A full length book poem. To be clear, not a book of poems, but a book containing one continuous poem, although three is a table of contents. The format makes for disjointed reading, because it’s a poem, so there isn’t really one story, but what I would call mini stories within the confines of verse and stanzas riffing on blackness, femininity, and rap. There were some very good lines in here,
“Thy rod’s useless.The good word cannot make
morning beget another take
on mourning.”

“I put my makeup on and broke
my face into a hundred pigments.
Some of the hues red as the part
of the mouth nobody ever sees.”

It is most certainly a very creative endeavor and one that I believe is worthy of your time. Poetry people will absolutely love this more than others, but it’s not just for the poetry crowd. An interesting way to get at some ideas and thoughts one wants to share. Thanks to Netgalley and Tin House Books for an advanced DRC. Publication date is Sept. 18, 2018

I enjoyed this read but missed a lot of the allusion. I want to dig back in with a pencil and start educating myself so I can appreciate this even more.
Political, lyrical, biting. It’s tough and worth a slower read. I’ll be back.

“For some, it don’t mean a thing without the swing of a gavel and a trace of doubt can trump a circumstance.

Oh beautiful for skies too small.”

4 1/2 stars. Free-form(alist), blank verse intermittently comprising various traditional modes of poetry. An uncorking of womanhood and blackness (I press a flashlight hard against my womb, spreading my legs to see if white comes out.) contextualized by the specificity of this precise moment in American history, while also dichotemizing these concerns by revisiting them in concert with biblical allusions and thematics: modernity vs. antiquity, antiquity as modernity, fuck donald trump, fuck donald trump. Today I told Donald Trump the story of a woman. How the skies came out of her wherever. Spacious skies. Dark skies. Grown woman skies.

This is necessary poetry.

3.5 Stars

Although at times a little lost, overall I enjoyed this poem. I may not be the target audience, but I still gained something from reading this. It’s one of the things I love about poetry: everyone is able to take away something from it.

Dawson weaves culture, religion, and current and past events together to create a rhetoric that’s not much seen in literature. She looks at what it is to be black and to be a woman in today’s society.

Some of my favorite lines were:

"For some, it don’t mean a thing without the swing of a gavel and a trace of doubt can trump a circumstance."

"I put my makeup on and broke my face into a hundred pigments."

"Eve knew she didn’t need a man to be a mother. Didn’t need his rib/God’s hand to be made."

"They don’t want us hysterical or loud or bold but like the way they reek of us and won’t wash off our sour."