Winner of the Feminist Wire’s inaugural poetry contest, ford debuts with a fiery collection that uses language both evocatively rich and colloquially sharp and sly to capture the African American experience. Poems titled “past life portrait” range from the Negroes Burying Ground in Lower Manhattan, circa 1787, to the imagined thoughts of Rodney King, while the ambitious and deftly handled “black, brown, and beige (a movement in three parts)” echoes Duke Ellington’s symphony of the same name. (“Movement Three: Beige” says “this/ skin a shade/ and a half past alright”). Another poem series, “how to get over,” offers tough-love advice: “unload the artillery/ of switch, shrapnel their eyes with/ bitch and fierce, drop dead// gorgeous.” VERDICT Drop-dead gorgeous indeed. [starred review, Library Journal]
"It would be impossible to separate out the poems that celebrate blackness, as every poem embodies a pride and history. There are poems that twist with aching sadness, as in the sparse dictionary created in “wilding,”for the Central Park Five or “ode to an African urn,” where questions about the death of Trayvon Martin and others are in conversation with Keats’ lines. The collection ricochets from meditations on ancestry to pop culture references, with never a line or sentiment out of place." ~ Lambda Literary
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"Like Claudia Rankine’s “Citizen,” ford elevates pain into introspective art, carefully connecting the dots between what it means to be black and what it means to be free. how to get over rejoices in the space where both are possible." ~Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards
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