Tyree Daye
Tyree Daye is a poet from Youngsville, North Carolina, and a Teaching Assistant Professor at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is the author of two poetry collections River Hymns 2017 APR/Honickman First Book Prize winner and Cardinal forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press 2020. Daye is a Cave Canem fellow. Daye won the 2019 Palm Beach Poetry Festival Langston Hughes Fellowship, 2019 Diana and Simon Raab Writer-In-Residence at UC Santa Barbara, and is a 2019 Kate Tufts Finalist. Daye most recently was awarded a 2019 Whiting Writers Award. Source
Learning Whitney
My father loved my mama
quiet. She never was.
Sang as she dusted,
Whitney was her back-up singer.
He’d disappear, stumble in,
bright blues still in his mouth.
I come from a family of men
who thought saying I love you
was something you saved for sleep or the dead
and tears could get your ass whooped.
Published:
2018
Length:
Shorty
Literary Movements:
Contemporary
Anthology Years:
2021
Themes:
Family
Music & Sports
Literary Devices:
Allusion
an expression designed to call something to mind without mentioning it explicitly; an indirect or passing reference
Couplets
two lines of verse, usually in the same meter and joined by rhyme, that form a unit
Juxtaposition
the fact of two things being seen or placed close together with contrasting effect