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    The Gilded Auction Block: Poems
    The Gilded Auction Block: Poems
    The Gilded Auction Block: Poems
    Ebook85 pages1 hour

    The Gilded Auction Block: Poems

    By Shane McCrae

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    About this ebook

    An incisive new collection of poetry on political and contemporary themes

    I’m made of murderers I’m made
    Of nobodies and immigrants and the poor

    and a whole / Family the mother’s
    liver and her lungs

    In The Gilded Auction Block, the acclaimed poet Shane McCrae considers the present moment in America on its own terms as well as for what it says about the American project and Americans themselves. In the book’s four sections, McCrae alternately responds directly to Donald Trump and contextualizes him historically and personally, exploding the illusions of freedom of both black and white Americans. A moving, incisive, and frightening exploration of both the legacy and the current state of white supremacy in this country, The Gilded Auction Block is a book about the present that reaches into the past and stretches toward the future.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateFeb 12, 2019
    ISBN9780374720322
    Author

    Shane McCrae

    Shane McCrae is the author of several books of poetry, including In the Language of My Captor, which won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Poetry and was a finalist for the National Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the William Carlos Williams Award; Sometimes I Never Suffered, which was short-listed for the T. S. Eliot Prize; and his recent collection, Cain Named the Animal. McCrae is the recipient of a Whiting Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He teaches at Columbia University and lives in New York City.

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      Book preview

      The Gilded Auction Block - Shane McCrae

      THE PRESIDENT VISITS THE STORM

      What a crowd! What a turnout!

      —DONALD TRUMP, TO VICTIMS OF HURRICANE HARVEY

      America you’re what a turnout great

      Crowd a great crowd big      smiles America

      The hurricane is everywhere      but here an

      Important man is talking here      Ameri-

      ca the important president is talking

      And if the heavens open up the heavens

      Open above the president      the heavens

      Open to assume him bodily into heaven

      As they have opened to assume great men

      Who will come back      and bring the end with them

      America he      trumpets the end      of your

      Suffering both swan      and horseman trumpeting

      From the back of the beast the fire and rose are one

      On the president’s bright head      the flames implanted

      To make a gilded crown America

      The hurricane is everywhere      but here

      America a great man is a poison

      That kills the sky the weather in the sky

      For who America      can look above him

      You’re what a great a crowd big smiles the ratings

      The body      of a storm is a man’s body

      It has an eye and everything in the eye

      Is dead      a calm      man is a man who has

      Let weakness overcome his urge for death

      America the president is talking

      You’re what a great a turnout      you could be

      Anywhere but your anywhere is here

      And every inch      of the stadium except those

      Feet occupied by the stage      after his speech

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