The Sobbing School (Penguin Poets)

Synopsis

Selected By Eugene Gloria As A Winner Of The National Poetry Series The Sobbing School, Joshua Bennett's Mesmerizing Debut Collection Of Poetry, Presents Songs For The Living And The Dead That Destabilize And De-familiarize Representations Of Black History And Contemporary Black Experience. What Animates These Poems Is A Desire To Assert Life, And Interiority, Where There Is Said To Be None. Figures As Widely Divergent As Bobby Brown, Martin Heidegger, And The 19th-century Performance Artist Henry Box Brown, As Well As Bennett's Own Family And Childhood Best Friends, Appear And Are Placed In Conversation In Order To Show That There Is Always A World Beyond What We Are Socialized To See Value In, Always Alternative Ways Of Thinking About Relation That Explode Easy Binaries-- The Sobbing School, Joshua Bennett's Mesmerizing Debut Collection Of Poetry, Presents Songs For The Living And The Dead That Destabilize And De-familiarize Representations Of Black History And Contemporary Black Experience. What Animates These Poems Is A Desire To Assert Life, And Interiority, Where There Is Said To Be None. Figures As Widely Divergent As Bobby Brown, Martin Heidegger, And The 19th Century Performance Artist Henry Box Brown, As Well As Bennett's Own Family And Childhood Best Friends, Appear And Are Placed In Conversation Toward The End Of Claiming That There Is Always A World Beyond What We Are Socialized To See Value In, Always Alternate Ways Of Thinking About Relation That Explode Easy Binaries-- In Defense Of Henry Box Brown -- On Extinction -- Invocation -- Yoke -- Taxonomy -- Didn't Old Pharaoh Get Lost In The Red Sea: Theorizing Amnesia In Afro-diasporic Maritime Literature -- Theodicy -- Run -- Still Life With First Best Friend -- Whenever Hemingway Hums Nigger -- Teacher's Aide -- Praise Song For The Table In The Cafeteria Where All The Black Boys Sat Together During A Block, Laughing Too Loudly -- In Defense Of Passing -- Fly -- Absolutely True Facts About Richard Wright -- Clench -- Self-portrait As Periplaneta Americana -- On Stupidity -- First Date -- Variation On The Father As Narcissus -- Fresh -- The Order Of Things -- Ode To The Equipment Manager -- Family Reunion -- Praise House -- Vcr&b -- In Defense Of Dmx -- Ode To The Mascot -- The Sobbing School -- Black History, Abridged -- Home Force: Presumption Of Death -- Tenacious Elegy: Insurgent Life In The Era Of Trial By Gunfire With A Line From Sylvia Wynter -- Anthropophobia -- Aubade With Insomnia -- Samson Reconsiders -- Love Poem Ending With Typewriters -- On Flesh -- Still Life With Little Brother -- On Blueness -- Preface To A Twenty-volume Regicide Note. Joshua Bennett.