In His Much Anticipated Follow Up To The Crown Ain T Worth Much, Poet, Essayist, Biographer, And Music Critic Hanif Abdurraqib Has Written A Book Of Poems About How One Rebuilds Oneself After A Heartbreak, The Kind That Renders Them A Different Version Of Themselves Than The One They Knew It S A Book About A Mother S Death, And Admitting That Michael Jordan Pushed Off, About Forgiveness, And How None Of The Author S Black Friends Wanted To Listen To Don T Stop Believin It S About Wrestling With Histories, Personal And Shared Abdurraqib Uses Touchstones From The World Outside From Marvin Gaye To Nikola Tesla To His Neighbor S Dogs To Create A Mirror, Inside Of Which Every Angle Presents A New Possibility
Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio His poetry has been published in Muzzle, Vinyl, PEN American, and various other journals His essays and music criticism have been published in The FADER, Pitchfork, The New Yorker, and The New York Times His first full length poetry collection, The Crown Ain t Worth Much, was released in June 2016 from Button Poetry It was named a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Prize, and was nominated for a Hurston Wright Legacy Award With Big Lucks, he released a limited edition chapbook, Vintage Sadness, in summer 2017 you cannot get it any and he is very sorry His first collection of essays, They Can t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, was released in winter 2017 by Two Dollar Radio and was named a book of the year by Buzzfeed, Esquire, NPR, Oprah Magazine, Paste, CBC, The Los Angeles Review, Pitchfork, and The Chicago Tribune, among others He is a Callaloo Creative Writing Fellow, an interviewer at Union Station Magazine, and a poetry editor at Muzzle Magazine He is a member of the poetry collective Echo Hotel with poet essayist Eve Ewing His next books are Go Ahead In The Rain, a biography of A Tribe Called Quest due out in 2019 by University of Texas Press, and They Don t Dance No Mo , due out in 2020 by Random House Yes, he would like to talk to you about your favorite bands and your favorite sneakers.
- A Fortune for Your Disaster
- Hanif Abdurraqib
- 25 December 2017 Hanif Abdurraqib
hanif abdurraqib s new collection of poetry, a fortune for your disaster is an emotionally stirring and deeply personal work of grief, sorrow, loss, self reflection, remembrance, violence, love, death, and heartbreak romantic and otherwise the polymathic authors casts a wide net, but his precise and unabashed imagery commands an unflinching gaze with his trademark interpolation of popular culture, hanif s poems can stir your heart almost as easily as they can stop it an obviously gifted and hanif abdurraqib s new collection of poetry, a fortune for your disaster is an emotionally stirring and deeply personal work of grief, sorrow, loss, self reflection, remembrance, violence, love, death, and heartbreak romantic and otherwise the polymathic authors casts a wide net, but his precise and unabashed imagery commands an unflinching gaze with his trademark interpolation of popular culture, hanif s poems can stir your heart almost as easily as they can stop it an obviously gifted and candid writer, hanif s poetry as well as his prose maps the connections between the forgotten and the unforgettable a fortune for your disaster is gritty and graceful, piercing and profound.it s not like nikola tesla knew all of those people were going to dieeveryone wants to write about godbut no one wants to imagine their godas the finger trembling inside a grenadepin s ring or the red vine of blood coughed into a child s palmwhile they cradle the head of a dying parent.few things aredangerous than a manwho is capable of dividing himself into several men,each of them with a unique river of desireon their tongues it is also magic to pray for a daughterand find yourself with an endless march of boyswho all have the smile of a motherfucker who wronged youand never apologized no one wants to imagine their godas the knuckles cracking on a father watching their sonpicking a good switch from the tree and certainlyno one wants to imagine their god as the tree.enough with the foolishness of hope and how it bruisesthe walls of a home where two people sit, stubbornly in lovewith the idea of staying if one must pray, i imagineit is most worthwhile to pray towards endings.the only difference between sunsets and funeralsis whether or not a town mistakes the howlsof a crying woman for madness
3.5 5.I m still fresh on Hanif s approach to poetry, though I really enjoyed quite a few of these It Is Once Again the Summer of My Discontent This Is How We Do It, Watching A Fight At the New Haven Dog Park, First Two Dogs and Then Their Owners, The Ghost of Marvin Gaye Plays the Dozens With the Pop Charts, I Tend to Think Forgiveness Looks the Way It Does In Movies, and Welcome to Heartbreak I love the way Hanif leans into the experience of heartbreak, death, and mourning, an 3.5 5.I m still fresh on Hanif s approach to poetry, though I really enjoyed quite a few of these It Is Once Again the Summer of My Discontent This Is How We Do It, Watching A Fight At the New Haven Dog Park, First Two Dogs and Then Their Owners, The Ghost of Marvin Gaye Plays the Dozens With the Pop Charts, I Tend to Think Forgiveness Looks the Way It Does In Movies, and Welcome to Heartbreak I love the way Hanif leans into the experience of heartbreak, death, and mourning, and how perceptive he is of his surroundings and how meaning can be drawn from even banal happenings of the day Watching A Fight, for example, illustrates this with haunting detail Collectively, however, I wasn t entirely taken with the poems here Hanif has a charming style, that s for certain, but there seemed to be a lack of congruence.Thanks, Tin House, for supplying me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review
Reading A Fortune for Your Disaster by Hanif Abdurraqib was engaging, cathartic, and soul stirring all at the same time These poems will haunt you, leave you deep in thought long after you ve finished reading They will sit with you like a recently found, long lost friend who has no intentions of leaving anytime soon And I think it s necessary So often we want to push tragedy and sadness out of our hearts and minds, using any catalyst for comfort we can conjure up These poems trigger us, mak Reading A Fortune for Your Disaster by Hanif Abdurraqib was engaging, cathartic, and soul stirring all at the same time These poems will haunt you, leave you deep in thought long after you ve finished reading They will sit with you like a recently found, long lost friend who has no intentions of leaving anytime soon And I think it s necessary So often we want to push tragedy and sadness out of our hearts and minds, using any catalyst for comfort we can conjure up These poems trigger us, make us remember, make us mourn, then challenge us to carry on Thank you to Tin House Books and Netgalley for an ARC of this beautifully heart breaking collection of poetry in exchange for an honest review I will shareabout this book closer to the release date
Hanif Abdurraqib s writing never fails to move me, puzzle me, and make me think I tried to pace myself through this poetry collection, focusing and contemplating, but taking breaks to let it sink in.The poems in this collection are heavy, exploring topics like loss, grief, loneliness, and how mourning can bring us together and eventually lead to celebration and moving forward.Some of these are hard to read, and there s emotion on every page Abdurraqib has done an amazing job as usual
breathless
First I read it through Then I re read all the poems with the title How Can Black People Write About Flowers At a Time Like This I counted 12 Then I re read all the poems with The Ghost of Marvin Gaye in the title 7 Then I re read all the poems with the title It s Not Like Nikola Tesla Knew All Those People Were Going to Die 3 Then I re read the two poems entitled I Tend to Think Forgiveness Looks the Way It Does in the Movies Then I re read all the poems that had non repeatin First I read it through Then I re read all the poems with the title How Can Black People Write About Flowers At a Time Like This I counted 12 Then I re read all the poems with The Ghost of Marvin Gaye in the title 7 Then I re read all the poems with the title It s Not Like Nikola Tesla Knew All Those People Were Going to Die 3 Then I re read the two poems entitled I Tend to Think Forgiveness Looks the Way It Does in the Movies Then I re read all the poems that had non repeating titles, only this time from the back to the front I don t know why I did it that way There are also two or maybe three poems entitled The Prestige which open and close the book, so I read those a bunch of times as well I got this book from the library, but I may have to go buy a copy so I can keep reading it whenever I want to The author is from Columbus, Ohio, but I haven t met him yet Somehow his readings always seem to happen when I m out of town Hope that won t keep happening, as I d like to hear him read these
Hanif Abdurraqib demonstrates a wide range of influences in A Fortune for Your Disaster, which takes its title from Fall Out Boy song lyrics, with poems that weave together Nikola Tesla, Christopher Nolan s film The Prestige, the ghost of Marvin Gaye, and song lyrics from artists including Kanye West, Drake, and Bruce Springsteen Abdurraqib is able to synthesize these elements andto create extraordinary poems that offer profound meditations on violence, death, and heartbreak.
Visceral poetry focused on grief and anger You can feel the loss in his poetry There is a need to feel something, anything, that comes after grief Even if it means to stare down an enemy or hoping two people get into a fight in a dog park The need to feel something real is palpable It s a book on grief and desperation It is a need for human contact after a loss OTES FROMA Fortune for Your DisasterHanif AbdurraqibSeptember 10, 2019The Pledge, p 10Imagine, instead the place where you have Visceral poetry focused on grief and anger You can feel the loss in his poetry There is a need to feel something, anything, that comes after grief Even if it means to stare down an enemy or hoping two people get into a fight in a dog park The need to feel something real is palpable It s a book on grief and desperation It is a need for human contact after a loss OTES FROMA Fortune for Your DisasterHanif AbdurraqibSeptember 10, 2019The Pledge, p 10Imagine, instead the place where you have a bed of your own a table to sit across from someone who laughs thick echoing at your smallest joy as an open palm then the fingers closeSeptember 11, 2019The Pledge, p 15If one must pray, I imagine it is most worthwhile to pray towards endings The only difference between sunsets and funerals is whether or not a town mistakes the howls of a crying woman for madness.September 11, 2019The Pledge, p 19my pal died not when pill bottle rolled empty from his unfurling palm It was sometime after that, when I told his old girlfriendSeptember 11, 2019The Pledge, p 26 I imagine this is no longer over cheese but over every mode of unfulfilled promise.September 10, 2019The Pledge, p 3when my heartbreak was a different animal howling at the same cloudsSeptember 10, 2019The Pledge, p 3there is intimacy in the moment where the eyes of two enemies meet there is a tenderness in knowing what desire ties you to a person, even if you have spent your dreaming hours cutting them a casket from the tree in their mother s front yard it is a blessing to know someone wants a funeral for youSeptember 10, 2019The Pledge, p 3not everything is Sisyphean no one ever wants to imagine themselves as the boulder.September 10, 2019The Pledge, p 5when the stakes are most violent I suppose we all become what we resemble most September 10, 2019The Pledge, p 5I feel guilty when I start to hope that the dog owners throw a punch at each other just so I can remember what it looks like when a fist determines its own destiny September 10, 2019The Pledge, p 6am getting too old I want only a good dog most days I m saying I want a dog that will never ask me to finish something it started I m saying I want a dog that will never make me clean its blood out of the streets.September 10, 2019The Pledge, p 10I wish this type of betrayal on no one being born out of that which will be your undoing.September 11, 2019The Pledge, p 11I am talking about the end of love how the door closes one night never re opens The coffee mug left with a lover s unshakable stains in the bottom the single fork from the infant night in the first shared apartment all of the relics we have to craft the leash used to keep our misery closeSeptember 11, 2019The Pledge, p 13the difference between a warning a threat is all a matter of what you ve lived throughSeptember 11, 2019The Pledge, p 18Everyone who thinks of death as peaceful place is still aliveSeptember 11, 2019The Pledge, p 25I am sorry that there is no way to describe this that is not about agony or that is not about someone being torn from the perch of their comfort on the same night a year before my mother died Jordan wept on the floor of the United Center locker room after winning another title because it was father s day his father went to sleep on the side of a road in 93 woke up a ghost there is no moment worth falling to our knees galloping towards like the one that sings our dead into the architecture so yes for a moment in 1998 Michael Jordan made what space he could on the path between him his father s small breathing graceSeptember 11, 2019The Pledge, p 27Only thing that separates purgatory and hell is whether or not you can see the face of someone you ve loved in the fire,September 11, 2019The Turn, p 44and it is really something to love only the unseen and still be finiteSeptember 11, 2019The Turn, p 54is it that memory is a field with endless gravesSeptember 11, 2019The Turn, p 57Here, finally, a country worth living in One that falls thick from whatever it is we love so much that we can t stop letting it kill us If we must die, let it be inside here If we must.September 14, 2019The Turn, p 60it is impossible to know what you d kill for until you hold a face in your two hands underneath a streetlight on a block where killing pays the rent where, as a boy,September 11, 2019The Turn, p 43is that i cling to the past because in it, i had yet to know painSeptember 11, 2019The Turn, p 55It is impossible to tell your saints from your sinners when a fistful of dollar bills descends on a room It isSeptember 11, 2019The Turn, p 55Loneliness is the drug from which all other drugs obtain their architectureSeptember 11, 2019The Turn, p 57I want, mostly, a year that will not kill me when it is over.September 13, 2019The Turn, p 59all of my idols diedSeptember 15, 2019The Prestige, p 77I can tell Magic from science by whether or not there is a body in the casket WHATSeptember 15, 2019The Prestige, p 84bring to me your palms overflowing with the production of your most intemperate anguish i promise there is no target i will not stand in front of for you there is no wood that could fashion a cross to hold me.September 15, 2019The Prestige, p 91love is not the drug itself but is the fluorescent palm which splits the earth in the name of its blooming not the drug, but the object so beautiful it demands to be stitched into something which the body can consume.September 15, 2019The Prestige, p 91may even the residue of our love find a curve of wind to dance an echo into THESeptember 14, 2019The Prestige, p 71I mean those of us who have reached for a song pulled back a coffinAll Excerpts FromAbdurraqib, Hanif A Fortune for Your Disaster Tin House Books, 2019 04 24 Apple Books This material may be protected by copyright
I do not know how Hanif Abdurraqib does it Everytime These poems beat out the already amazing poems from The Crown Ain t Worth Much.
Yeah, this is amazing If one must pray, I imagineIt is most worthwhile to pray toward endings The only difference between sunsets and funeralsis whether or not a town mistakes the howlsof a crying woman for madness. from It s Not Like Nikola Tesla Knew All of Those People Were Going to Die Mercy, like the boy pulling back a fist as the small straydog below him trembles with its eyes shut Mercy, that boy then walking into the arms of this mother,who once dragged him from a home ransacked by Yeah, this is amazing If one must pray, I imagineIt is most worthwhile to pray toward endings The only difference between sunsets and funeralsis whether or not a town mistakes the howlsof a crying woman for madness. from It s Not Like Nikola Tesla Knew All of Those People Were Going to Die Mercy, like the boy pulling back a fist as the small straydog below him trembles with its eyes shut Mercy, that boy then walking into the arms of this mother,who once dragged him from a home ransacked by a man s violence Mercy, the city unfolding its wide generous palms over your skin the way a city does when it opens itself up darkness to pour intoits open mouth you, too, wait for the night to spill itself into your echoing terraces of grief call yououtside tell you that it is almost your season, darling. from I Tend to Think Forgiveness Looks the Way It Does in the Movies Tesla said there are not great inventions made by married men but then howdo you explainthe way the space in betweenbodies in a sharedbed can feel like an entirecountry I m sayingthat all inventions comeat the cost of a roombecoming somethingdifferent than it was.a boy who imagines himselfalone falls from an abandonedskyscraper halves the sky there is nothing up therethat will hold any of ustogether darling I think I ve got it I can tellMagic from science bywhether or notthere is a bodyin the casket. from It s Not Like Nikola Tesla Knew All of Those People Were Going to Die 3