Antebellum Dream Book - Paperback

by Elizabeth Alexander (Author)

In surprising turns through different American cities, mindsets, and eras, and through the strange rhythms of dreaming, the celebrated poet Elizabeth Alexander composes her own kind of improvisational jazz. Antebellum Dream Book offers a music of resistances as well as soaring flights of fancy: the conflicts of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and after; a mother's struggle to see through a postpartum fog; a vision in which the poet takes on the narrative voice of Muhammad Ali. The New York Times Book Review has said that "Alexander creates intellectual magic in poem after poem." In this stunning collection, she furthers her reputation as a vital and vivid poetic voice keenly attuned to our ideas of race, gender, politics, and motherhood.

Author Biography

Elizabeth Alexander was born in New York City and grew up in Washington, DC. She has read her poetry and lectured on African American literature and culture across the country and abroad. She teaches poetry in the Cave Canem Poetry Workshop and at Yale University.