Children is a fearless, sparkling magnum opus."

-Gianna Russo, Wordsmith of the City of Tampa, and author of One House Down

"Earl Braggs is his own man. His poems are a personal and public history of America told in numerous personas, poetic syntax, and a dancing rhythmic narrative that carries the reader into stories that seem familiar yet are often a bit askew. It's like looking at the world through old glass windows-streets, cars, trees, people, and history are wavy and grainy but not untrue. The truth is in the spirit, in the heart of the work and the poet. Book after book reveals what it's like to be a Black man in the United States, and therefore, what it's like to be an American."

-Rick Campbell, author of Provenance and Gunshot, Peacock, Dog