Brief Bio
Cornelius Eady was born and raised in Rochester, New York, in 1954. He attended Monroe Community College and Empire State College.
He is the author of Brutal Imagination (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2001), which was a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award in Poetry; the autobiography of a jukebox (1997); You Don't Miss Your Water (1995); The Gathering of My Name (1991), which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize; BOOM BOOM BOOM (1988); Victims of the Latest Dance Craze (1985), which was chosen by Louise Glück, Charles Simic, and Philip Booth for the 1985 Lamont Poetry Selection of The Academy of American Poets; and Kartunes (1980).
In 1996, Eady and the poet Toi Derricote founded Cave Canem, a nonprofit organization serving black poets of various backgrounds and acting as a safe space for intellectual engagement and critical debate. Along with Derricote, he also edited Gathering Ground (University of Michigan Press, 2006).
He has collaborated with jazz composer Deidre Murray in the production of several works of musical theater, including You Don't Miss Your Water; Running Man, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 1999; Fangs, and Brutal Imagination, which received Newsday's Oppenheimer Award in 2002.
About his work, the poet June Jordan has said, "Cornelius Eady leads and then cuts a line like no one else: following the laughter and the compassionate pith of a dauntless imagination, these poems beeline or zig-zag always to the jugular, the dramatic and unarguable revelation of the heart."
His honors include the Prairie Schooner Strousse Award, a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Rockefeller Foundation.
He has served as director of the Poetry Center at the State University of New York at Stonybrook, and has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, New York University, City College of New York, The Writer's Voice, The College of William and Mary, and Sweet Briar College.
Cornelius Eady is currently Professor of English and Miller Family Endowed Chair in Literature & Writing at the University of Missouri.
Poems - 15 in all
Cornelius Eady
Grief Bird
Nature Poem
LEADBELLY
Tubman's Rock
Hardheaded Weather
JEMIMA'S DO-RAG
HESITATION BLUES
RODNEY KING BLUES
BUCKWHEAT'S LAMENT
Manchild
Nina's Blues
I'm a Fool to Love You
The Cab Driver Who Ripped Me Off
Money Won't Change It (but time will take you on)
Photo of Miles Davis at Lennies-on-the-Turnpike, 1968
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