a little bump in the earth

by Tyree Daye

Through invention and remembrance, a little bump in the earth creates a black town on a hill—its land, its losses, its living and ancestral dead. Tyree Daye’s a little bump in the earth is an act of invention and remembrance. Through sprawling poems, the town of Youngsville, North Carolina, where Daye's family has lived for the last 200 years, is reclaimed as “Ritual House.” Here, “every cousin   aunt   uncle    ghost” is welcome. Daye invokes real and imagined people, the ancestral dead, land, snakes, and chickens, to create a black town on a hill. Including dreams, letters, revised rental agreements, and “a little museum in the here & after,” where collaged images appear besides documents from Daye’s ancestors—census records, marriage licenses, and WWII Draft Registration cards—the collection asks if the past can be a portal to the future, the present a catalyst for the past. a little bump in the earth explores what it means to love someone, someplace, even as it changes, dies right in front of your eyes. Poem by poem, Daye is honoring the people of Youngsville and “bringing back the dead.”

Genres: Poetry

104 pages, Paperback

Published April 2, 2024

Reviews

[Dan Marcantuono · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I’ll never show you where we hid the children // we kept them in eyesight // like tears”

“an angel would witness a child // wield their will so wholly // the wound would lose its mind & steal a lamb // or any soft white animal // just to leave it dead // in someone’s yard // like a cloud pulled down”

“her hurt was a spindle to her love”

[Mya Matteo · Rating 5 out of 5]

gorgeous, floaty linework, sprawling depictions of Black life

the people in this poems are rendered so tenderly.

“mamas who sing what they could not name / then pass the song on to you”.

[Syd · Rating 5 out of 5]

got a review copy through work and I am so in awe. a truly truly beautiful collection.

[Cary Draper · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poems (songs) of the ancestors in Youngsville, NC. “Cantaloupe Stories” and “Happy Birthday to Ya” were my favorites.

[Quoth the Robyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

"a Sunday when nobody died for years"

a little bump in the earth by Tyree Daye is a story about family, love, home, and what passes through the heart. Daye draws a family tree and prunes each family members roots with nostalgia and air. This collection is scrapbook of memories Daye is actively planting into the ground, knowing that they will be there forever, knowing that nothing is lost when it is gone.

"to let the moon touch me on the mouth"

While I felt the collection wanted to stay grounded in its homage to family and memory, I often felt that the poems became untethered and lost their footing. Each poem held within it an anchoring point, but quickly let that anchor go to drift away and dissipate. I wanted to stay in the Earth, but these poems felt too ephemeral at times.

[Gabriel Noel · Rating 4 out of 5]

ARC given by Edelweiss+ for Honest Review

An ancestral journey through Youngsville, North Carolina where Daye's family has lived for centuries. Themes of love, loss, grief, and family run throughout. The language is fresh, vibrant, and playful.
The incorporation of draft records, pictures, and letters make this especially moving and interesting.

My favorite poems are: "Begin with Me", "Friday Night on the Hill", "'tween my gone people & me", and "what the angels eat."

Definitely worth a read.

[Cherry Cheesman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful collection. A masterpiece of contemporary southern literature. Daye’s images are open, inviting, and deeply accessible, while still being layered, nuanced, and thought-provoking. Daye’s world is constructed of realities that edge on struggle and grief, that are transformed deeply by a profound love and empathy. I strive to make work as audience-focused as Daye. Blown away by this, even if I don’t necessarily think everything experimental in the collection is successful.

[Ambrose Miles · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started out slow and low, sure not to rate Tyree’s poetry five stars. Along about 11:00 at night reading aloud, still slow, the poetry excellent, coasting into five stars. The poet is also an artist both in word and visible. Wonderful!

[Matthew Talamini · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don’t know if I’m a good judge of this kind of poetry. I’m sure the author’s family is very nice, but I’m not terribly interested in their history and genealogy. Overall, there are three or four stanzas in the book that I really liked.

[Reagan Kapasi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Liked: homage to family, innovative style (rental agreement and documents). Disliked: little personal overlap with the narrative/experiences made it somewhat inaccessible.

[Shawn Aebi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reminisces and artifacts from a storied place filled with angels, loud happy dogs and good earth.

[S꩜phie]

Another one of my Kenyon Review instructors 🍄

[Vivienne Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read for class, loved, I love poetry and this was incredible

[ally · Rating 3 out of 5]

I went to Tyree Daye's reading at NYU's Lillian Vernon a few weeks ago and bought this collection. I enjoyed how deeply familial it is. I liked the details such as the blue Toyota, Budweiser 40s, etc that make the poems so intimate and specific to Daye's family. I also loved so many of the descriptions like "splinter-giving-picnic-table" and "rivered us clean."

What drew me to "a little bump in the earth," though, was "a little museum in the herein-&-after"— a ~20 page multimedia "museum" with pictures/collages and experimental writing (fill-in-the-blanks, a block of prose, a list of names, etc)

"Space became the vehicle where we could see the people we were missing again. Poetry and all art allow for this, a timelessness that creates a path that resists the linear" (46).