Eady, Cornelius: Brutal Imagination: Poems
Although this book is only slightly over 100 pages, the impact is huge. There are two cycles of poems, the first is from the point of view of a phantom young Black man who Susan Smith claimed kidnapped her two children, after she had actually drowned her children. The second cycle, called The Running Man Poems deals with a character based on reality, but whose legend is bigger than the person.
Brutal Imagination was a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry in 2001, and both cycles of poetry have been adapted into theater productions, led by Jazz composer Deidre Murray. In fact, Cornelius Eady, himself, leads a jazz trio, in addition to being a poet. This book is his seventh published collection.
Cornelius Eady Trio
Twelve of us met on Saturday, April 27th for our book discussion. As we usually do for National Poetry Month, we took turns reading the poems aloud.
I began by reading “Charles Stuart in the Hospital.” In 1998, in Boston, Charles Stuart, killed his pregnant wife and shot himself to make his story more believable, then claimed the assailant was a young Black male. I wanted to start out with this poem to demonstrate Eady’s use of “personification” of the phantom was the same in both Susan Smith’s and in Charles Stuart’s cases.
p.22 “I sat with her in the station
The way I sat with Charles
At the hospital:
A shadow on the water glass,
Changing hues,”
In addition to the fictitious character becoming personified in Eady’s work, the character also becomes fused with the person who created him. He only exists because she exists.
Shelara read us “My Heart”
p.6 “Like a bad lover, she has given me a poisoned heart.
It pounds both our ribs, black, angry, nothing but business.
Since her fear is my blood
And her need part mythical,
Everything she says about me is true.”
p.47 “The sheriff’s too good to be true.
He tries to urge Susan and me to part…
But we’re hard to untangle.”
There are a few pages in which other fictitious characters speak up in solidarity with the made-up character in this cycle of poems. They are Uncle Tom, Uncle Ben, Aunt Jemima, Buckwheat, and Stepin Fetchit.
p.29 “Uncle Ben Watches the Local News”
“Like him, I live, but never agreed to it.
A hand drew me out of some mad concern.
I was pulled together
To give, to cook
But never eat.”
We did spend a little time discussing the case in addition to reading the poems. Shelara mentioned the brutality of Susan Smith’s act was the proof of her brutal imagination. She could have just given the children to their dad, but she wanted to punish him. She actually laughed once during a news conference that took place during the nine days she kept up her façade. She had strapped her two children into their car seats and pushed the car into a lake. As she walked up the embankment she stopped at the first house in view and started the story about the Black man who kidnapped her kids. Everyone in town spent nine days searching for the “suspect” and the children, and some people in town even said they saw them.
Kay agreed, saying, “She was only thinking of herself.”
Sheina told us that she was reminded of another case: the case of Diane Downes who shot her three children in 1983 and blamed it on a “carjacker.”
Ann pointed out that psychopaths often end up in jail because they have no empathy.
Nancy elaborated, saying, Susan Smith was diagnosed with a personality disorder and mental illness. We read, “Why I am not a woman” on page 18 and Kay pointed out that “if you’ve ever been in a car that children had been in, you’d notice right away: the car seat or booster seat, the spilled food and drinks, and toys rolling around on the floors.”
We talked a lot about the intimidation of approaching poetry. I shared with the group that I don’t have to be able to decode all the lines in the poem. I only have to appreciate the lines that I like. Shelara expanded, saying, “trying to find meaning is the wrong way to approach poetry.”
We spent so much time on the first cycle of poems, we were hardly able to talk about The Running Man Poems. Robin offered the idea that “the Running Man was too, created by the white world. He was super bright, but he didn’t fit in. Not having an outlet for his intelligence, that intelligence was perverted. Also, he was gay, but his father brutally punished him for his sexual orientation. He became a criminal and a murderer.
Barb read “When He Left”
p.62 He was on a first name basis
With a bloom or a motor.
He’d unlock books
And tame the jargon,
Cornelius Eady, in recent years
Nancy wanted to share with us another poem by Eady, outside of this collection. It’s a response to Thomas Jefferson saying that Phillis Wheatley couldn’t have been a poet because she was Black.
“Like this room of the mansion he probably
Wrote his opinion in—what black mind could
Dream in these proportions?”
In 1996 Cornelius Eady and fellow poet Toi Derricotte founded the Cave Canem foundation, a writing retreat for African American poets. Our book discussion group learned about Cave Canem when we discussed Remica Bingham-Risher's Book: Soul Culture for poetry month last year. It’s full circle that we would read a book by one of the founders just a year later.
Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady, founded Cave Canem in 1996
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