Heed the Hollow
Poems
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- 16,99 лв.
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- 16,99 лв.
Publisher Description
The stirring debut from the winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, selected and introduced by Chris Abani
Heed the Hollow introduces the work of Malcolm Tariq, whose poems explore the concept of “the bottom” across blackness, sexuality, and the American South. These lyrics of queer desire meet the voices of enslaved ancestors to reckon with a lineage of trauma that manifests as silence, pain, and haunting memories, but also as want and love. In bops, lyrics, and erasures, Heed the Hollow tells of a heritage anchored to the landscape of the coastal South, to seawalls shaped by forced labor, and to the people “marked into the bottom / of history where then now / we find no shadow of life.” From that shadow, the voices in these poems make their own brightness, reclaiming their histories from a language that evolved to exclude them.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, Tariq's daring debut explores the intersection of black, queer, and Southern identity through the concept of "bottom," both as a sexual role and a position in the social hierarchy. The conceit is often playful, as in the repeated phrase "Malcolm Tariq's Black Bottom," which is woven throughout the collection: "His Tastykake/ cake/ His Doublicious Kandy Kake/ cake cake/ the bounce/ of his Little Debbie/ cake." More often, this concept makes erotic submission continuous with historical traumas, torquing familiar expressions: "Take this moan as historical rendering,/ my downward-facing sigh. Thy rod/ and thy staff they come for me." Charting a journey from Savannah to Michigan, Tariq's confessionalism can be direct, as in the title poem ("I take my own pills as I once learned/ to sign for my mother's birth/ control. Preventative measures"), or suggestively and wittily oblique: "He's never had/ a black man. I've never had myself." Readers of Robin Coste Lewis will appreciate Tariq's archival erasures, while Natasha Trethewey fans will appreciate a journey to South Carolina's "Ellis Island of Slavery," where "baby strollers and casual dog walks/ file before a single marquee meant to hold/ place for history." Reckoning with historical atrocities and making use of a variety of formal gestures, Tariq triumphs in creating his distinctive brand of blues.
