Vessel

Poetry

Vessel

Winner of the Midwest Book Award
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The imagination of a girl, the retelling of family stories, and the unfolding of a rich and often painful history: Parneshia Jones’s debut collection explores the intersections of these elements of experience with refreshing candor and metaphorical purpose.

A child of the South speaking in the rhythms of Chicago, Jones knits “a human quilt” with herself at the center. She relates everything from the awkward trip to Marshall Fields with her mother to buy her first bra to the late whiskey-infused nights of her father’s world. In the South, “lard sizzles a sermon from the stove”; in Chicago, we feast on an “opera of peppers and pimento.” Jones intertwines the stories of her own family with those of historical black figures, including Marvin Gaye and Josephine Baker. Affectionate, dynamic, and uncommonly observant, these poems mine the richness of history to create a map of identity and influence.

ISBN:
9781571314673
Publish Date: 
04/01/2015
Pages: 
112
Size: 
5.5 × 8.5 × 0.3 in
Weight: 
5.4 oz
Author

Parneshia Jones is the author of Vessel, chosen as “One of 12 Books to Savor” by Oprah Magazine. A member of the Affrilachian Poets, she serves on the board of Cave Canem and Global Writers. Jones currently holds positions as Sales and Subsidiary Rights Manager and Poetry Editor at Northwestern University Press.

Praise and Prizes

Blog Post

Milkweed Staff – 10/04/2017

We are thrilled to share that Parneshia Jones—author of the collection of poems Vessel , published in 2015 by Milkweed...