Summoning Our Saints

Book excerpt: Summoning Our Saints: The Poetry and Prose of Brenda Marie Osbey celebrates and illuminates the poetry and prose of one of the South’s and the nation’s most notable writers. A native of New Orleans and a former poet laureate of Louisiana who served magnificently in that function during the dark days after Hurricane Katrina, Osbey has summoned up a magical, beguiling, sometimes chilling and appalling portrait of the myriad chapters of New Orleans, Southern, and hemispheric history. Her dazzling narratives offer apertures into desire, death and remembrance, often through the voices of neglected and abused citizens. The essays in this collection examine Osbey’s essays and poetry collections, situating them within greater traditions of African American women’s writing, blues music, and West African religious traditions and Catholicism. The chapters are punctuated throughout with Osbey’s own reflections on her work and bring a long-needed and appreciative critical focus to a great artist, elucidating her contributions to our common cultural heritage. The book examines Osbey’s meditations on topics such as colonization, the African diaspora, the circumCaribbean, and contemporary parallels between Europe and the United States to showcase the ways in which they add valuable new insights to transnational studies.