Cornelius Eadys Poetry - Essay Example

The major stimulus of Eady’s “Brutal Imagination” is race and racism in America. On October 25, 1994, in Union, South Carolina, 23-year-old, Caucasian, Susan Smith drowned her two young sons, 3-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alex, in a South Carolina lake (King, 1). She tried to cover up that brutal crime by accusing and fabricating a false story that her car, along with her two young children, had been stolen by an unidentified black man, who had forced her from the car and then disappeared with her offspring and vehicle in Union County, South Carolina. Smith’s concocted tale fueled very high racial tensions in Union, S.C. Fortunately, nine days later, the whole tension was diffused when she confessed that had let her car, with the two infants strapped in the back seat, drift deep into the John D. Long Lake, not too far from her home. Nimaginary the imaginary black man that Susan Smith falsely claimed had abducted her children, however, existed in reality in the minds of the American public for nine days until the truth surfaced about her infanticide (Jansen, 1).“Brutal Imagination” narrates Eady’s persona - the black man, invented by white consciousness, particularly by Susan Smith like individuals. He, for the most part, writes in the voice of the imaginary kidnapper, using the details of the case to investigate the way the black man lives in the white imagination. The black man’s character draws power both from the real and fictional realms for his existence. “Susan Smith willed me alive/At the moment/Her babies sank into the lake/When called, I come” he explains in “How I Got Born,” the collection’s opening poem (Rakoff, para. 6).

Eady’s work transcends the public arena and moves within Smith’s imagination. In poems like “Birthing”, the spirit takes form; I am not me, yet. /I am just an understanding” Eady continues to delve into the mind and body of this imagined black man who stalks and preys on white women and their children in poems like “My Heart,” “My Face” and “Press Conference” where he lurks just behind the screen of Smith's lie and reports, like an entry to a travel diary (Bashir, 2007, pin his-5). Also, in his poem” Where Am I?” he nationalities on his functional fictionality in perpetrating racial mistrust in a divided land: I flicker from TV to TV… / I hover/ over so many lawns, so many cups of coffee. //I pour from lip to lip. Abstractly dispersed across the white field of vision, “a shadow on the water glass, / Changing hues, The slant of my nose and eyes. Depending on the light /And the question,” young black men are typecast as menaces to society, to be hauled out periodically for a symbolic and cosmetic justice (Deniz, para.2).

The second section entitled “The Running Man Poems” illustrates the barriers in a white racist society that often tear apart the black family and defer the dreams of black youth. The theme of the poem “Running Man,” used in Eady’s libretto is also used for Diedre Murray’s 1999 Pulitzer Prize-nominated jazz opera. Examining the violent death of a black youth and its effect on his family, these powerful poems also focus on expectation weight expectation and its uneasy converse with reality. Defying the role usually allotted to his kind, Tommy (the running man) shows intellectual promise, ambition, and sensitivity at an early age, "proof that maybe not everything happens …The way they say it should.” But in the end, he is still dragged down by that heavy burden—unable to run quite fast enough. Still, words can hold the weight aloft long enough to speak painful, necessary truths. The power of his work is such that, even thus diluted, Brutal Imagination is a haunting collection. Fans of Eady’s work will find that it shows a profound expansion of his considerable gift, and contains his most piercing work to date. Read More