Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!
Rate this book!
Write a review?
Fantastic, absolutely deserving of the National Book Award this past year, an exploration of identity from internal and external perspectives. The title poem, a long one in sections composed entirely of names of works of art containing a black female figure, is astounding in how it morphs and changes just by arranging the words of others.
I'm a big fan of this collection- it reminds me of Layli Long Soldier's WHEREAS (another volume I adore) in terms of form, if not content. And yet, while there are some comparisons to be made due to how the central sections of each volume operate as robust rejections of the construction of identity through representational politics (whether that be the literal language of politics, or the more elusive racialization within art history- though, maybe both are so elusive), Coste Lewis grounds herse...
I didn't love this collection, but I certainly affirm that Robin Coste Lewis is very skillful at communicating the pain she's lived through and sees all around her. This is most acute in her poem "Lure," which describes everything perfectly by denying all of it. Lewis's poems aren't all bleak hopelessness by any means, but that undercurrent is strong throughout the book. One of my favorite poems in the collection, "From: To:," about a moment of triumph for black servicemen in WWII, is followed i...
What an amazing and challenging book...using art catalogues and ships' manifests, the central part of the book lays open the bodies of black women in "found" language manipulated, punctuated, spaced and arranged by the author to overwhelming effect. Lyric poems that feel utterly personal bookend this central section and are equally although more personally heart-wrenching. It's a collection that needs to be read many times. Its power accrues. I am awed that this is Lewis's first collection. How
Very innovative and it feels like a written walk through a museum but if I'm being totally honest, I can sense the importance and beauty of it but I'm not sure I can fully appreciate this work. I think it's a bit over my head and I am ok with admitting that!
This is one of the best books I have ever read. It is outstanding, an achievement. Good on Knopf for publishing this book and so beautifully.The poems are so moving, powerful, unapologetically black. On the Road to Sri Bhuvaneshwari is outstanding. Also, Frame. And Lure. I mean, my god. This is a book of poetry. I will write an actual review soon for somewhere, I am still processing. Sable of Venus is an absolutely essential read.
" All is suffering is a bad modernist translation. What the Buddha really said is: It's all a mixed bag. Shitis complicated. Everything's fucked up. Everything's gorgeous. Even Death contains pleasure - six feet below understanding."- from "Pleasure & Understanding," one of my favorite poems in this astonishing collection that explores and tests our cultural definitions of beauty; history and those who would like to sanitize or erase it; and the power, joy, and pain of personal memory. The titl...
This is one of the best collections of poetry written in English, period. Lyricism, conceptual praxis, spiritual theory, socio-political double-twists, and aesthetics criticism blend elegantly in this collection. The body of the goddess, the steppe, the poetic I/ We, and history is no longer fractured - it's sutured. This body hurts and it also feels good, and neither experience of being alive is more important - it's not a series about transcendence, but about descending - walking into the demo...
Four and one-half (4 1/2) stars; not four (4) stars.While I personally favored Terrance Hayes' smart collection of poetry in "How to be Drawn" this book by Robin Coste Lewis tenderly traces her journey of self-discovery toward racial identity and enlightenment that is both thrilling, erudite and tragic. Written in three parts with Part Two containing her intellectual "Voyage" examining the female black figure throughout the history of Western Art. Part One and Part Three make elegant "bookends"
IQ "Knowingtaught me-quickly-to spell communitymore honestly: l-o-n-e-l-y.During Arts and Crafts, when Miss Larson allowedthe scissors out, I'd sneak a pair, then cutmy hair to stop me from growing too long" (121) Art & Craft^Raise your head if you've felt like this before when mocked for being a bookworm, being the only one in accelerated learning classes, etc.I have never taken a poetry course, we covered the basics my freshman year in high school but I barely remember what we learned. Thus I
Reading this book is like walking through a museum. The poems are exquisite, well-crafted, and impressive. But they are also a bit sterile, like museum pieces. I understand the context in which these poems are presented to me, but it feels like a theme in an exhibit. This book is a brilliant show of post-modern poetry, but there is a distance between the poems and the reader, a velvet rope that separates the reader from experience and relegates one to appreciation.
3.5!A powerful read!
Sheeeeesh
Now I don't want you to look at the one star missing here and think that this wasn't a mind mindbogglingly good book. It was crazy good. In fact it was so good, I had trouble understanding it. I think the problem here was that I took out a library copy and therefor could not highlight, underline, and otherwise scribble manically in the margins. Is this always necessary with poetry? No, but I have noticed that it tends to be necessary with the good stuff.I never would think that the judges of the...
Amazing first book of poetry. It would be amazing at any point in a career. The title poem, which forms the central panel of a triptych of historical memory, consists solely of the titles and descriptions of works of art involving black women; I'm not going to try to summarize the rules Lewis established for herself, but that captures the idea. It could have felt gimmicky, but it doesn't. The montage makes a complicated set of points about the interaction of representation and experience, the po...
“Art hurts. Art urges voyages—” (Gwendolyn Brooks)Oh, so many chills! A beautiful, heart-rending, inventive book of poems. (Those breathtaking line breaks!) Highly, highly recommended. The best poems I’ve read this year. With many thanks to Wei for giving us a copy.The titular collection (a survey of the history of art featuring black women) is amazing, but also, my favorite poems in the book:“On the Road to Sri Bhuvaneshwari”“From: To:”“Let Me Live in a House by the Side of the Road and Be a Fr...
"Is there a street that can anticipateour tenderness? A corner or curbthat stands still waiting for me?Where is the road - gilded and broad -which can foresee our vast inability not to love?"
cant stop thinking about That One Poem 🥺 so guess its time for my annual reread 🤠
If you read professional reviews, like this one from The Rumpus you'll see how completely brilliant this book is.Unfortunately for me, I don't have the context required to fully appreciate this book. Most of this book went over my head. Some of the poems will linger with me, but most of them I don't understand.SummerLast summer, two discrete young snakes left their skinon my small porch, two mornings in a row. Beingpostmodern now, I pretended as if I did not seethem, nor understand what I knew...
An amazing read. Lewis brings the life back to the many Black women whose lives were discarded by the thieves of museums, the thieves of slavery. And recognizes where power and identity might exist within the body. So much to ponder in this. A landmark.