Field Theories

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY FEB 20, 2017

In her third collection, Bashir (Gospel) displays an intriguingly multivalent approach to the objectivities and subjectivities of black experience reflected in her multimedia collaborations. A series of recurring "coronagraphs" become a tunnel through which the figures of John Henry and his wife Polly Ann speak, forming a sonnet crown that brings new life to an American myth. They are interspersed with four sections structured on the laws of thermodynamics and bearing voices of denizens trapped in a capitalist matrix, "An anthropocene/ of wannabe hepcats" who "pay// defense department rates/ for a sandwich; unremember// memorable jingles." Bashir's experimental visual gestures, such as a bullet-hole riddled prose poem on the law of probability, resonate as bluesy meditations on cosmic entropy's presence in the irreversible occurrences of American lives. While fans of Kevin Young will appreciate the pop of unexpected end rhymes and a present-tense narrative impulse, those of the more associative Ashberian school will enjoy such playful titles as "Universe as an infant: fatter than expected and kind of lumpy," which features a private visit with Groucho Marx. Whether depicting the faces of marginalized citizens at late-night truck stops or cross-sectioning "bloodstreaks through musculoskeletal structure," Bashir positions the slings and arrows of black American life as both empirically observable and available for radical, and movingly layered, interpretations.