{"product_id":"the-cachoeira-tales-and-other-poems-9780807130643","title":"The Cachoeira Tales and Other Poems","description":"\u003cp\u003eSoaring images, rhythmic language, and wry humor come together in these three narrative poems that explore travel from an African American historical and social perspective. A cab ride turns into an amazing encounter with the driver, an amateur physicist whose ideas about space and time travel spark the poet's musings on chutzpah and artistic ambition. A trip to Triolet, a Creole village in the Indian Ocean island nation of Mauritius, leads the poet to ponder the past and present as she reflects on the ironic complexities of the slave trade and its legacy shared by so many peoples. And in \"The Cachoeira Tales,\" longing to take her family on a journey to \"some place sanctified by the Negro soul,\" the poet finds herself in Brazil's Bahia, along with a theater director, a jazz musician, a retired commercial pilot, an activist, a university student, and two mysterious African American women whom they meet along the way. In rhymed couplets, each pilgrim tells a story, and the result is a rollicking, sensual exploration of spirit and community, with a nod to Chaucer and to traditional Trickster tales. \u003cbr\u003eUsing her remarkable ability to educate and inspire, Marilyn Nelson demonstrates the power of travel to transform our imaginations. We have long known that travel broadens; in these poems, it also deepens and makes wiser.\u003cbr\u003eJoined skin to skin, we moved like molecules\u003cbr\u003ein the great, impossible miracle\u003cbr\u003eof atmosphere, swaying to the music, \u003cbr\u003eall eyes on the stage, all hearts attuning\u003cbr\u003ethemselves in beautiful polyrhythmy, \u003cbr\u003eone shaking booty. On one side of me\u003cbr\u003ea young man danced; I felt his muscled warmth\u003cbr\u003eflow into mine, his pure, sexual strength.\u003cbr\u003eOn my other sides young women danced, whose curves\u003cbr\u003ebumped me softly, dancing without reserve, \u003cbr\u003ehands waving in the air, releasing scent\u003cbr\u003efragrant as nard. We danced in reverent, \u003cbr\u003esilent assent to the praise-song of drums.\u003cbr\u003e -- from \"Olodum\" of \"The Cachoeira Tales\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eMarilyn Nelson is the author of eight volumes of poetry, including The Fields of Praise, Magnificat, and The Homeplace. She has been a National Book Award finalist on three occasions and has received the Anisfield-Wolf Award, the Poets' Prize, the Boston Globe \/ Horn Book Award, a Newbery Honor Award, and a Coretta Scott King Honor Award.. The daughter of a career U.S. Air Force officer, she was born in Cleveland, Ohio, grew up on air bases all over the country, and wrote her first poem at age eleven. She is a professor emerita of English at the University of Connecticut and Poet Laureate of Connecticut.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"LSU Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50527332303122,"sku":"9780807130643","price":14.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_f5e69247-7a6b-485e-8ae7-eb1de06c2466.jpg?v=1731298095","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/the-cachoeira-tales-and-other-poems-9780807130643","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}