Books by Quincy Troupe
Little Stevie Wonder
Eleven-year-old Stevland Judkins Morris Hardaway hit the big time when he signed a Motown recording contract. At the age of thirteen, Little Stevie Wonder had millions of fans dancing to the number-one song in the nation.
Little Stevie Wonder is the true story of a boy who lost his sight shortly after birth, grew up in Detroit, Michigan, and became one of the twentieth century’s most creative and influential musicians—an instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, musical innovator, and cultural activist.
Here in Quincy Troupe’s joyful poem and Lisa Cohen’s vibrant art is an uplifting celebration of life, peace, and music.
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Miles & Me: Miles Davis, the man, the musician, and his friendship with the journalist and poet Quincy Troupe
Soon to be a major motion picture from the producers of Fences and The Hurricane
"Brilliant, poetic, provocative, Quincy Troupe's Miles & Me reveals the man behind the dark glasses and legend."—Ishmael Reed
Poet, activist, and journalist Quincy Troupe's candid account of his friendship with Miles Davis is a revealing portrait of a great musician and an engrossing chronicle of the author's own artistic and personal growth. Miles & Me describes in intimate detail the sometimes harrowing processes of Davis's spectacular creativity and the joys and travails Davis's passionate and contradictory temperament posed to the two men's friendship. Miles & Me shows how Davis, both as an artist and as a black man, influenced Troupe and whole generations of Americans while forever changing the face of jazz.
With a new introduction by film producer Rudy Langlais, an original photo essay of Miles and Quincy together by Jon Stevens, and a new Q&A with Quincy Troupe about how—and why—he came to write Miles & Me.
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Seduction New Poems, 2013-2018
The world is made of seductions. In Quincy Troupe's Seduction, the "I" becomes the "Eye," serving as metaphor and witness in a narrative compilation from a master of poetic music. Elegies and dramatic odes look at the seduction of all things loved or hated, especially the man made of color. How did the killings of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and Trayvon Martin seduce the public's eye and catch the fire of racism? How did Aretha Franklin seduce us with voice and twang? How does the art of Romare Bearden or Jack Whitten still tell our truths, fantasies, and oppressions?
time is a bald eagle, a killer soaring high in the blue, / music to men
dodging bullets in speeding cars, / knew death, hoped it'd never come . . .
In this collection we are seduced by Troupe's opus. This is the poet's art laid bare. He is our "Eye." Visions of the transatlantic slave trade, portraits of American violence, pop culture, and historical voices are the lyrical relics in Troupe's masterful verse. One of American literature's most important rhythmical artists, Troupe has created a chronicle reaching through history for the collective "I/Eye" that is all of us.
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Jack Whitten: Five Decades of Painting
by Quincy Troupe, Robert Storr, Kathryn Kanjo
For five decades, New York-based artist Jack Whitten (born 1939) has explored the possibilities of paint, the role of the artist and the allure of materials. As a child of the segregated South, he bears witness to expressions of evil and the resilience of the human spirit. From his first spectral canvases to his recent mosaic canvases, Whitten's compelling compositions have spanned a half-century of artistic innovation. Showcasing approximately 60 canvases, this survey--the first substantial volume on the artist--reveals Whitten as an innovator who uses abstraction in its newest idioms to achieve an enduring gravitas. Whitten's abiding engagement with scientific systems (as structure), social issues (as evidence) and commitment to the power of visual expression (materiality) show him to be an artist both of his time and for the present.
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Ghost Voices A Poem in Prayer
If we were all brave enough to resurrect the voices lost from our humanity, what would they say? Award-winning poet Quincy Troupe, spokesman for the humanizing forces of poetry, music, and art, parts the Atlantic and rattles the ground built on slavery with Ghost Voices: A Poem in Prayer.
we are crossing, / we are / crossing, / we are crossing in big salt water, // we are crossing, // crossing under a sky of no guilt / we have left home // though we know we will go back / someday, / see our people / as we knew them . . .
Troupe re-creates the history of lost voices between the waters of Africa, Cuba, and the United States. His daring poetics drenched in new forms-notably the seven-elevens-clench transformative narratives spurred on by a relentless, rhythmic language that mimics the foaming waves of the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. His personae speak quantum litanies within one epic, sermonic-gospel to articulate our most ancient ways of storytelling and survival.
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Weather Reports: New and Selected Poems
New York:: Harlem River Press,, 1991.. Fine in a near fine dustjacket (light edgewear to dj.). First printing. The relatively uncommon hardcover issue of this collection by this award-winning African American poet and writer, who was chosen poet laureate of California and resigned that position amidst controversy. SIGNED on the title page by the author.
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Errançities
"Troupe is an innovator of form and tone who shifts quickly from a lofty, elegiac mode into burlesque or smoky, jazzed-down pop phraseology."Publishers Weekly
"Troupe's poems are exuberant and passionate outpourings with driving, syncopated rhythms and improvisatory riffs of colorful language."Star Tribune
Coined with the French word errance (to wander) in mind, these poems rove through ancient Yoruba to the streets of Harlem to the tropical heat of Guadeloupe and emerge with a new vocabulary for the transformations of the physical, philosophical, and musical worlds. Known for his long, lyrical narrative poems and invocation of the oral tradition, Quincy Troupe captures the histories and deaths of Michael Jackson and Miles Davis, celebrating both their accomplishments and contradictions. This collection embraces the improvisation of a soul as it offers a paean to the possibilities of poetry.
The author of eight volumes of poetry, Quincy Troupe has also collaborated with Chris Gardner on The Pursuit of Happyness, which was made into a major motion picture, and with Miles Davis on Miles: The Autobiography. His friendship with Miles Davis is chronicled in Miles and Me. Troupe has also recently published children's books on Magic Johnson and Stevie Wonder. He divides his time between New York and a countryside village in Guadeloupe.
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The Architecture of Language
“Troupe’s poems resemble Romare Bearden’s collages: muscular and colorful.”—North American Review
In the Whitmanic tradition, Troupe’s poetry explodes from the page, capturing the spirit of America. Inspired by contemporary art, music, literature, and sports, The Architecture of Language dismantles the dangerously clichéd, wooden rhetoric saturating our national discourse and rebuilds the language in poems bursting with beauty, energy, and enough imaginative fire to light the way to the future.
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