Red Clay Suite

by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

In her third book of poems, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers expresses her familiarity with the actual and imaginary spaces that the American South occupies in our cultural lexicon. Her two earlier books of poetry, The Gospel of Barbecue and Outlandish Blues, use the blues poetic to explore notions of history and trauma. Now, in Red Clay Suite , Jeffers approaches the southern landscape as utopia and dystopia—a crossroads of race, gender, and blood. These poems signal the ending movement of her crossroads blues and complete the last four “bars” of a blues song, resting on the final, and essential, note of resolution and reconciliation.

Genres: Poetry, African American

88 pages, Paperback

First published March 26, 2007

About the author

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers was born in 1967 and grew up in Durham, North Carolina, and Atlanta, Georgia. Her work examines culture, religion, race, and family. Her first book, The Gospel of Barbecue (2000), won the Stan and Tom Wick poetry prize and was a 2001 Paterson Poetry prize finalist.

Jeffers’s poetry has appeared in the American Poetry Review, Callaloo, the Iowa Review, Ploughshares, and Prairie Schooner. Her work has been anthologized in numerous volumes, including Roll Call: A Generational Anthology of Social and Political Black Literature and Art (2002) and These Hands I Know: Writing About the African American Family (2002). Jeffers has also published fiction in the Indiana Review, the Kenyon Review, the New England Review, and Story Quarterly.

The recipient of honors from the Rona Jaffe Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, and the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund for Women, Jeffers teaches creative writing at the University of Oklahoma where she is an associate professor of English.

Reviews

[Raymond · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many of the poems in this collection echo themes that are also in the author's novel The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois. Many of the poems deal with the land in Georgia and Oklahoma, the Native Americans who inhabited that land before us, and their relations with Black people. Other poems seem more autobiographical especially those that deal with a daughter's relationship with their father (who is a poet) and the father's abusiveness to the mother and daughter. There are also poems about dreams, visions, and connecting with the ancestors. Very good collection, definitely had a down home feel to it.

Favorite poems in this collection: "Passing"; "Giving Thanks for Water"; "An Angel, Unaware"; "The Compass of Moss"; "I've Been Up Late Reading the Book of Poems You Inscribed and Mailed to Me"; "The Blues I Don't Want to Remember"; "The Little Boy Who Will Be My Father"; "Hawk Hook Tea"; "Oklahoma Naming".

[LaTrice McNeil-Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whew! So many poems that hit you in the gut. Honorée been through some stuff 😩 and this woman can WRITE!

[Alicia (PrettyBrownEyeReader) · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the Field Mob version of the song, Georgia there is a line that says “But ain’t nothing like that GA red clay.” Honoree Fanonne Jeffers echoes that sentiment in this deeply personal collection of poems. Professor Jeffers explores historical events, her relationship with her father and the experiences of people indigenous to the United States.

The collection starts with the title poem, Red Clay Suite which explores the role of red clay throughout the poet’s family history. A very moving poem that fits the sentiment of the entire collection.

[Kent · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jeffers does great work defining personal history, and how these events that happen with little regard for our own satisfaction or needs are the crucial experiences our identity is built upon. There could be criticism that this is mere identity politics poetry, but I would say that Jeffers' concerns aren't given a preference over someone else. I get the feeling that this speaker would sympathize with me, as she asks me to sympathize with her, as any poem invites its reader inside the speaker.

[Sandy D. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short book of recent poems about the South, the Plains, race, the blues, gardens, parents, the funerals of relatives, going home as an adult.