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4.54 AVERAGE
4.54 AVERAGE
Sharp, breathtaking, and relevant in a way that stops you cold.
Clint Smith of Pod Save the People speaks on the conflict black artists feel between not wanting to exploit a painful moment for their personal brand and the truth that art is the thing that sustains us. He speaks of relevance and the appreciation he feels that people find solace in his poems, but that he wishes poems that sustained us 5 years ago were no longer relevant today, will no longer be relevant 5 years or 10 years into the future.
To read "what the window said to the black boy" is to read a conversation that played out on twitter last week and 5 years ago. To read "James Baldwin speaks to the protest novel" and "the protest novel responds to James Baldwin" is to read a dialogue from the fifties but also, from today. To read "for Charles" is to understand yourself within a conversation that continues in its relevance since 1811. To read "playground elegy" and "no more elegies today" is to read black joy as: childhood as a childhood as: a radical notion.
No, unfortunately, Counting Descent is just as relevant today as it was 5 years ago, and will probably continue to be relevant sometime into the future, even though relevance is the last thing it wants.
Clint Smith of Pod Save the People speaks on the conflict black artists feel between not wanting to exploit a painful moment for their personal brand and the truth that art is the thing that sustains us. He speaks of relevance and the appreciation he feels that people find solace in his poems, but that he wishes poems that sustained us 5 years ago were no longer relevant today, will no longer be relevant 5 years or 10 years into the future.
To read "what the window said to the black boy" is to read a conversation that played out on twitter last week and 5 years ago. To read "James Baldwin speaks to the protest novel" and "the protest novel responds to James Baldwin" is to read a dialogue from the fifties but also, from today. To read "for Charles" is to understand yourself within a conversation that continues in its relevance since 1811. To read "playground elegy" and "no more elegies today" is to read black joy as: childhood as a childhood as: a radical notion.
No, unfortunately, Counting Descent is just as relevant today as it was 5 years ago, and will probably continue to be relevant sometime into the future, even though relevance is the last thing it wants.
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
This book is unspeakably beautiful and eloquent and I want to go get my MFA just to be able to teach this collection. So instead I’ll settle for gifting it to everyone I know.
dark
emotional
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
Powerful, heartbreaking, and beautiful. From a writer with a well of pride in his community and grief for what it's lost.
I already want to read them again.
I already want to read them again.