Field study
Description
Winner of the 2020 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets"Layered, complex, and infinitely compelling, Chet’la Sebree’s Field Study is a daring exploration of the self and our interactions with others—a meditation on desire, race, loss and survival." --Natasha Trethewey, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Memorial DriveChet’la Sebree’s Field Study is a genre-bending exploration of black womanhood and desire, written as a lyrical, surprisingly humorous, and startlingly vulnerable prose poemI am society’s eraser shards—bits used to fix other people’s sh*t, then discarded. Somehow still a wet nurse, from actual babes to Alabama special elections.Seeking to understand the fallout of her relationship with a white man, the poet Chet’la Sebree attempts a field study of herself. Scientifically, field studies are objective collections of raw data, devoid of emotion. But during the course of a stunning lyric poem, Sebree’s control over her own field study unravels as she attempts to understand the depth of her feelings in response to the data of her life. The result is a singular and provocative piece of writing, one that is formally inventive, playfully candid, and soul-piercingly sharp. Interspersing her reflections with Tweets, quips from TV characters, and excerpts from the Black thinkers—Audre Lorde, Maya Angelou, Tressie McMillan Cottom—that inspire her, Sebree analyzes herself through the lens of a society that seems uneasy, at best, with her very presence. She grapples with her attraction to, and rejection of, whiteness and white men; probes the malicious manifestation of colorism and misogynoir throughout American history and media; and struggles with, judges, and forgives herself when she has more questions than answers. “Even as I accrue these notes,” Sebree writes, “I’m still not sure I’ve found the pulse.”A poem of love, heartbreak, womanhood, art, sex, Blackness, and America—sometimes all at once—Field Study throbs with feeling, searing and tender. With uncommon sensitivity and precise storytelling, Sebree makes meaning out of messiness and malaise, breathing life into a scientific study like no other.
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Published Reviews
Library Journal Review
Winner of the 2020 James Laughlin Award, this second collection from the Black American poet Sebree (after Mistress) is part lyrical poem and part prose, a beautifully executed "collection of observational information" that references over 100 works ranging from key authors to pop culture as it affords us a study on intimacy, race, and gender. "Note: This is an investigation of the effects of the world on one woman's desire and identity formation," Sebree explains. An elegy to a past relationship with a white man is woven throughout, layered with all the complexities and emotional turmoil one might expect when mourning such a relationship and which Sebree so expertly captures. The dedication reads, "For people seeking whole with the holes they see"; this phrase and the theme itself are repeated again and again, as Sebree offers acute self-reflection that embraces the reader. VERDICT Black womanhood, the unyielding past, bonds forged and broken--all are powerfully explored in ways that allow the reader to feel present in each poem, walking with the narrator and bearing witness to moments of racism and violence. Highly recommended.--Sarah Michaelis, Sun Prairie P.L., WI
Library Journal Reviews
Winner of the 2020 James Laughlin Award, this second collection from the Black American poet Sebree (after Mistress) is part lyrical poem and part prose, a beautifully executed "collection of observational information" that references over 100 works ranging from key authors to pop culture as it affords us a study on intimacy, race, and gender. "Note: This is an investigation of the effects of the world on one woman's desire and identity formation," Sebree explains. An elegy to a past relationship with a white man is woven throughout, layered with all the complexities and emotional turmoil one might expect when mourning such a relationship and which Sebree so expertly captures. The dedication reads, "For people seeking whole with the holes they see"; this phrase and the theme itself are repeated again and again, as Sebree offers acute self-reflection that embraces the reader. VERDICT Black womanhood, the unyielding past, bonds forged and broken—all are powerfully explored in ways that allow the reader to feel present in each poem, walking with the narrator and bearing witness to moments of racism and violence. Highly recommended.—Sarah Michaelis, Sun Prairie P.L., WI
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