I don’t want this to be a cultural critique, or to garner attention as a poet only because the background seems exotic. I want the work to stand for the work.
The Rupture Point: Conversation with Abigail Chabitnoy Read More »
Aminatu sometimes found comfort in the fact that no one there quite knew her. Their expectation of the things she should have done or could have been was not humiliatingly high. To most who met her, Aminatu was “that young African woman.” That, in its ambiguity, was manageable. So she combined whatever it was to be African with what she was inevitably coming to know as black in America.
My scars are currently valued at $1,149.28 (81.44 hours of my labor). The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams Vol 1: 1909-1939 costs $27.85 (1.98 hours).The head of Orpheus retains no monetary value.
In a deep, official voice, the announcer told the fans to exit the arena and promised, “You are all safe… We are all safe.” With that, the crowd emptied out; no more basketball.
Everyone On Screen Has Tested Negative: On Enjoying Basketball in 2020 Read More »
Nighttime rubs against windows
Like the same black cat
Who slinked out of language
Punched black-&-blue by fists
The internet allows us to be in contact with loved ones from far away, to be able to hear and see them from the other side of the world. But it also allows us to create scenarios in our head about how lonely or unloved or uninteresting we are.
Powers and Motivations: An Interview with Patrick Johnson Read More »
So the girl balled up her fist to keep the thirty-seventh president safe and stuck it away. Like having the White House in your pocket.
Nothing As Dirty As a Richard Nixon Hand Read More »
In Kinnell’s work, hell and heaven often make some sort of appearance. Neither fare particularly well.
Some Notes on Galway Kinnell’s “Burning the Brush Pile” Read More »
In both Europe and the Americas, art was important to African slaves because it offered them the possibility of what I will call a socially transcendental existence; it could be marshaled into everyday life as a condition of survival against the laws that mapped out the place of the black as being outside the framework of modernity…Just as the aesthetic could become a key index in the violence of modernity, it could also provide the subjects of this cruelty with the hallowed place where utopian dreams could be nurtured and secured.
Race and the Idea of the Aesthetic Read More »
I am always striving to push the limits of categories, and if people have a hard time classifying me, I see that as a very good thing! As far as I’m concerned: good writing is good writing, wherever you shelve it.
Interview with Danielle Trussoni on The Ancestor: A Novel Read More »
