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    Trouble the Water
    Trouble the Water
    Trouble the Water
    Ebook102 pages43 minutes

    Trouble the Water

    By Derrick Austin and Mary Szybist

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

  • The scope of Trouble the Water is very much historical: from the Bible through several artistic periods (Byzantine, Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, and contemporary) as well as several recent historical events (the infamous BP Oil spill, the slaughter of black bodies in the past and present, and the current #BlackLivesMatter movement).

  • The author's race and sexuality are inextricably tethered to the book, which is one of its strengths. Other strengths are its lyricism and attention to parts of history that aren’t necessarily trendy, as well at its investment in formal poetics. The ways in which Derrick Austin inserts himself into a heterosexual, white tradition to forge his own path as a queer, black writer are unique.

  • Trouble the Water is a journey through the poet's moving experience coming out as gay. It deals with the loneliness associated with wandering the world as a queer, black body, a body that’s often invisible, fetishized, and distorted in other ways beyond recognition, and with the transformation of those feelings into art. The oldest poem in the book, “Apology,” was written long before Austin came out, and newer poems deal with these new trying times, where black lives are threatened and police are seen in new light.
    • LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBOA Editions Ltd.
    Release dateApr 18, 2016
    ISBN9781942683056
    Trouble the Water

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      Book preview

      Trouble the Water - Derrick Austin

      [image: cover][image: cover]

      TROUBLE THE WATER

      [image: cover]

      WINNER, 2015 A. POULIN, JR. POETRY PRIZE

      SELECTED BY MARY SZYBIST

      [image: cover]

      Copyright © 2016 by Derrick Austin

      Foreword copyright © 2016 by Mary Szybist

      All rights reserved

      Manufactured in the United States of America

      First Edition

      16 17 18 19   7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      For information about permission to reuse any material from this book please contact The Permissions Company at www.permissionscompany.com or e-mail permdude@eclipse.net.

      [image: cover]

      Publications by BOA Editions, Ltd.—a not-for-profit corporation under section 501 (c) (3) of the United States Internal Revenue Code—are made possible with funds from a variety of sources, including public funds from the Literature Program of the National Endowment for the Arts; the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency; and the County of Monroe, NY. Private funding sources include the Lannan Foundation for support of the Lannan Translations Selection Series; the Max and Marian Farash Charitable Foundation; the Mary S. Mulligan Charitable Trust; the Rochester Area Community Foundation; the Steeple-Jack Fund; the Ames-Amzalak Memorial Trust in memory of Henry Ames, Semon Amzalak, and Dan Amzalak; and contributions from many individuals nationwide. See Colophon on page 96 for special individual acknowledgments.

      Cover Design: Sandy Knight

      Cover Art: 10-79 by Diedrick Brackens

      Interior Design and Composition: Richard Foerster

      Manufacturing: Versa Press, Inc.

      BOA Logo: Mirko

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Names: Austin, Derrick, 1989– author.

      Title: Trouble the water : poems / by Derrick Austin ; foreword by Mary Szybist.

      Description: First edition. | Rochester, NY : BOA Editions Ltd., 2016. | Series: A. Poulin, Jr. New Poets of America ; 38

      Identifiers: LCCN 2015046377 | ISBN 9781942683049 (paperback)

      Subjects: | BISAC: POETRY / American / African American. | POETRY / Inspirational & Religious. | SOCIAL SCIENCE / Discrimination & Race Relations.

      Classification: LCC PS3601.U857 T76 2016 | DDC 811/.6—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015046377

      BOA Editions, Ltd.

      250 North Goodman Street, Suite 306

      Rochester, NY 14607

      www.boaeditions.org

      A. Poulin, Jr., Founder (1938–1996)

      for my parents: Derrick and Tracy

      Contents

      Title Page

      Copyright

      Dedication

      Foreword

      [image: cover]

      Tidewater Psalm

      Devotions

      Okaloosa

      Pass-A-Grille

      Breakwater

      Torch Song

      Blaxploitation

      Bow Down

      Major Arcana: Judgment

      We’re Standing on the Sun

      [image: cover]

      Catacombs of San Callisto

      Sans Souci

      Illumination

      St. Sebastian’s Executioner

      Byzantine Gold

      O-P-U-L-E-N-C-E

      City of Rivers:

      City of Rivers

      Crown Glass

      Fountain Statue

      Effigy Without a Body

      Antaeus

      Cathedral

      The Bait

      Little Gospels

      Ghost Slipper

      Conveyance

      No Union

      Heaven and Earth

      [image: cover]

      Summertime

      Deepwater

      Apology

      Persian Blue

      Dominion

      Jezebel

      Cedars of Lebanon

      Blue

      Canaan

      Dead Gull

      [image: cover]

      Sleeping Alone

      St. Mathew’s Pentecostal Church

      Primer for Sainthood

      Sweet Talk

      Magnolia

      Sweet Boys

      Visiting Mount Calvary Cemetery

      At the Grave of Zora Neale Hurston

      Vespers

      [image: cover]

      Notes

      Acknowledgments

      About the Author

      Colophon

      [image: cover]

      Foreword

      The tonal complexity of Derrick Austin’s remarkable debut begins with its title. Trouble the Water is, of course, a phrase from the spiritual Wade in the Water.

      Wade in the water.

      Wade in the water, children,

      Wade in the water.

      God’s a-going to trouble the water.

      It is a sorrow song married to a vision of great hope and faith, conjuring the Exodus story of God parting the sea to allow the Israelites to escape enslavement in Egypt. Whether we hear the final line of this refrain as a promise of

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