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E

Eady, Cornelius (1954– )
An award-winning poet and playwright, Cornelius
Eady was born in Rochester, New York, in 1954.
He has taught poetry at several places, includ-
ing State University of New York at Stony Brook,
where he directed the poetry center; City College
of New York; Sarah Lawrence College; New York
University; The College of William and Mary; and
American University. Along with Toi Derricotte, he
is the cofounder of Cave Canem, a summer work-
shop and retreat for African-American poets.
Eady has written poetry for more than two de-
cades, including the volumes of poetry Kartunes
(1980), Victim of the Latest Dance Craze (1986), the
Pulitzer Prize nominee The Gathering of My Name
(1991), You Don’t Miss Your Water (1995; an adap-
tation was performed in June 1997), The Autobiog-
raphy of a Jukebox (1997), and Brutal Imagination
(2001; first performed as a workshop production
with Diedre Murray in October 2000).
One of the best poems in The Gathering of My
Name is “Thelonious Monk.” Through language,
Eady duplicates the deliberate playfulness of
Monk’s rhythmic music with monosyllabic lines
to create a broken narrative that allows him to pay
homage to a great musician. By cleverly infusing
the voice of Monk and first-person narrative, Eady
permits Monk to explain what he was trying to ac-
complish in his music, when he writes:

“I know what to do with math. / Listen to this.

It’s / Arithmetic, a soundtrack. / The motion /

Frozen in these lampposts, it / Can be sung.”

In Eady’s fourth “exquisitely constructed” and

emotionally charged volume of poems, You Don’t

Miss Your Water, he meditates on his father’s ill-

ness and death (“I Know I’m Losing You” and

“Fetchin’ Bones”); his lies, infidelities, and secrets

about a half-sister with the same last name (“Papa

Was a Rolling Stone”); and his bitterness toward

a darker-skinned son (“A Little Bit of Soap”) and

the unmarried mother (“Motherless Children”).

Related through strong images, references to Af-

rican-American music, and heartfelt honesty, the

poems weave an intense, powerful, personal tale of

an artist who attempts to come to terms with spe-

cific childhood memories.

The National Book Award finalist, Brutal Imag-

ination, is based on the true story of Susan Smith,

who, to cover her infidelity, murdered her two sons

and invented a black kidnapper-murderer as the

perpetrator of her crime. The dominating theme

of the two cycles of poems is the subject of the

black man in white America. Combining subtlety;

charged, harsh images; the sweetly ordinary; and

street idiom with elegant inversions, Eady’s inven-

tiveness, his deft wit, and skillfully targeted anger

capture the vision of the black man in the white