Cornelius Eady: "Aretha Franklin's Inauguration Hat"

The VPR Poem of the Week is Cornelius Eady’s “Aretha Franklin’s Inauguration Hat,” which appears in the special tenth anniversary issue (Volume XI, Number 1) of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

Cornelius Eady is the author of eight books of poetry: Hardheaded Weather: New and Selected Poems (2008), Brutal Imagination (2001), a National Book Award finalist; The Autobiography of a Jukebox (1997); You Don’t Miss Your Water (1995); The Gathering of My Name (1991); Boom, Boom, Boom (1988); Victims of the Latest Dance Craze (1986), winner of the 1985 Lamont Prize from the Academy of American Poets; and Kartunes (1980). He is also co-editor, with Toi Derricote, of Gathering Ground (2006). Eady’s work in theater includes the libretto for an opera, The Running Man, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 1999. His play, Brutal Imagination, won Newsday’s Oppenheimer Award in 2002. He has received the Prairie Schooner Strousse Award and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation. Eady is the director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Notre Dame.

Tuesday of each week “One Poet’s Notes” highlights an excellent work by a poet selected from the issues of Valparaiso Poetry Review, except when other posts with news or updates preempt the usual appearance of this item, with the recommendation that readers visit it. Please check the sidebar to view the list of poets and works that have been past “Poem of the Week” selections. Additionally, readers are reminded that VPR pages are best read with the browser font preference in which they were set, 12 pt. Times New Roman, in order to guarantee the stanza alignment and the breaks of longer lines are preserved.