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A Hard Summation
A HARD SUMMATION is a suite of 13 new poems by Afaa Michael Weaver, covering the history of African Americans from the Middle Passage to Now. Like a rite of passage, struggle has been unyielding and synonymous with the black experience in America. In this rich compilation, Weaver unearths a genealogical deficit that permeates through generations. But in this collection, you won't hear the poems cry foul or attempt to appease friend or offend foe. Its intention is hardly to be conclusive. When you add it all up, A HARD SUMMATION offers us an opportunity to listen, celebrate, commemorate, and appreciate the successes and failures of the past in order to develop a current and contextual understanding of what it means to be Black and American.
- GenresPoetry
44 pages, Paperback
First published July 18, 2014
9 people want to read
About the author
Afaa Michael Weaver
22 books19 followersAfaa Michael Weaver was born Michael S. Weaver and grew up in East Baltimore, the son of a beautician and a steelworker. He entered the University of Maryland–College Park at the age of 16 and studied engineering for two years. He then joined the Army Reserves and worked alongside his father at the Bethlehem Steel mill. His firstborn son died at 10 months of complications from Down syndrome. Weaver worked at the mill and, later, a factory for a total of 15 years, writing poetry on coffee breaks, before publishing his first collection, Water Song (1985). It is a time he describes as a literary apprenticeship, during which he founded 7th Son Press and the journal Blind Alleys. He then earned an MA in theater and playwriting from Brown University, concurrent with a BA from Excelsior College.
Influenced by Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Michael Harper, and Jay Wright, Weaver writes poetry that engages the intersection of contemporary African American culture, the African American literary tradition, and the technical constraints of contemporary Chinese poetry. “He explores and rethinks questions of identity. Over the years, he has listened to a chorus of other voices, the inflections of the past, as they have come together to shape and enlarge his own distinctive, musical voice,” Ed Hirsch observed of Weaver’s Timber and Prayer (1995).
Weaver’s numerous collections of poetry include The Plum Flower Dance: Poems 1985 to 2005 (2007). He edited the anthology These Hands I Know: African-American Writers on Family (2002), and co-edited Gathering Voices (1985) with James Taylor and David Beaudouin. Weaver has been awarded a Pushcart Prize and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pew Foundation, and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. He was a Poet-in-Residence at Bucknell University’s Stadler Center and taught as a Fulbright Fellow at National Taiwan University. Among Weaver’s achievements is his invention of a new poetic form, “The Bop,” which he created during a Cave Canem summer retreat.
He has taught at Rutgers University, Cave Canem, and Simmons College, where he co-founded the Zora Neale Hurston Literary Center and launched the International Chinese Poetry Conference.
In 1997, to mark his release from the weight of grief that he had carried since the death of his first son, Weaver chose a new name, Afaa, meaning “oracle,” with the help of Nigerian playwright Osonye Tess Onwueme.
Influenced by Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Michael Harper, and Jay Wright, Weaver writes poetry that engages the intersection of contemporary African American culture, the African American literary tradition, and the technical constraints of contemporary Chinese poetry. “He explores and rethinks questions of identity. Over the years, he has listened to a chorus of other voices, the inflections of the past, as they have come together to shape and enlarge his own distinctive, musical voice,” Ed Hirsch observed of Weaver’s Timber and Prayer (1995).
Weaver’s numerous collections of poetry include The Plum Flower Dance: Poems 1985 to 2005 (2007). He edited the anthology These Hands I Know: African-American Writers on Family (2002), and co-edited Gathering Voices (1985) with James Taylor and David Beaudouin. Weaver has been awarded a Pushcart Prize and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pew Foundation, and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. He was a Poet-in-Residence at Bucknell University’s Stadler Center and taught as a Fulbright Fellow at National Taiwan University. Among Weaver’s achievements is his invention of a new poetic form, “The Bop,” which he created during a Cave Canem summer retreat.
He has taught at Rutgers University, Cave Canem, and Simmons College, where he co-founded the Zora Neale Hurston Literary Center and launched the International Chinese Poetry Conference.
In 1997, to mark his release from the weight of grief that he had carried since the death of his first son, Weaver chose a new name, Afaa, meaning “oracle,” with the help of Nigerian playwright Osonye Tess Onwueme.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
November 16, 2014
This little book is a hard look at slavery in America. It should be required reading for children in schools across our country. In 13 poems Affa Michael Weaver gives breath and voice to the intergenerational trauma and it's roots in our history from the middle passage to the declaration of freedom to the preseent day.
In the final poem, which is also the poem the title of his book come from, On the Passing of Heaven Sutton, he writes,
...
"I am black because I enter that space, people
see I am the door to what they ache to know,
the long corridors and rooms of our freedom,
a place where I refurse to be told I cannot dream
my own dreams, a place where people like me
agree to offer love from an uneasy forgiveness.
Nights become deep stillness, I do a soul dance
with ancestors building a respite from history,
arguing against the hard summation of slavery,
the truth of our black wish for humanity, a seed
made from resistance, bright moments where
we teach America the song of our right to live."
In times like these, where black youth are being killed daily and black men are endangered, this is a necessary book. Affa is one of my heroes.
In the final poem, which is also the poem the title of his book come from, On the Passing of Heaven Sutton, he writes,
...
"I am black because I enter that space, people
see I am the door to what they ache to know,
the long corridors and rooms of our freedom,
a place where I refurse to be told I cannot dream
my own dreams, a place where people like me
agree to offer love from an uneasy forgiveness.
Nights become deep stillness, I do a soul dance
with ancestors building a respite from history,
arguing against the hard summation of slavery,
the truth of our black wish for humanity, a seed
made from resistance, bright moments where
we teach America the song of our right to live."
In times like these, where black youth are being killed daily and black men are endangered, this is a necessary book. Affa is one of my heroes.
Displaying 1 of 1 review