{"title":"Frank X. Walker","description":"FRANK W WALKER is the 2013-2014 poet laureate of Kentucky. He is an associate professor of English at the University of Kentucky and the editor of Pluck! The Journal of Affrilachian Arts \u0026amp; Culture. A Lannan Literary Fellowship for Poetry recipient, he is the author of five collections of poetry, including Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York, which won the Lillian Smith Book Award, and Isaac Murphy: I Dedicate This Ride.","products":[{"product_id":"load-in-nine-times-poems-hardcover","title":"Load in Nine Times: Poems - Hardcover","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFor decades Frank X Walker has reclaimed essential American lives through his pathbreaking historical poetry. In this stirring new collection, he reimagines the experiences of Black Civil War soldiers--including his own ancestors--who enlisted in the Union army in exchange for emancipation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Moving chronologically from antebellum Kentucky through Reconstruction, Walker braids the voices of the United States Colored Troops with their family members, as well as slave owners and prominent historical figures from Abraham Lincoln to Frederick Douglas and Margaret Garner. Imbued with atmospheric imagery, these persona poems and more \"[clarify] not only the inextricable value of Black life and labor to the building of America, but the terrible price they were forced to pay in producing that labor\" (Khadijah Queen). \"How do you un-orphan a people?\" Walker asks. \"How do you pick up \/ shattered black porcelain and make \/ a new set of dishes fit to eat off?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e While carefully attuned to the heartbreak and horrors of war, Walker's poems pay equal care to the pride, perseverance, and triumphs of their speakers. Evoking the formerly enslaved General Charles Young, Walker hums: \"I am America's promise, my mother's song, \/ and the reason my father had every right to dream.\" Expansive and intimate, \u003cem\u003eLoad in Nine Times\u003c\/em\u003e is a resounding ode to the powerful ties of individual and cultural ancestry by an indelible voice in American poetry.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51368275345631,"sku":"9781324094937","price":26.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/LGp3pSEKYK9781324094937.webp?v=1789125163"},{"product_id":"load-in-nine-times-poems-paperback","title":"Load in Nine Times: Poems - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFor decades Frank X Walker has reclaimed essential American lives through his pathbreaking historical poetry. In this stirring new collection, he reimagines the experiences of Black Civil War soldiers--including his own ancestors--who enlisted in the Union army in exchange for emancipation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Moving chronologically from antebellum Kentucky through Reconstruction, Walker braids the voices of the United States Colored Troops with their family members, as well as slave owners and prominent historical figures from Abraham Lincoln to Frederick Douglas and Margaret Garner. Imbued with atmospheric imagery, these persona poems and more \"[clarify] not only the inextricable value of Black life and labor to the building of America, but the terrible price they were forced to pay in producing that labor\" (Khadijah Queen). \"How do you un-orphan a people?\" Walker asks. \"How do you pick up \/ shattered black porcelain and make \/ a new set of dishes fit to eat off?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e While carefully attuned to the heartbreak and horrors of war, Walker's poems pay equal care to the pride, perseverance, and triumphs of their speakers. Evoking the formerly enslaved General Charles Young, Walker hums: \"I am America's promise, my mother's song, \/ and the reason my father had every right to dream.\" Expansive and intimate, \u003cem\u003eLoad in Nine Times\u003c\/em\u003e is a resounding ode to the powerful ties of individual and cultural ancestry by an indelible voice in American poetry.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51368943812831,"sku":"9781324098508","price":17.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/31EBVHS9Z9781324098508.webp?v=1789135918"},{"product_id":"turn-me-loose-the-unghosting-of-medgar-evers-paperback","title":"Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003eAround the void left by the murder of Medgar Evers in 1963, the poems in this collection speak, unleashing the strong emotions both before and after the moment of assassination. Poems take on the voices of Evers's widow, Myrlie; his brother, Charles; his assassin, Byron De La Beckwith; and each of De La Beckwith's two wives. Except for the book's title,\"Turn me loose,\" which were his final words, Evers remains in this collection silent. Yet the poems accumulate facets of the love and hate with which others saw this man, unghosting him in a way that only imagination makes possible.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51378338496735,"sku":"9780820345413","price":23.71,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/KXa76Mdmhd9780820345413.webp?v=1789254437"},{"product_id":"about-flight-paperback","title":"About Flight - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Up until this point in American history, no poet has written an honest and believable lament about the crippling effects from the tornado swirl of a crack pipe, how a little rock being melted between thin mesh screen creates pallid smoke: a monster, a slave to the white lady that is cocaine. In About Flight, Frank X Walker gives us the beautiful ugly narrative of a brother who is wrestling with chemical dependency, and losing. The high, in all of its beautiful contradictions takes on the metaphor of flight, and so we soar through the terrible highs and lows of a protagonist who carries his family with him into the den of iniquity.\" --Randall Horton\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51378353733855,"sku":"9781936628360","price":10.8,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/QS8fZuLr479781936628360.webp?v=1789254476"},{"product_id":"masked-man-black-paperback","title":"Masked Man, Black - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"We all wear masks. There are people with whom we can take our masks off and speak from the heart. Professor Walker is an expert in masks, or personas. And he well knows that sometimes masks let us speak deep truths about the world. He also knows masks sometimes protect us, sometimes keep us from ourselves, and sometimes cause us pain. Paul Dunbar, in \"We Wear the Mask,\" asks of the world and of poetry, \"Why should the world be over-wise, \/ In counting all our tears and sighs?\" Yet, it seems that now, as then, the world pays too little attention to the tears and sighs about which Dunbar sings. We are so grateful that Walker has taken the time to sit with death and pain and heartbreak, to sit and tune his voice to sing these elegies, so that we can gather around him to sing through our tears with head held high. \" -Jeremy Paden\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51378373984479,"sku":"9781936628599","price":17.28,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/f8v_qFrYAY9781936628599.webp?v=1789254532"},{"product_id":"love-house-paperback","title":"Love House - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"In his new book of poems, Love House, Frank X Walker invites his readers in and speaks to them with consummate grace and intimacy about the things that matter most: loving, parenting, aging, living, dying, as well as basketball, birds, gardens, and golf. Walker, who is well known for giving voice to historical characters and bringing their stories to life, uses his insight, imagination, and hard-earned wisdom to write about himself and his family, including secrets, fears, and the unsolved mysteries that underlie daily living. Love House is \"made of air, poems, books, and art\" and real loving people brought to the page by one of today's finest and most prolific poets.\" - Greg Pape, author of A Field of First Things\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51378379522271,"sku":"9781961127036","price":27.36,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/odTCSm2MOH9781961127036.webp?v=1789254558"}],"url":"https:\/\/blackandbarhe.com\/collections\/frank-x-walker.oembed","provider":"Black \u0026 Barhe Bookstore","version":"1.0","type":"link"}