Signals: Poems

South Carolina Poetry Book Prize

by Ed Madden, Afaa Weaver (Foreword)

Meditations on personal and cultural memory, race, and sexuality in the New South

Selected by Afaa Weaver as the third annual winner of the South Carolina Poetry Book Prize, Signals is the first book-length collection from Ed Madden. Deeply rooted in the recognizable landscapes and legacies of the American South, these lyric poems couple daring engagements in topics of race and sexuality with tender reflections on personal and cultural histories. Madden's adopted home of South Carolina rises to the surface in poems set at Folly Beach, Fort Moultrie, Lake Keowee, and Middleton Place. His interrogations of social oppression conjure the ubiquitous iconography of the bygone Confederacy, a first encounter with the miniseries Roots, and a cameo appearance by Strom Thurmond. In the collection's central section, Madden turns to issues of sexual difference, community formation, and the place of gay men in contemporary Southern culture. Throughout Madden repeatedly turns to the artifacts that demarcate his memories of youth in the rural South to ask how we define home, how we form meaning out of the silences and losses of the past, and what rituals and relationships might sustain us as we inch forward across a rough terrain of shifting emotional and moral challenges.

Genres: Poetry

69 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2008

About the author

An associate professor of English at USC, Ed Madden is the author of three books of poetry, most recently Nest (Salmon 2014). His work also appears in Best New Poets 2007 and elsewhere. He is also the editor of Out Loud: The Best of Rainbow Radio. In January 2015, he was named the Poet Laureate of the City of Columbia, South Carolina.

Reviews

[Jennifer Collins · Rating 3 out of 5]

Much of this collection is devoted to nature and place-based poetry that has a quiet power, complete with some gorgeous images. It's not the sort of poetry I normally seek out, and although I can appreciate it for the images it evokes and the South Carolina it brings to mind for me, it doesn't quite have an emotional impact for me. The more powerful poems are those which marry the poet's sense of place with a quiet examination of race/race relations/racism--these poems being few and far between, but intensely quiet and thoughtful in a way that makes them resonate on a deeper level. Between those and the lovely language throughout this collection, and the images that bring to mind South Carolina (where I lived for five years and hope to eventually get back to), I'm glad to have come across this collection. I'm sure I'll revisit some of the poems in the future.

[Terri · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ed Madden is one of the best modern poets I've ever read. In Signals he struggles with what it means to be Southern. He writes about the setting- South Carolina, Arkansas. He writes about race. He writes about love and history and hidden things.

I listened to him read from Signals at the 2008 Southern Festival of Books. Ever since, I've given long and serious thought to where I would like to die. And that, my friends, is good poetry.

I finished Signals laying on a blanket in a newly mowed hayfield on my mother's farm, with my husband asleep next to me. The sky was blue and a Hawk circled us, curious. After every poem I had to lay down the book, look around, take in my surroundings and think about the images- the ones in the poem and the ones surrounding me. It is an impressionist's book about moments and places and the people who inhabit moments.

I can't recommend it highly enough.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book, winner of the South Carolina poetry book prize, captures the poet's confrontations with race and sexuality in the South. Madden has a remarkable sense of place; his poems catapult the reader into the often dark places his poems inhabit, in terms of geography but also of history. Beautiful and haunting. Very highly recommended.