A review by das737
Indecency by Justin Phillip Reed

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.