If I had to choose one writer’s work to take to a desert island, I would pick Hanif Abdurraqib. It’s a two-for-one choice as Hanif is an exquisite poet as well as an essayist and profound point of view. His first book of essays, “They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us” opened my mind to the concept that one can pour their personal experience into any topic (in this case, music) and create work that transcends cultural criticism; work that stands on its own as art. I’ve seen him live on several occasions, including a poetry event in Seattle where his reading caused members of the audience to audibly gasp. You know you’re witnessing greatness when words cause such a reaction.
May we all strive to be AGW (audible gasp worthy) at some point. Not all the time, because then it would lose its luster.
A quote from the book mentioned above that sticks with me:
“The truth is, if we don’t write our own stories, there is someone else waiting to do it for us. And those people, waiting with their pens, often don’t look like we do and don’t have our best interests in mind.”
Amen.
From 2019’s A Fortune For Your Disaster:
The Prestige
the poem begins not where the knife enters
but where the blade twists.
Some wounds cannot be hushed
no matter the way one writes of blood
& what reflection arrives in its pooling.
The poem begins with pain as a mirror
inside of which I adjust a tie the way my father taught me
before my first funeral & so the poem begins
with old grief again at my neck. On the radio,
a singer born in a place where children watch the sky
for bombs is trying to sell me on love
as something akin to war.
I have no lie to offer as treacherous as this one.
I was most like the bullet when I viewed the body as a door.
I’m past that now. No one will bury their kin
when desire becomes a fugitive
between us. There will be no folded flag
at the doorstep. A person only gets to be called a widow once,
and then they are simply lonely. The bluest period.
Gratitude, not for love itself, but for the way it can end
without a house on fire.
This is how I plan to leave next.
Unceremonious as birth in a country overrun
by the ungrateful living. The poem begins with a chain
of well-meaning liars walking one by one
off the earth’s edge. That’s who died
and made me king. Who died and made you.
See you soon with a personal update. It’s been too long.
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