Thirsty
This is a poem about the city. About a man who has visions, hovering on the edge but hating it, restless and at war with the world but wanting the peace that passeth understanding. Everything he does is half-done, except his death. When he falls, his parched spirit crying "thirsty," his family falls apart. This is a poem about Toronto, the city that’s never happened before, about waiting for a bus, standing on a corner, watching a stranger: the bank to one corner, the driving school on another, the milk store and the church. This is also about the poet, her own restless sensibility woven in and out through moments of lyric beauty, dramatic power and storytelling grace. It is written in the margins, like a medieval manuscript with shades of light and darkness.
Dionne Brand is an award-winning poet, novelist, and essayist.
Other publications from this author include:
- An Autobiography of the Autobiography of Reading (2020)
- The Blue Clerk (2018)
- Theory (2018)
- Love Enough (2014)
- Ossuaries (2010)
- Inventory (2006)
- What We All Long For (2005)
- A Map of the Door of No Return: Notes to Belonging (2001)
- At the Full and Change of the Moon (1999)
- Bread Out of Stone: Recollections on Sex, Recognitions, Race, Dreaming and Politics (1998)
- Land to Light On (1997)
- In Another Place, Not Here (1996)
- We're Rooted Here and They Can't Pull Us Up: Essays in African Canadian Women's History (1994)
- No Burden to Carry: Narratives of Black Working Women in Ontario, 1920s-1950s (1991)
- No Language Is Neutral (1990)
- Sans Souci, and Other Stories (1988)
- Rivers have sources, trees have roots: Speaking of racism (1986)
- Chronicles of the Hostile Sun (1984)
- Winter Epigrams and Epigrams to Ernesto Cardenal in Defence of Claudia (1983)
- Primitive Offensive (1982)
- Fore Day Morning: Poems (1978)