The Fateful Apple

"The Fateful Apple" mines the sensibility of the blues and these poems reside in what has come to be called by scholars the "matrix" of the blues, the intersection of shared history, artistic techniques and sensibilities, and individual creativity which marks this most defining of our cultural forms. As in Lucille Clifton's rewriting of the Bible to reclaim sexuality, imagination, and joy, "The Fateful Apple" gives us a taste of all that there is to gain from the loss of the false paradise of the blithe unknowing that animates our normalizing conventions. Channeling the magic of Eve and her punishment, the collection opens readers to the possibilities of new ways of knowing one another.