
"There are more beautiful things than Beyoncé uses political and pop-cultural references as a framework to explore 21st century black American womanhood and its complexities: performance, depression, isolation, exoticism, racism, femininity, and politics. The poems weave between personal narrative and pop-cultural criticism, examining and confronting modern media, consumption, feminism, and Blackness. This collection explores femininity and race in the contemporary American political climate, folding in references from jazz standards, visual art, personal family history, and Hip Hop. The voice of this book is a multifarious one: writing and rewriting bodies, stories, and histories of the past, as well as uttering and bearing witness to the truth of the present, and actively probing toward a new self, an actualized self. This is a book at the intersections of mythology and sorrow, of vulnerability and posturing, of desire and disgust, of tragedy and excellence"--
Publisher:
Portland, Oregon :, Tin House Books,, 2017
Edition:
Second U.S. edition
ISBN:
9781941040539
Branch Call Number:
ANF 811.6 PAR 2017
Characteristics:
85 pages ; 22 cm


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Add a CommentI will admit that I don't read a lot of poetry, but it didn't take me long to recognize the quality of the written words on each page of Morgan Parker's book. Beautiful and thoughtful, each poem in this short book is worth your time and effort.
My mom never taught me "if you have nothing nice to say...", but I'm trying to be a better human being. Translation: this isn't for me and I'm not for it. I love poetry and I really like Beyoncé, but those two things didn't help me enjoy or want to understand this collection or any given poem within. It's not bad stuff; it's poetry!
This would be a great "in" with people who think they hate poetry, or are afraid of it. Maybe do a tie-in exercise writing dirty limericks about Queen Bey? *shrug*