{"id":14224,"date":"2020-02-06T14:18:09","date_gmt":"2020-02-06T19:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/?page_id=14224"},"modified":"2024-12-03T21:58:32","modified_gmt":"2024-12-04T02:58:32","slug":"fantasia-for-the-man-in-blue","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/fantasia-for-the-man-in-blue\/","title":{"rendered":"Fantasia for the Man in Blue"},"content":{"rendered":"[column col=”1\/4″]\n\n\"\"<\/a>\n

paper \u2022 152 pages \u2022 16.95\nISBN-13: 978-1-945588-49-5<\/p>\n

Add to Cart<\/a><\/p>\n[\/column]\n[column col=”3\/4″]\n

Fantasia for the Man in Blue<\/em><\/h1>\n

Tommye Blount<\/h2>\n

Finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry.<\/a><\/h5>\n
Finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award in Poetry.\u00a0<\/a><\/h5>\n
Finalist for the Hurston\/Wright Legacy Award in Poetry.\u00a0<\/a><\/h5>\n
Finalist for the Publishing Triangle Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry<\/a>.<\/h5>\n
Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Gay Poetry.<\/a><\/h5>\n
Finalist for the Julie Suk Award.<\/a><\/h5>\n
Finalist for the 2020 Big Other Book Award for Poetry.<\/a><\/h5>\n
Longlisted for the Believer Book Award in Poetry.<\/a><\/h5>\n
Featured in Poets & Writers<\/em>.\u00a0<\/a><\/h5>\n
Received a starred review in<\/a> Booklist<\/em><\/a>.<\/h5>\n
Received a starred review in Publishers Weekly<\/em><\/a>.<\/h5>\n
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In his debut collection, Fantasia for the Man in Blue<\/em>, Tommye Blount orchestrates a chorus of distinct, unforgettable voices that speak to the experience of the black, queer body as a site of desire and violence. A black man\u2019s late-night encounter with a police officer \u2013 the titular \u201cman in blue\u201d \u2013 becomes an extended meditation on a dangerous, erotic fantasy. The late Luther Vandross, resurrected here in a suite of poems, addresses the contradiction between his public persona and a life spent largely in the closet: \u201cIt\u2019s a calling, this hunger \/ to sing for a love I\u2019m too ashamed to want for myself.\u201d In \u201cAaron McKinney Cleans His Magnum,\u201d the convicted killer imagines the barrel of the gun he used to bludgeon Matthew Shepard as an \u201cinfant\u2019s small mouth\u201d as well as the \u201csad calculator\u201d that was \u201cbuilt to subtract from and divide a town.\u201d In these and other poems, Blount viscerally captures the experience of the \u201cother\u201d and locates us squarely within these personae.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\nThe bug<\/strong>\n
<\/div>\nlands on my pretty man\u2019s forearm. Harmless,\nit isn\u2019t deadly at all; makes his muscle flutter\n\u2014the one that gets his hand to hold mine, or\nball into a fist, or handle a gun. It\u2019s a ladybug,\nor an Asian Lady Beetle everyone mistakes\nfor a Ladybug\u2014eating whatever\nit lands on. My pretty man is asleep\u2014at ease, or\nplotting like the bug. Or maybe the bug\nis a blowfly\u2014eating my pretty man\u2019s tan\nfrom his pretty arm. My man swats it\nwithout waking, as if he\u2019s dreaming of an enemy,\nor me. When my pretty man isn\u2019t asleep\nhe\u2019s got a temper.\n\nNo, he is not\nasleep. He\u2019s wide awake and wants me to tell you<\/span>\nI\u2019m wrong. Blowflies don\u2019t eat skin,\n<\/span>they lay eggs on skin. He knows all about\n<\/span>blowfly larvae. Napoleon used them\n<\/span>to clean war wounds, my cold pretty man\n<\/span>says in that pretty way,\n<\/span>with his cold pretty mouth. He\u2019s eaten plenty\nof bugs before. On night watch,\nover there. Over there, they\u2019re everywhere.\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n[\/column]\nAbout the Author<\/a>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[column col=”1\/4″] paper \u2022 152 pages \u2022 16.95 ISBN-13: 978-1-945588-49-5 Add to Cart [\/column] [column col=”3\/4″] Fantasia for the Man in Blue Tommye Blount Finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry. Finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award in Poetry.\u00a0 Finalist for the Hurston\/Wright Legacy Award in Poetry.\u00a0 Finalist for the Publishing Triangle Thom […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-14224","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/14224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14224"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/14224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20514,"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/14224\/revisions\/20514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}