His words flow like water. His illustrations strike a match. The pair together are an encapsulation of a moment in time, the whole world holding its bHis words flow like water. His illustrations strike a match. The pair together are an encapsulation of a moment in time, the whole world holding its breath inside one unnamed house.
This is poetry + art at the top of its game....more
True confession: I majored in poetry, and I am a terrible poetry-reader. Most often, I just "don't get it", which is how I felt about approximately 60True confession: I majored in poetry, and I am a terrible poetry-reader. Most often, I just "don't get it", which is how I felt about approximately 60% of Citizen. (Kirkus Reviews said it more succinctly: "Frequently powerful, occasionally opaque.")
But the parts that I did "get" (mostly the retellings of daily racially-charged interactions with strangers and friends alike) were strong and affecting.
P.S. There are frequent references to "Script for Situation video". If you want to see the videos that were created from these scripts, you can do so under "Situations" on
Favorite Quotes
That man who is forced each day to snatch his manhood, his identity, out of the fire of human cruelty that rages to destroy it, knows...something about himself and human life that no school on earth-and indeed, no church-can teach. He achieves his own authority, and that is unshakable.
The state of emergency is also always a state of emergence.
That time and that time and that time the outside blistered the inside of you, words outmaneuvered years, had you in a chokehold, every part roughed up, the eyes dripping. That's the bruise the ice in the heart was meant to ice.
Not my favorite novel-in-verse. I kept losing the rhythm and struggled to find it again. I also thought at times it was trying too hard, with phrases Not my favorite novel-in-verse. I kept losing the rhythm and struggled to find it again. I also thought at times it was trying too hard, with phrases like, "vaginal vernissage". I might have felt differently if I knew Rakoff's previous work.
Still, it was not without some merit.
Favorite Quotes
The yard a brown painting of motionless calm The packed, ochre dirt and the lone, scraggly palm. No sway to its fronds nor the measly dry grasses, Immobile and baking in air like molasses.
Gets up, quite refreshed, sets the coffee to perk. For once looking forward to going to work. She pours out a cup, adds a stream of cold milk And smiles as it swirls just like taffeta silk.
snowflakes falling like shredded wax and the wind flexing its muscles...
so I’ll sacrifice my yen to know the what and whim of you.
Poems aFavorite Quotes:
snowflakes falling like shredded wax and the wind flexing its muscles...
so I’ll sacrifice my yen to know the what and whim of you.
Poems arrive as meteorite...I fight its common sense: I try to stabilize us through eloquence. It’s an old story, better told than I tell, how artists shape what hurts like hell [into:] lesser desires we can control.
we ladle ideas.
peel the zest from a mood, even butcher the morning for you...more
Had I the heavens� embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim anFavorite Poems:
He wishes for the cloths of heaven
Had I the heavens� embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half-light, I would spread the cloths under your feet; But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
-W.B. Yeats
All the while
Upstairs to my downstairs echo to my silence you walk through my veins shopping and spin food from my sleep
I hear your small noises you hide in closets without handles you surprise me from the cellar your foot-soles bright black
You slip in and out of beauty and imply that nothing is wrong Who sent you? What is your assignment?
Though years sneak by like children you stay as unaccountable as the underwear set to soak in the bowl where I brush my teeth.
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