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Leontyne Price remains one of the twentieth century's most revered opera singers and, notably, the first African American to achieve such international acclaim. In movements encompassing poetry and prose, writer and musician Kevin Simmonds explores Price as an icon, a diva, a woman, and a patriot-and himself as a fan, a budding singer, and a gay man-through passages that move polyphonically through the contested spaces of Black identity, Black sound, Black sensibility, and Black history.
Structured operatically into overture, acts, and postlude, The Monster I Am Today guides the reader through associative shifts from arias like 'weather events' and Price's forty-two-minute ovation to memories of Simmonds's coming of age in New Orleans. As he melds lyric forms with the biography of one of classical music's greatest virtuosos, Simmonds composes a duet that spotlights Price's profound influence on him as a person and an artist: 'That's how I hear: Her.'
Leontyne Price remains one of the twentieth century's most revered opera singers and, notably, the first African American to achieve such international acclaim. In movements encompassing poetry and prose, writer and musician Kevin Simmonds explores Price as an icon, a diva, a woman, and a patriot-and himself as a fan, a budding singer, and a gay man-through passages that move polyphonically through the contested spaces of Black identity, Black sound, Black sensibility, and Black history.
Structured operatically into overture, acts, and postlude, The Monster I Am Today guides the reader through associative shifts from arias like 'weather events' and Price's forty-two-minute ovation to memories of Simmonds's coming of age in New Orleans. As he melds lyric forms with the biography of one of classical music's greatest virtuosos, Simmonds composes a duet that spotlights Price's profound influence on him as a person and an artist: 'That's how I hear: Her.'
Kevin Simmonds is a musician and writer originally from New Orleans. He studied music at Vanderbilt University and the University of South Carolina. He is the author of two poetry collections, Mad for Meat and Bend to It, and the editor of Collective Brightness: LGBTIQ Poets on Faith, Religion & Spirituality and Ota Benga under My Mother's Roof, a posthumously published collection by Carrie Allen McCray.
"Across the text, what comes through is the author's recognition of
the extraordinary quality of Price's singing, and its effects on
him and others. For the author-narrator, Price's music serves as a
ballast, compass, buoy, and, it would not be farfetched to say, a
lifesaver of sorts . . . There are many compelling aspects of this
book, not least its distinctive associative structure and the high
quality of its poetry." --John Keene, author of Counternarratives
"In pages of what read, to me, like film stills of a throat in
song, the prose-throat pulsates into line then sentence again. A
pulsation of lyric, memory, research. Simmonds stretches the ink
into a 'tangible Black continuum of sound, ' a simultaneously
autobiographical and biographical text that radiates with
relationship. A twelve-year-old Black, gay boy encounters Leontyne
Price for the first time: 'I discovered in her whirling howl my
human noise / my instrument eye [.]' Just part of Simmonds' genius
is his ability to write a work so sensuous with attention even as
it is terrorized by ever-looming racial and homophobic violences.
This book is a lucid, extraordinary history of a voice, and 'the
clearing it makes / to be unhidden . . .'" --Aracelis Girmay,
author of the black maria "The Monster I Am Today: Leontyne Price
and a Life in Verse may well prove to be the ultimate hybrid: a
monster of a book, to be read and reread, not in parts but whole,
attending and attentive to the body of its 'dark molasses sound.'"
--Brenda Marie Osbey, World Literature Today
"In the urgent spirit of those who have sought to unearth and
celebrate the combined wealth of archived, preserved, and inherited
histories of African American lives, Kevin Simmonds has produced an
intimate, iconic, and wonderfully lyrical accounting of the life
and art of Leontyne Price. Simmonds' gift of well-developed
emotional and intellectual artistry allows him, in this collection
of luminous poems and revealing prose, to produce a work of great
importance and power. By laying bare his own admiration of Price,
and by doing so with emotional and intellectual honesty and
intimacy, Simmonds tells us why we should value Price. Price is an
American treasure of genius and humanity, and in The Monster I Am
Today, Simmonds reminds us of his own singular value to American
letters." --Kwame Dawes, author of Nebraska: Poems "Memoir and
music theory may not seem like the most obvious of pairings, but
Kevin Simmonds's new biography-in-verse of Leontyne Price, the
first great African-American opera star, makes it look natural."
--Keely Weiss, Harper's Bazaar "The Monster I Am Today is an
excellent pick for the contemporary opera fan. It's grand and
operatic, with its emotional peaks and depths. For me, it's a
completely new -- and frankly, overdue -- perspective on this
beloved art form. It's a fresh read, and I highly recommend."
--Jenna Simeonov, Schmopera
"Each of us has a personal diva--or should. Leontyne Price is the
greatest singer that our country produced in the 20th century. How
fitting that she should continue to receive her flowers while she
still dwells among us. Kevin Simmonds' intelligent and open homage
to 'the god-object of her voice' is pitch perfect, and a valuable
lesson to future singers on how their art functions beyond their
control, shaping the life of each listener in profound ways."
--Dante Micheaux, author of Circus
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