To Cut Is To Heal: A Critical Companion To Michael S. Harper's Debridement

Product Description Cultural Writing. Literary Criticism. African American Studies. Ben Lerner interviews the poet Michael S. Harper about his important book on the American experience, DEBRIDEMENT(now available for the first time in its intended format). In addition, Herman Beavers, Alison Bundy, Deborah Murphy and Scott Saul contribute thoughtful and provocative essays on Harper's major contributions to the artistic, political and social discourse."In my experience, most history is unwritten, particularly the history about blacks in America, and its traduction is a continuous minefield of delusion and denial, from slavery, to the African slave trade, to "Reconstruction," and the compromises inherent in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. So as an American writer you had better have your own sense of history if you are going to be rooted in any kind of truth as you see it" - Michael S. Harper, interviewed by Ben Lerner. About the Author Benjamin S. Lerner is an American poet. Born on February 4, 1979 and raised in Topeka, Kansas, he is a 1997 graduate of Topeka High School. At Brown University he earned a B.A. in Political Theory and a MFA in Poetry. In 2003 Copper Canyon Press awarded its Hayden Carruth prize to Lerner's cycle of fifty-two loose sonnets, The Lichtenberg Figures. In 2004, Library Journal named it one of the year's twelve best books of poetry. He traveled on a Fulbright Scholarship to Madrid, Spain in 2003 where he wrote his second book, Angle of Yaw. Together with Deb Klowden, Lerner presently edits No: A Journal of the Arts, a magazine of poetry, art, and criticism. In 2008 he began editing poetry for Critical Quarterly, a British academic publication.[2] Lerner is on the faculty of the writing program of the University of Pittsburgh.