Cornelius Eady

Cornelius Eady
Reading atFolger Shakespeare Library,2014
Born	1954 (age 69–70) Rochester, New York,U.S.
Genre	Poetry
Literary movement	Co-foundedCave Canem Foundation

Cornelius Eady(born 1954) is an American writer focusing largely on matters ofraceandsociety.His poetry often centers onjazzandblues,family life, violence, and societal problems stemming from questions of race and class. His poetry is often praised for its simple and approachable language.

Biography

Cornelius Eady was born inRochester, New York,and is an author of seven volumes of poetry. In most of Eady's poems, there is a musical quality drawn from theBluesandJazz.

Recently awarded honors include the Strousse Award fromPrairie Schooner,a Lila Wallace-Reader's DigestAward, and individual Fellowships from theRockefeller Foundation,theJohn Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation,and theNational Endowment for the Arts.

Eady has also recently collaborated with jazz composerDeirdre Murrayin the production of several works of musical theater, includingYou Don't Miss Your Water, Running Man, Fangs,andBrutal Imagination.Eady's work also appears inBlackbird: an online journal of literature and the arts.

In 1996, Eady and fellow poetToi DerricottefoundedCave Canem Foundation,a nonprofit organization for black poets.

Eady has taught atSarah Lawrence College,New York University,The Writer's Voice,The College of William and Mary,University of Notre Dame,andSweet Briar College.Formerly an associate professor of English and Director of the Poetry Center atState University of New York at Stony Brookand Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at theCity College of New York,as well as the Miller Chair in Poetry atUniversity of Missouri.Currently he lives inKnoxville, TN,where he serves as the Chair of Excellence at theUniversity of Tennessee-Knoxville.He is married to novelistSarah Micklem.

Works

Eady's first book of poetry,Kartunes,was published in 1980, with several books of poetry following it. He is also the author ofVictims of the Latest Dance Craze,which won the 1985Lamont Poetry Prizeof the Academy of American Poets;BOOM, BOOM, BOOM: A Chapbook(1988);The Gathering of My Name;You Don't Miss Your Water;andthe autobiography of a jukebox(Carnegie Mellon, 1997). Eady's most recent collection of poetry,Brutal Imagination,was a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award in Poetry.

One of his most popular works, Eady's bookBrutal Imagination(2001) comprises two cycles of poems, each confronting the same subject: the black man in whiteAmerica.The first cycle, which carries the book's title, is narrated largely by the "imaginary black man thatSusan Smithblamed for kidnapping her two children when in fact she had strapped her babies into the back of their family car and pushed the car into John D. Long Lake and let them drown. It took nine days for the authorities— the FBI and the sheriff— to break her story and so the premise is that for those nine days, that man is alive and walking among us, and it's a big what if: What if he could talk? What if he had the ability to speak? What would he have told us? "

The second cycle, "Running Man", focuses on the African-American family and the barriers of color and class. The title character represents every African-American male who has crashed into these barriers.

Bibliography

• Kartunes.West Orange, N.J.: Warthog Press. 1980.
• Victims of the Latest Dance Craze: Poems,Ommation Press, 1986,ISBN9780941240024;Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1997,ISBN9780887482540
• BOOM, BOOM, BOOM: A Chapbook,State Street Press, 1988
• The Gathering of My Name,Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1991,ISBN9780887481154
• You Don't Miss Your Water: Poems,Henry Holt, 1995,ISBN9780805036688;Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2004,ISBN9780887484162
• The Autobiography of a Jukebox: Poems,Carnegie Mellon Press, 1997; Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2007,ISBN9780887484704
• Brutal Imagination: Poems.G. P. Putnam's Sons. 2001.ISBN9781101143575.
• Hardheaded Weather: New and Selected Poems.Penguin. 2008.ISBN9780399154850.
• The War Against the Obvious,Jacar Press,ISBN978-0-936481-27-2

List of poems

Title	Year	First published	Reprinted/collected
Emmett Till's glass–top casket	2020	Eady, Cornelius (July 27, 2020)."Emmett Till's glass–top casket".The New Yorker.Vol. 96, no. 21. p. 27.

External links

• Text of Selected Poems
• Academy of American Poets Biography
• Blackbird: an online journal of literature and the arts
• Eady interviewonWords on a Wire,November 27, 2011.
• Podcast at Badilisha Poetry Exchange
• Cornelius Eady Papers.James Weldon Johnson Collection in the Yale Collection of Americaln Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.