Ordinary Beast
Poems
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5.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
ONE OF PUBLISHERS WEEKLY'S TOP 10 POETRY BOOKS OF FALL 2017
NPR'S MOST ANTICIPATED POETRY BOOKS OF 2017
A striking, full-length debut collection from Virgin Islands-born poet Nicole Sealey
The existential magnitude, deep intellect, and playful subversion of St. Thomas-born, Florida-raised poet Nicole Sealey’s work is restless in its empathic, succinct examination and lucid awareness of what it means to be human.
The ranging scope of inquiry undertaken in Ordinary Beast—at times philosophical, emotional, and experiential—is evident in each thrilling twist of image by the poet. In brilliant, often ironic lines that move from meditation to matter of fact in a single beat, Sealey’s voice is always awake to the natural world, to the pain and punishment of existence, to the origins and demises of humanity. Exploring notions of race, sexuality, gender, myth, history, and embodiment with profound understanding, Sealey’s is a poetry that refuses to turn a blind eye or deny. It is a poetry of daunting knowledge.
Sealey’s acclaimed debut confronts the tensions of existence with:
Caribbean American Poetry: With a voice born in St. Thomas and raised in Florida, Sealey interrogates ideas of origin, history, and belonging.LGBTQ+ Poetry: Featuring brilliant and subversive tributes to legends of drag ball culture like Venus Xtravaganza and Pepper LaBeija.Poems About Pop Culture: From odes to Brad Pitt to a murder-mystery poem inspired by the board game Clue, Sealey finds the profound in the familiar.Formal Experimentation: Masterfully crafted centos, sonnets, and inventive forms showcase a poetry of "daunting knowledge" where every line is electric.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sealey's elegant and elemental debut acts as a balm for and protectant against the hazards of modernity. Though her poems are very much in and of the material world, Sealey's gifts of attention and distillation resist any tendency toward superficial excess and distraction. Brief poems leave no room for flourishes, moving instead with lithe musicality toward the universal. She locates the human condition succinctly "We fit somewhere between god/ and mineral" and attends to the vast range of experiences contained therein. One of the collection's longer poems, "Cento for the Night I Said, I Love You,' " is a gorgeous meditation on human connection; the cento, a form composed solely of quotations, nods to the ways in which expressions of love are at once culturally inherited and unmistakably one's own. The collection also contains playful riffs on pop culture, including sonnets in voices from the film Paris is Burning and a sestinalike poem featuring the characters from Clue (which is then subsequently recast in a spare, sober erasure). But there are also images of racism and violence and in one of the book's many withering-yet-beautiful turns, Sealey wagers, "Every thing aspires to one/ degradation or another. I want/ to make something/ holy, then walk away." And yet, instead of walking away, Sealey engages with the world patiently and courageously.
