Fantasia for the Man in Blue

In his debut collectionFantasia for the Man in Blue, Tommye Blount orchestrates a chorus of distinct, unforgettable voices that speak to the experience of the black, queer body as a site of desire and violence. A black mans late-night encounter with a police officerthe titular man in bluebecomes an extended meditation on a dangerous erotic fantasy. The late Luther Vandross, resurrected here in a suite of poems, addresses the contradiction between his public persona and a life spent largely in the closet: Its a calling, this hunger / to sing for a love Im too ashamed to want for myself. In Aaron McKinney Cleans His Magnum, the convicted killer imagines the barrel of the gun he used to bludgeon Matthew Shepard as an infants small mouth as well as the sad calculator that was built to subtract from and divide a town. In these and other poems, Blount viscerally captures the experience of the other and locates us squarely within these personae.

A Cave Canem alumnus, Tommye Blount is the author ofWhat Are We Not For(Bull City Press, 2016). A graduate of Warren Wilson Colleges MFA Program for Writers, he has been the recipient of scholarships and fellowships from Kresge Arts in Detroit and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. Born and raised in Detroit, Blount now lives in the nearby suburb of Novi, Michigan.

• Paperback:152 pages
• ISBN-10:1945588497
• ISBN-13:978-1945588495
• Item Weight:8.8 ounces
• Product Dimensions:6 x 0.7 x 9 inches
• Publisher:Four Way Books; 1st Edition (March 2, 2020)
• Language:English