Crown Ain't Worth Much

Made a great gift My Dad loves it.

If Mary Oliver is the poet who channels the wildness of the natural world into images that are comprehensible to us mortals, then Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib is the poet who telescopes the Pop (Punk) landscape across streets and highways, in cars and at parties, in the barber's chair. He fixes his own joy and pain to songs and celebrities and ideas of family that we all share, shining a light on memories and nostalgia, revealing a depth and power that we knew were there, but couldn't fully see. These poems are gifts, helping us see the poetic in each of our engagements with music and film and television and life.Simultaneously, these same poems set out for all, the experience of being a young black man in America. I like to think that I think things like, "Oh, it must be crazy to be a black driver or a black kid or do anything, really, as a black person in this country." Like, that thinking that thought makes me a maybe "woke" white guy. Reading these poems made me realize there's so much I don't understand and I don't even know if understanding *that* lack of understanding is helpful. Yet, this work (this book of poetry) is so good and so open, it makes us return to the pain that is here, trying to find an answer.To paraphrase Rumi: Outside, beyond ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing, there is a club, they're playing Tribe. I will meet you there.

Fantastic collection of poetry. Different to anthologies I have read previously but just as beautiful. Every line is golden.

I generally read poetry with a pack of sticky notes to mark passages that particularly speak to me. I had to lay that practice aside with this collection because there were getting to be so many I wasn’t going to be able to properly close the book. I could go on with reactions, but I will spare you. The important takeaway is that this is a very special piece of work that I am very happy to have found.

I settled into bed for the night with my fiance asleep, head on my chest, as I grabbed this collection off my pile of books on my bedside table and cracked it open for the first time. I wouldn't put it down for an hour."AT THE HOUSE PARTY WHERE WE FOUND OUT WHITNEY HOUSTON WAS DEAD," has stirred up more emotions than any poem I've encountered save , "The Gate," by Marie Howe. You know a poem is good, when you can cry over it through every reading, and just upon thinking about it. You know a poem is great when it moves you to tears, but you can't name why immediately, and a month later you're still sorting out just what this poem is trying to surface, and that work may take a while, but you know there will be life found in the uprooting.Hanif weaves pop culture effortlessly with the lived in city of Columbus, and his own family life, as if the three can be separated. Perhaps thats the beauty of this collection. It feels universal, contextual, and personal all at one, offering multiple entry points into any given poem.