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A review by jonscott9
Alive At The End Of The World by Saeed Jones
4.0
So thankful for Saeed Jones' voice in our world of letters. My high expectations for this 2022 tome of poems came after being absorbed into his sphere via the memoir How We Fight for Our Lives. It was painfully beautiful.
Here in Alive, he checks quite a few boxes on the iconic-artists passport – there's Aretha, Toni, Maya, Billie, Cicely, Whitney and Diahann – though despite those divas' appearances, I was perhaps most moved by the poem, "Little Richard Listens to Pat Boone Sing 'Tutti Fruitti.'" Appropriations of Black-made art are nothing new, never will be – see Ryan Charles' videotaped thoughts on Elvis Presley's fame – but they're jarring once one's eyes are opened to truth. (I won't say "woke." Fuck woke.)
Meditations on grief, that over the passing of his mother, are particularly poignant among Jones' pieces here. As soon as I finished, and probably before that, I realized that I need to sit with this batch of poems again before too long. So eager for what he writes next, apart from the Substack newsletter I already get, and am running toward the closest copy of Prelude to a Bruise, his previous work of poetry, that I can find. Candidly, time and again, Saeed Jones finds me.
Here in Alive, he checks quite a few boxes on the iconic-artists passport – there's Aretha, Toni, Maya, Billie, Cicely, Whitney and Diahann – though despite those divas' appearances, I was perhaps most moved by the poem, "Little Richard Listens to Pat Boone Sing 'Tutti Fruitti.'" Appropriations of Black-made art are nothing new, never will be – see Ryan Charles' videotaped thoughts on Elvis Presley's fame – but they're jarring once one's eyes are opened to truth. (I won't say "woke." Fuck woke.)
Meditations on grief, that over the passing of his mother, are particularly poignant among Jones' pieces here. As soon as I finished, and probably before that, I realized that I need to sit with this batch of poems again before too long. So eager for what he writes next, apart from the Substack newsletter I already get, and am running toward the closest copy of Prelude to a Bruise, his previous work of poetry, that I can find. Candidly, time and again, Saeed Jones finds me.