Voyage of the Sable Venus by Robin Coste Lewis

Best Seller

Voyage of the Sable Venus

Name: Voyage of the Sable Venus
Price: 12.50 USD
Availability: InStock
Author: Robin Coste Lewis
ISBN: 9780593461044

Audiobook Download

Published on Aug 31, 2021 | 3 Hours 6 Minutes

Buy from Other Retailers:

Published on Aug 31, 2021 | 3 Hours 6 Minutes

Buy from Other Retailers:

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD

A stunning poetry debut: this meditation on the black female figure throughout time introduces us to a brave and penetrating new voice.

Robin Coste Lewis’s electrifying collection is a triptych that begins and ends with lyric poems considering the roles desire and race play in the construction of the self. The central panel is the title poem, “Voyage of the Sable Venus,” a riveting narrative made up entirely of titles of artworks from ancient times to the present—titles that feature or in some way comment on the black female figure in Western art. Bracketed by Lewis’s autobiographical poems, “Voyage” is a tender and shocking study of the fragmentary mysteries of stereotype, as it juxtaposes our names for things with what we actually see and know. Offering a new understanding of biography and the self, this collection questions just where, historically, do ideas about the black female figure truly begin—five hundred years ago, five thousand, or even longer? And what role has art played in this ancient, often heinous story? From the “Young Black Female Carrying / a Perfume Vase” to a “Little Brown Girl / Girl Standing in a Tree / First Day of Voluntary / School Integration,” this poet adores her culture and the beauty to be found within it. Yet she is also a cultural critic alert to the nuances of race and desire and how they define us all, including herself, as she explores her own sometimes painful history. Lewis’s book is a thrilling aesthetic anthem to the complexity of race—a full embrace of its pleasure and horror, in equal parts.

“Powerfully evocative . . . Among the virtues of the collection is the intensity of Lewis’s faith in the power of language and image to tell us things that are true, but that are rarely said, about history, race, gender, power, the body, scholarship, and visual representation. In providing us with a revelatory gloss on centuries of art, Robin Coste Lewis has made us aware of the enormity of the change reflected and perhaps partly brought about by contemporary black women artists whose vision, originality, and humor offer a heartening corrective to the ghastly insult of the Sable Venus.” —Francine Prose, New York Review of Books

“Robin Coste Lewis’s Voyage of the Sable Venus is an experimental tribute to a human history that embraces truth and adventure. She shows how cultures traverse terrains and comingle. These poignant poems, through a poetic excavation, unearth figures that make us question racial constructs. The body is at the center of this imagistic inquiry, and each line is a blind stitch in the psychological metrics of the whole. Lewis’s first collection, a detailed tapestry of ancient and modern behavior—names, dates, and emotional marginalia—is one of a kind.” —Yusef Komunyakaa

“Voyage of the Sable Venus and Other Poems reframes the black figure, most specifically the black female, by pointing out the borders of black beauty, black happiness, and black resilience in our canonical visual culture. Tender and masterful opening and closing poems bookend the archival, lyric masterwork, “Voyage of the Sable Venus,” at the center of the collection. This title poem upends the language of representation, collected from the cataloging of the black body in Western art. Robin Coste Lewis takes back depictions of the black feminine and refuses to land or hold down that which has always been alive and loving and lovely. Altogether new, open, experimental and ground-breaking, Lewis privileges real life in all its complications, surprises and triumphs over the frames that have locked down the scale of black womanhood.” —Claudia Rankine

Author

Robin Coste Lewis

ROBIN COSTE LEWIS won the National Book Award for Voyage of the Sable Venus, her first collection of poetry. The book was also a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Award, and it was named one of the best books of the year by The New Yorker and The New York Times. Literary Hub named it one of the best books of the last twenty years. Her second book, To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness, was the winner of the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry and the NAACP Image Award for Oustanding Literary Work in Poetry. She is also the coauthor, with Kevin Young, of Robert Rauschenberg: Thirty-Four Illustrations for Dante’s Inferno. The former poet laureate of Los Angeles, Lewis holds a PhD in poetry and visual studies from the University of Southern California, an MFA in poetry from New York University, an MTS in Sanskrit and comparative religious literature from the Divinity School at Harvard University, and a BA in post-colonial literature and creative writing from Hampshire College. Her work has appeared in various journals, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Paris Review, Transition, and The Massachusetts Review. She is currently a professor of poetry and poetics at USC.ROBIN COSTE LEWIS is available for select speaking engagements. To inquire about a possible appearance, please contact Penguin Random House Speakers Bureau at speakers@penguinrandomhouse.com or visit prhspeakers.com.

Learn More

Voyage of the Sable Venus

Related Genres

You May Also Like

Tanya

Running in the Family

Vintage Ondaatje

For the Confederate Dead

The Cinnamon Peeler

To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness

Conquistadora

Thick with Trouble

The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You

Spectral Evidence

Success!

By Robin Coste Lewis