suddenly we

by Evie Shockley

Overview

Evie Shockley's new poems invite us to dream—and work—toward a more capacious "we"

Finalist for the 2024 National Book Award for Poetry

In her new poetry collection, Evie Shockley mobilizes visual art, sound, and multilayered language to chart routes towards openings for the collective dreaming of a more capacious "we." How do we navigate between the urgency of our own becoming and the imperative insight that whoever we are, we are in relation to each other? Beginning with the visionary art of Black women like Alison Saar and Alma Thomas, Shockley's poems draw and forge a widening constellation of connections that help make visible the interdependence of everyone and everything on Earth.

perched

i am black, comely,
a girl on the cusp of desire.
my dangling toes take the rest
the rest of my body refuses. spine upright,
my pose proposes anticipation. i poise
in copper-colored tension, intent on
manifesting my soul in the discouraging world.

under the rough eyes of others, i stiffen.

if i must be hard, it will be as a tree, alive
with change. inside me, a love of beauty rises
like sap, sprouts from my scalp
and stretches forth. i send out my song, an aria
blue and feathered, and grow toward it,
choirs bare, but soon to bud. i am
black and becoming.

        —after Alison Saar's Blue Bird

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780819500458
Publisher:	Wesleyan University Press
Publication date:	03/07/2023
Series:	Wesleyan Poetry Series
Pages:	112
Sales rank:	241,957
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 9.30(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

EVIE SHOCKLEY, (Jersey City, NJ) poet and scholar, is the Zora Neale Hurston Professor of English at Rutgers University. A Lannan Literary Award-winner, she is the author of multiple books of poetry including a half-red sea; the new black, which received the 2012 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Poetry; and semiautomatic, which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2018.

Table of Contents

alma's arkestral vision (or, farther out)

we :: becoming & going

perched

no car for colored (+) ladies (or, miss wells goes off [on] the rails)• the blessings the beauties: third dimension

blues-elegy for cheryl

(in)site unseen

sol(ace) song

the lost track of time

we :: uppity & down

women's voting rights at one hundred (but who's counting?) •nature studies

fruitful

dive in

what does it mean to be human?

in this light

"the musician stands out" (or, le musée de l'orangerie curates a history lesson)

breonna taylor's final rest (or, the furies are still activists)

color-bleeding

destin(ed)ation

migratory patterns: birds of paradise

we :: indurate & out

virtually free

fire works

can't unsee 50 an inoculation against innocence

one foot out of the panorama

umbra's ell

in relation: a semi-cento with, for, and about john keene (et al.)

jury duty

prefixed

holla •anti-immigration

ex patria

we :: adhere & there

the center of a tension

direct to your table

we'd like to propose—

brava gente

pantoum: 2020

sonnet for the long second act

facing south •les milles

notes

acknowledgements

Editorial Reviews

"suddenly we sings the nuanced realities of Black life as homage, elegy, and polyphonic celebration striking at the core of remembrance. A deep and unfettered thinking, Shockley gives us shouts of joy amidst the drudge of a world unraveled."—Matthew Shenoda, author of Tahrir Suite

From the Publisher

★ 04/01/2023

"we are the sailors/ we are the ships/ we are the stars/ we are the night": so declares Pulitzer Prize finalist Shockley (semiautomatic) as she embarks on a journey to discover who we might become to ourselves, to others, together. There's a contained majesty to this work, a grandeur to the perfectly pared lines, as Shockley steers us through the shimmering spaces of the first section toward a u-shaped figure made of we's pointedly disclosing the words unique and universe, crucial polarities uniting to form a whole. The second section, "we: becoming & going," opens with "perched," a poem expressing exactly the sense of anticipation brimming throughout; the speaker, like a tree, is "alive with change." But as the section's subsequent portraits show, becoming fully alive is not always easy, particularly for Black women—Mammy "served as a container for others' woe"—and the section concludes with a sense of lost time, detour, roads blocked. Starting with "/ a flock of votes, a pride of votes, a murder of votes/ can really make a difference," the volume's increasingly expansive poems move forward to a greater sense of community, to the need for a "suddenly we." VERDICT Another accomplished work from Shockley; highly recommended.—Barbara Hoffert

Library Journal

★ 02/20/2023

This verbally and visually stirring outing from Shockley (Semiautomatic) offers a rewarding mix of short and long poems, elegies and odes, images, repetitions, and “conversations” with writers and artists. The expansive “we” in this collection is paramount, encompassing a mighty chorus of “I”s. Shockley’s poems are risk-taking and significant as they explore how society’s expectations and suppositions cage individuals into categories that squash individual narratives: “a woman is innocent until proven/ angry. a man is innocent until/ he fits the profile. a child is/ innocent until she sees her mother/ or father in cuffs. can’t unsee.” Within Shockley’s investigation is a lush desire for intimacy and connection—that “we” that is so critical, especially today: “the question is: who was i when we last hugged so close our bones met? where are the coffee spoons of yesteryear? i’ve measured out my life in package deliveries and what’s in bloom... if you can locate my whenabouts on a calendar, come get me. i don’t know where i’m going, but i need a ride.” This collection is a welcome companion for that ride as it celebrates the collective, the “we” that is vital to survival. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly