Best Barbarian : poems / Roger Reeves.

Title :

Best Barbarian : poems

Author:

Format:

Books

Summary:

"An incandescent collection that interrogates the personal and political nature of desire, freedom, and disaster. In his brilliant, expansive second volume, Whiting Award-winning poet Roger Reeves probes the apocalypses and raptures of humanity-climate change, anti-Black racism, familial and erotic love, ecstasy and loss. The poems in Best Barbarian roam across the literary and social landscape, from Beowulf's Grendel to the jazz musician Alice Coltrane, from reckoning with immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border to thinking through the fraught beauty of the moon on a summer night after the police have killed a Black man. Drawing on a history of poetry that ranges from the Aeneid to Walt Whitman to Drake, Best Barbarian offers moments of joy and intimacy amid catastrophe"--

Language:

English

ISBN - ISSN:

9780393609332

Physical Description:

120 pages ; 22 cm

Contents:

Grendel -- Without the pelt of a lion -- Children listen -- Standing in the Atlantic -- The alphabet, for Naima -- In rehearsal for the funeral -- Sovereign silence, or The city -- Cocaine and gold -- Rat among the pines -- American landscaping, Philadelphia to Mount Vernon -- Into the West -- The broken fields mended -- After the funeral -- Echo: from the mountains -- so, Ecstasy -- After death -- Cyclops and Balthazar -- Mother's Day -- Second plague year, black spots on the rose -- Poem, in an old language -- The end of Ghassan Kanafani -- Domestic violence -- Something about John Coltrane -- Ode to Pablo Neruda's "Ode to a lemon" -- Rich Black, or Best barbarian -- Prayer of the jaguar -- Drapetomania, or James Baldwin as an improvisation -- Grendel's mother -- "Espíritu santo también..." -- Fragment 107 -- American runner -- Best Barabbas -- My Folks -- Leaf-Sigh and Bray -- Caught in a Black doorway -- As a child of North America -- Future, from beyond the voice of God -- By beauty, from beyond the voice of God -- Your hand to your face blocking the sun -- I can drink the distance, or Fire in the lake -- Journey to Satchidananda -- For Black children at the end of the world--and the beginning.

Subject:

African Americans -- Poetry.

Humanity -- Poetry.

Intergenerational relations -- Poetry.

Psychic trauma -- Poetry.

POETRY / American.

POETRY / Subjects & Themes.

African Americans.

Psychic trauma.

Intergenerational relations.

Humanity.

Poetry.

First Title value, for Searching:

Best Barbarian : poems / Roger Reeves.

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Summary

The poems in Best Barbarian roam across the literary and social landscape, from Beowulf's Grendel to the jazz musician Alice Coltrane, from reckoning with immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border to thinking through the fraught beauty of the moon on a summer night after the police have killed a Black man.

Daring and formally elegant, Best Barbarian asks the reader: "Who has not been an entryway shuddering in the wind / Of another's want, a rose nailed to some dark longing and bled?" Reeves extends his inquiry into the work of writers who have come before, conversing with--and sometimes contradicting--Walt Whitman, James Baldwin, Sappho, Dante, and Aimé Césaire, among others. Expanding the tradition of poetry to reach from Gilgamesh and the Aeneid to Drake and Beyoncé, Reeves adds his voice to a long song that seeks to address itself "only to freedom."

Best Barbarian asks the reader to stay close as it plunges into catastrophe and finds surprising moments of joy and intimacy. This fearless, musical, and oracular collection announces Roger Reeves as an essential voice in American poetry.

Author Notes

Roger Reeves is the author of King Me and the recipient of a Whiting Award, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, among other honors. He lives in Austin, Texas.

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

The mesmerizing second collection from Reeves (King Me) reflects intergenerational racial trauma and personal tragedy with a remarkable balance of acute feeling and lyrical precision. These poems powerfully allude to the ways in which racial atrocity is sewn into the fabric of America. Referencing the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in 1963 Birmingham, which killed four children, he explains how they continue "to haunt the plate of the nation, to travel in the husk/ And ears of corn going to market, to sit on the Senators' plates" ("The End of Ghassan Kanafani"). Throughout, there is a stoic lack of sensationalism that makes violence and grief even more palpable. In the biblical "Domestic Violence," a speaker navigates the "AfterLife" with a man named Ezra as his guide, encountering the spirits of formerly enslaved people and giving voice to the impulse of rebellion against the white supremacist state: "And when all the voices/ sound like the police, I said, kill all the voices." Yet there are also moments of joy expressed with imagery that is beautiful in its specificity, "the sun slipping/ Into a boy's pocket and warming an unpeeled orange." With vivid images and haunting, evocative language, Reeves memorably places the reader in the space where life and death intersect. (Mar.)

Library Journal Review

"Sometimes you can be made more than your body/ While still in your body. Now, that's power." Reeves's haunting second collection (after King Me) crafts a sweeping and powerful poetic topography. The poems encounter and reencounter suffering, grief, and violence across personal and political history, particularly U.S. history with its myths of innocence and its foundations in atrocity. The coexistence of tenderness, love, and wonder threads the work with tension and complexity ("And someone calling/ It beautiful--summer, moon--/ And someone dying beneath that beauty,/ Which is America's "), as does the impulse to converse. Poems engage with presences ranging from Sappho to James Baldwin to a deceased father. "Where is the end of speaking to the dead/ Of the brutal obligations of memory?" Perhaps there is no end, the poems imply, as the present reveals itself permeated by past and future, elegy and hope. "Children/ You were never meant to be human/ You must be the grass/ You must grow wildly over the graves." VERDICT Rich and cohesive, with remarkable depth and lyrical command, this work offers manifold discoveries. A book that reveals more with each reading.--Amy Dickinson

Grendel	p. 15
Without the Pelt of a Lion	p. 18
Children Listen	p. 20
Standing in the Atlantic	p. 21
The Alphabet, for Naima	p. 23
In Rehearsal for the Funeral	p. 25
Sovereign Silence, or The City	p. 26
Cocaine and Gold	p. 29
Rat Among the Pines	p. 31
American Landscaping, Philadelphia to Mount Vernon	p. 33
Into the West	p. 35
The Broken Fields Mended	p. 36
After the Funeral	p. 39
Echo: From the Mountains	p. 41
So, Ecstasy	p. 42
After Death	p. 44
Cyclops and Balthazar	p. 46
Mother's Day	p. 47
Second Plague Year, Black Spots on the Rose	p. 49
Poem, In an Old Language	p. 51
The End of Ghassan Kanafani	p. 54
Domestic Violence	p. 57
Something About John Coltrane	p. 68
Ode to Pablo Nerudas "Ode to a Lemon"	p. 78
Rich Black, or Best Barbarian	p. 79
Prayer of the Jaguar	p. 82
Drapetomania, or James Baldwin As an Improvisation	p. 84
Grendel's Mother	p. 86
"Espíritu Santo También ..."	p. 88
Fragment 107	p. 89
American Runner	p. 91
Past Barabbas	p. 93
My Folks	p. 94
Leaf-Sigh and Bray	p. 96
Caught in a Black Doorway	p. 98
As a Child of North America	p. 100
Future, from Beyond the Voice of God	p. 102
By Beauty, from Beyond the Voice of God	p. 104
Your Hand to Your Face Blocking the Sun	p. 106
I Can Drink the Distance, or Fire in the Lake	p. 107
Journey to Satchidananda	p. 108
For Black Children at the End of the World-and the Beginning	p. 110
Acknowledgments	p. 112
Notes	p. 115

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Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

Summary

Author Notes

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Library Journal Review

Table of Contents