Worldly Things

A New York Times Book Review "New & Noteworthy Poetry" Selection A Library Journal "Poetry Title to Watch 2021" A Chicago Review of Books "Poetry Collection to Read in 2021 A Reader's Digest "14 Amazing Black Poets to Know About Now" Selection A Books Are Magic "Recommended Reading" Selection Sometimes, writes Michael Kleber-Diggs writes in this winner of the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, everything reduces to circles and lines. In these poems, Kleber-Diggs names delight in the same breath as loss. Moments suffused with loveteaching his daughter how to drive; watching his grandmother bake a cake; waking beside his beloved to ponder trumpet mechanicscouple with moments of wrenching griefa fathers life ended by a gun; mourning children draped around their mothers waist; Freddie Grays death in police custody. Even in the refuge-space of dreams, a man calls the police on his Black neighbor. But Worldly Things refuses to offer allegiance to this centuries-old status quo. With uncompromising candor, Kleber-Diggs documents the many ways America systemically fails those who call it home while also calling upon our collective potential for something better. Lets create folklore side-by-side, he urges, asking us to aspire to a form of nurturing defined by tenderness, to a kind of community devoted to mutual prosperity. All of us want, after all, our share of light, and just enough rainfall. Sonorous and measured, the poems of Worldly Things offer needed guidance on ways forwardtoward radical kindness and a socially responsible poetics.