Reviews

Indecency by Justin Phillip Reed

vishnu_'s review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

3.5

bethreadsandnaps's review against another edition

3.0

I’m not a poetry lover. I read this as part of the 10 To Try library challenge, and one of the categories is poetry.

I found several of these poems more accessible than others. I still have no idea what “zephyr-rascalled twigs” are. That is to me one of the lesser accessible poems in this collection. Even when I can’t figure out what a few of the poems are talking about, I can feel the emotion.

poeticallygrey's review against another edition

5.0

I recommend reading this one outloud. Reed's language concoction is astounding.

his_reidness's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective slow-paced

4.75

francisco909's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

5.0

Incredible collection.

das737's review against another edition

While the amount of technical prowess, formal ambition, and promise of this collection is undeniable, several of the poems—especially in the first half—left me wanting more. In particular, I am never a fan of the Susan Howe-esque word collage type stuff as Reed does in "Portrait with Stiff Upper Lip", and a few other poems in the first half of the collection felt oddly academic and distant. Still, the highlights of this collection are BIG highlights—with prose poems straddling genre lines in a way comparable to Claudia Rankine. And the poems in the latter half that reckon with black queerness are searing, as painful to read as they are necessary. I look forward to following Reed's career.

kenocatabay's review against another edition

4.0

Probably too smart for me.

elliottblackbird's review against another edition

3.0

Indecency
Justin Phillip Reed
3.25/3.5 Stars

I now approve of my impulsive decision to buy this at almost the original full price, from a used book, because did enjoy quite a good amount of the poems, and I suspect a handful of them will grow on me with a second reread.

I saw many reviews speaking of confusion in interpreting the poems, and I can agree that there was a good amount of that which felt like lost wandering as a reader, but I think I've always been one for the more straightforward poems (in terms of readability and whatnot, even when remaining somewhat ambiguous) anyways, so in some ways, it's hard to fault as something other than the subjectivity of poetry and words with meaning. That said, there were a handful of poems I did really enjoy and will definitely be coming back to:

4 Stars

On Being a Grid One Might Go Off On
Retrograde
Orientation
To Every Fa***t Who Pulverized Me For Being A Fa***t (Note: censored for Goodreads purposes)

3.75 Stars

Any Unkindness
About a White City
They Speak of the Body and One Sits Up Straight
Paroxysm

3.5 Stars

Performing a Warped Masculinity en Route to the Metro
|p|l|e|a|s|
The Fratricide
The Victim Dissolves into tears

~

"[...]You too
once knew what it was to feel impressive. As the bed dissolves
into the walls, the walls disrobe themselves of their edges
and your resolve is now acute in the locking jaw of darkness."

(from: On Being a Grid One Might Go Off On)

~

"[...] For a second, you realize
that every single man in the room
has his back to another. Suppose

this were not true all of the time."

&

"[...] Nightly in the cold open
a character is assassinated, and you wonder if you won't eventually
play the part of every prone body, because no one looks long enough
to notice any difference. [...]"

&

"The apex predation, the brilliance in it,
this global verdant climb beyond—
Is this what it means to be lost in the night?
A paranoia. Unearthing tombs
and slipping inside of annullable memory.
You don't expect survival but

demand to survive nonetheless and believe
as if an afterlife—as if
an extant black mouth will be your legacy."

&

" you know that the night did not fall. it was dropped.
the evidence is yet uncollected.
the onomasticon in the mind makes room:
a round of hangman.
you eat the salience of waiting,
inhale it, and teeter as a reed in the wind at shore—
an indication of the will to move. [...]
say it will emerge like a body—
for what were you last destroyed?
for what did you last destroy?"

(each of the above, from: Paroxysm)

awwgustt's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.0

paltrindome's review against another edition

emotional reflective sad fast-paced

3.75

ONE PARAGRAPH REVIEW:

"forget the world's smallness. i'm tired
of pretending. i've been lost. the storeroom 
of a hotel pool is approximately the size
of our lives anyway."

Indecency is a hauntingly emotional collection of poetry, dealing with issues of blackness, queerness, love and loss. It’s stunningly written and the motif of violence (self-inflicted, inflicted upon others) is explored, not just through the language Reed uses, but also in the form of his poems. Orientation, for example, is in the form of a steering wheel, where thoughts of self-doubt, violence and repetitions of seemingly weird phrases "if he hollers let him go eeny meany miney mo" are entangled together to form a circular shape, underlining the constant intrusive thoughts that plague the persona. Other poems were similarly well written, with my favourites being Retrograde, I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel and To Every F*ggot Who Pulverized Me For Being A F*ggot among others. While parts of this collection would likely come across as esoteric, most poems struck a chord within me, and would likely do the same for anyone who's felt that same feeling of unrestrained violence and grief that accompanies what it means to be LGBTQ+ or black.