This is the second volume of a trilogy (the first was "The Plum Flower Dance") in which Weaver analyzes his life, striving to become the ideal poet. In "The Government of Nature, " Afaa Michael Weaver explores the trauma of his childhood--including sexual abuse--using a "cartography and thematic structure drawn from Chinese spiritualism." Weaver is a practitioner of Daoism, and this collection deals directly with the abuse in the context of Daoist renderings of nature as metaphor for the human body.

Winner of the 2015 Phillis Wheatley Book Award (poetry category) This is the final book in the Plum Flower Trilogy by Afaa Michael Weaver, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. The two earlier books, The Plum Flower Dance: Poems 1985 to 2005 and The Government of Nature, reveal similar themes that address the author's personal experience with childhood abuse through the context of Daoist renderings of nature as a metaphor for the human body, with an eye to recovery and forgiveness in a very eclectic spiritual life. City of Eternal Spring chronicles Weaver's travels abroad in Taiwan and China, as well as showing the limits of cultural influence.

Winner of the 2008 Paterson Award for Literary Excellence
"Weaver has crafted a virtual planet in this book with plenty of alternate geographies for readers of all flavors and stripes. Marvelous. Huge. Prodigious."

"--North American Review"

"Weaver's life studies and lyrics are imbued with a vivid sense of language, a vivid sense of the world, a vivid sense of their inseparability. And his tonal range—from unabashed passion to the subtlest velleity—is impressive indeed. This is a singular talent."—Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

This title offers meditations on cultural memory, race relations, and sexual identity in the New South.Deeply rooted in the recognizable landscapes and legacies of the American South, these lyric poems couple daring engagements with topics of race and sexuality with tender reflections on personal and cultural histories. Madden's adopted home of South Carolina rises to the surface in poems set at Folly Beach, Fort Moultrie, Lake Keowee-Toxaway, and Middleton Place. His interrogations of social oppression evoke the ubiquitous iconography of the bygone Confederacy, a first encounter with the miniseries Roots, and a cameo appearance by Strom Thurmond. In the collection's final section, Madden turns to issues of sexual difference, community formation, and the place of gay men in contemporary southern culture. Throughout he repeatedly turns to the artifacts that demarcate his memories of youth in the rural South.