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ralowe's review against another edition
5.0
i'm going to have to be working my way through moten's other poetry now, having read almost all his essays. there's always a kind of rich melancholy ordinariness in his style, from when i've heard him read poetry, that right now makes me wonder about jose esteban munoz' never completed project on brown affect. but there's an unbearably kinetic reaching into ecstasy that bursts in the middle of a slightly receding activity. is the immanent and the far beyond within one deft lingual moment. you know i'm pretty sure the best section "come on, get it," carefully numbered like elaborations of an argument or stations in a narrative, reminds me of his response during a seminar on his paper called "just friends" a few years back, when people asked him about occupy and tiqqun. moten noted there was a weakness in their shit, if their shit is wanting the world different, and this weakness is a function of their failure to avail themselves to the archive and thought of the black radical tradition. moten's exhortation to "come get this" rings out. it's there. moten has described blackness as a refusal of closure and i wonder about the blackness in the refusal to come get it, and the sublime optimism in the injunction: "come get this." this tone dominates the movement of the language here, saturates it with unbearable beauty.
steveatwaywords's review
challenging
emotional
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
This was a tough collection for me to appreciate fully, and (mostly) I blame myself and my limited experience for it. I have a fair background in jazz music (composition and performance) and have taught poetry for many years (including stream of consciousness and African American oral traditions). Even so, following Moten's experience(s) through The Feel Trio was difficult, not because I needed explication of each image (the nature of neologies and assembled images suggested a sonic and rhythmic response more than linguistically figurative), but because they were layered so thickly from open stanza to stanza I found them challenging to direct.
Moments of beauty, connotations linked across pages, dialogues internal and external blending, along with histories personal and political, and overall moods of pain and brokenness massaged into creative power. I was moved at times, by the open palette, but only at times. I could not decide how long to spend with each page--to analyze overmuch compromised the utterance; too little time and it was beyond my experience to absorb. My best experience with the work was when I read it aloud, of course.
And perhaps that is the very issue: watching wonderful videos of Moten perform his work is a far more enriching experience, and I am compelled by his theory work. Somehow, the literary community says, this must ultimately be consigned to paper. And this paper is the physical distance placed upon my appreciation.
Moments of beauty, connotations linked across pages, dialogues internal and external blending, along with histories personal and political, and overall moods of pain and brokenness massaged into creative power. I was moved at times, by the open palette, but only at times. I could not decide how long to spend with each page--to analyze overmuch compromised the utterance; too little time and it was beyond my experience to absorb. My best experience with the work was when I read it aloud, of course.
And perhaps that is the very issue: watching wonderful videos of Moten perform his work is a far more enriching experience, and I am compelled by his theory work. Somehow, the literary community says, this must ultimately be consigned to paper. And this paper is the physical distance placed upon my appreciation.
jacob_wren's review
5.0
Fred Moten writes:
I’m in a bad mood about
everybody’s bad mood, their
political depression, whatever.
and they’re so god damn
squeamish about it—they
can’t even come close to
saying how fucked up it is,
with their anempathic
numbers, but they can say
that. they so attached
to it but they can say that.
o, say what they cannot can!
to say there’s no exit from
compromised ordinariness
is an ordinary compromise,
as if there’s more danger in the
idea of flight than in staying
home, as if laying back where
you stay precludes flying, as if
the symposium was theirs alone.
I’m in a bad mood about
everybody’s bad mood, their
political depression, whatever.
and they’re so god damn
squeamish about it—they
can’t even come close to
saying how fucked up it is,
with their anempathic
numbers, but they can say
that. they so attached
to it but they can say that.
o, say what they cannot can!
to say there’s no exit from
compromised ordinariness
is an ordinary compromise,
as if there’s more danger in the
idea of flight than in staying
home, as if laying back where
you stay precludes flying, as if
the symposium was theirs alone.
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