Exile

"Exile is . . . quick, vivid, and nuanced, the poet, like the jazz artist, declaring his space with sustained, restless invention."

-Michael Anania, poet, essayist, fiction writer, and author of the poetry collection In Time

"Sterling Plumpp's poems are the cartography to our ancient tongues, silted and scribed in The Blues. His inner explorations are seismic eruptions of ancestral scale, galactic in reach and honed in the bell of Bebop's tremulous birthing story. His lyric: all/truism be indigo line/break/through/out the canon and in/to/ward saints marching in. This poet's self-imposed Exile is a mellifluous, multi-chordal long-distance call-a compass reading to the home / front where you might stand up and / yell amen on walls / of eternity."

-Tyehimba Jess, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, professor, and author of the poetry collection Olio

"Astonishing in its depth, range, and movement, Sterling Plumpp's Exile reclaims utterance as expanse as inheritance-invention, a limitless field, always already known to itself and in discovery, lyric root and pulse of breath. Exile-an epic, passing-a legacy-a ritual undoing echoes' trace, to prevail. The poet in form.'Every / thing is here'"

-Duriel E. Harris, poet, performer, sound artist, author, and editor of Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora