I am grateful for the opportunity to read The Collection Plate, a collection of poems by Kendra Allen. These poems explore the raw experience of living in the United States. For me, the most powerful poems were Naked & Afraid and Afraid & Naked. As consumers, we can watch a made-up show where people who choose and are paid to pretend to be struggling to survive in the wilderness, sickening themselves on unclean drinking water, when clean water is always nearby. The reality is that there are many communities in our countries for whom this experience is not a game, not a reality show, but daily reality for people who must boil their water before they can drink it, if there is enough water at all. There is ‘always enough clean water near by’ if we choose equity, but as a country we do not. Thank you to NetGalley and Ecco for opening my eyes to this artist.

The Collection Plate is an interesting poetry collection that covers an array of topics and in a variety of different formats. I thought it was interesting the way the author structured each poem on the page; it made it feel more intentional and part of the larger narrative of this collection.

A couple poems that really resonated with me were ‘Naked & Afraid’ and ‘Afraid & Naked’. I thought it was smart the way the author paired these two separate poems in such a way to depict a broader picture and injustice around clean water.

My one critique is that there were a few poems that I had a hard time connecting to and following. I often found myself scratching my head, wondering what the author was intending to convey. With those few examples, I wished there was more fluidity at times and thought that was needed to pull the whole collection together more seamlessly.

Some poems were moving. My only complaint is the structure. I constantly had to reread lines because there was no true structure to the lines. There was no telling when a line started and when it ended or if it continued on. The words were constantly scattered all around the pages and it was frustrating having to decipher what would have been a simple sentence/poem.

I received an advanced copy of this book from the publisher through netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This book is well written and the characters are described well. I enjoyed the writing style of this book. It is a fast paced poetry book. I absolutely can't wait to read more books by this author in the near future. This book is in stores for CA$33.50 (CAD). I would recommend reading this book to anyone and everyone.

Thank you to Ecco and NetGalley for the Advanced Reader's Copy!

Now available!

Eloquent and elusive, The Collection Plate maps religion, Black girlhood, and family in an urgent manner. Flowing through the collection is a theme of water, muddled, clear and haunting. Blood waters that tie together family, environmental waste water that plagues generations, cellular water that helps us survive. Absolutely stunning!

Thanks to NetGalley for the Arc. There were some moving and thoughtful poems in this collection. I would recommend it to new poetry readers.

I was intrigued by the description of this work of poetry, but I couldn't get into it. I just didn't connect and found it difficult to read in the format it was in, which was acknowledged at the beginning of the book. I appreciated the chance to read it, but this one wasn't for me.

As a first read of contemporary poetry, I found this collection quite interesting. Kendra used an intriguing style of writing and structure throughout. It's hard to critique poetry, because interpretation of poetry is unique to each person.

The Collection Plate was indeed a collection plate of things: god, confessions, observations, experiences. There was a lot of water imagery, knitting the poetry tighter together.

I really enjoyed the sister poems and evening service.

There were times I was unsure if the structure of every poem was correct as I was reading an uncorrected proof. Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for a free copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review. I am grateful to have been able experience this collection of poetry.

Kendra Allen's The Collection Plate offers an uncompromising body of poems. She gives voice to rage, specific and universal, and pulls the curtains away to show us the ugliness and hypocrisy that lie behind much of what passes as kindness or care. One of the best examples of this ability see shaming truths is offered by a pair of poems both titled "Naked and Afraid."

The first poem of this title seems to discuss strategies for winning on a program like Survivor—what to bring, what kind of location to look for. She notes "One of the biggest challenges contestants face/on the show is finding drinkable water." One needs containers for water. One needs fire—because even seemingly clear water will need disinfecting. And a failure to obtain clean water can have catastrophic consequences.

The second poem of this title, moves from reality TV to real life: "one of the biggest challenges citizens face/is finding drinkable water." The individuals at the heart of this poem aren't contestants out to win a prize. They're ordinary Americans living in cities like Flint, Michigan, where tap water can be deadly and drinking it can have catastrophic consequences: "Drinking from contaminated/waters leads to Legionnaires'/disease, lethal pneumonia,/abandonment, dehydration,/paranoia."

Reading Allen's work isn't easy—and it isn't intended to be. The mirror she holds up through her poems will have you seeing yourself and your world in damning, and also revealing, light. Enter these poems with caution, but also with openness. Read them one or two at a time and let them sink in. Allen wastes no words, and none of her words should be wasted by readers.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinions are my own.

The Collection Plate is a short debut contemporary poetry collection.

I had a hard time with this book, if I’m honest. Modern poetry can be a struggle for me to enjoy at any time, but I’m just not sure it fits an e-book format. The version I read was an ARC, so it’s possible that some of the confusing line breaks were corrected in the finished version, but it was just a difficult read. Because of the format, I’m not sure the real cadence or intent of each poem came through to me, and I just tried to speed and skim through as a result. If you’re thinking of picking this one up, I’d suggest opting for the physical book.

The Collection Plate was just published on July 6. Thank you to Ecco Books, HarperCollins, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read a free e-ARC of this book.

The Collection Plate by Kendra Allen is a personal poetry collection that covers a huge variety of topics. From her girlhood to the black experience to culture in the United States. Allen expresses her passion and pain well. I personally didn't connect to the style of the poetry, but know many might.

Thank you Ecco Books and NetGalley for providing this ARC.

A collection of raw and emotional poems. If you are looking for love poems/ feel good poems this is not it. These are the type of poems that portray the strong emotions and dark language. Filled with portrayals of hurt and anger towards the system.

Thank you Netgalley for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

This book of poetry contains an interesting collection of the evaluation and critique of today's society. Formatted in a unique fashion, the author discusses topics that range from religion to societal constructs. It is a very interesting read.

The collection plate was a deeply personal collection of poetry. It’s hard to rate poetry because poems do different things for different people, I was captivated by the cover. The poems bring the cover to light. There is darkness and pain and there is the resilience (flowers) that grow from the pain black women endure. Some of the poems were not easy to read but overall I thought this was an original work.

A whole lot of nonsense. I love poetry when it actually makes sense. No flow, no story, no thing. I didn’t take a single thing away from this collection.

It was interesting to read these poetries and how each one reflected something about somebody's life and excellent writing Great book

The Collection Plate knocked the wind out of me at times. The themes explored through these poems were especially meaningful to me. Intially, I thought this would be a collection of poems about religion. While religion or religious jargon is weaved thoughout, Kendra Allen explores so much more. She explore family, love, grief, and community. I can't even begin to explain how water showed up over and over again, holding beautiful metaphors.

There were some poems were I wanted more. They did not feel complete. I was left on edge and not in a good way. However, I was more more wowed than no.

Review by Jim Esch for West Trade Review. https://westtradereview.com/index.html


It is safe to say we are at the point where poet Morgan Parker needs little introduction. Winning a National Book Critics Circle Award will do that for a writer. Even before her 2019 collection Magical Negro won the award, literati were taking notice of her 2017 book There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé. Terence Hayes affirmed Parker as a “forward-thinking literary star.” The aforementioned books were issued by Tin House, and now the publisher has seen fit to re-introduce readers to Parker’s first poetry collection, Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up at Night (originally published by Switchback Books in 2015). The reissue includes a new cover and new introduction by Danez Smith.

Morgan Parker’s debut collection arrived with her bristling voice fully formed. Candid, smart, funny, it navigates confessional and political modalities with aplomb. It is the kind of poetry that keeps readers on their toes, sparring with her bob and weave style, her lines leaping out like quick, stinging jabs.

At the heart of the arresting collection are explorations of black identity, stereotypes, and the implacable residue of tradition. “I’m Not The King of Black People” feels like a keystone piece in this regard. In “White Walls, White People”, Parker uses an art gallery setting and metaphors of “looking” to portray how race relations are never not being performed, even in contexts that pretend to ignore them. The micro aggressions described in “The Grandmothers Never Did the Laundry” disclose a racism that is always lurking. In “Epistolary Poem For Reader, Brother, Grandmother, Men (Or, When I Say I Want To Spit You Up)” Parker’s woven strings of seemingly isolated observations and speculations build to a powerful crescendo:

Maybe if I knew my grandmother
and the white family she worked for
I would feel different
about everything around me.

Instead I can only describe half
of the view outside the kitchen window.
Brown curtains are covering
the other half and I don’t mind it.

The past has not been as rewarding
as I had hoped.

Instead it feels
like something dark and hard is back there.
I spit it up
like a stringy peach.

The poems hinge on striking juxtapositions of unexpected images that infuse new drama into what might otherwise become stale tropes. In “The World Is Beautiful But You Are Not In It”, the “missing a loved one” theme feels strangely luminous:

Ladies will say we are expert with machines
but they will be under two pitchers of sangria
I said you could make music out of this.
Ingesting artificial palm trees, exploding.
Your letters are getting shorter. I am getting close
enough to the sun to touch the tip of its cigar.
(13)

You could call this confessional poetry, cut from the mold of giants like Sexton, Berryman, Plath, et. al. but confessional doesn’t quite nail what Parker achieves here. The personal is also constantly aware of social and political consciousness, even when that subtext is muted. It’s as if world and speaker form a dialectical bond. Larger than life problems tangle with the personal:

…what you don’t know is
I envy this world and I want to save it
squeeze its bloodied hand like so
saying this will only sting for a minute
(from “There Are Other Things I Want To Explain But They Are Mysteries”)

Stylistically, Parker’s concise lines, fast cuts, and enjambments deliver her spicy, arch wit in small packages. The titles deserve a shout out, too. They do not mince words. “If My Housemate Fucks With Me I Would Get So Real (Audition Tape Take 1)” and “How To Piss In Public And Maintain Femininity”, offer sardonic yet endearing gateways; they lure us in, and then the condensed lines set to work delivering wincing blows:

In Africa this man
is a lawyer
but here
he sells records
on the street (16).
(from “Face Cathedral”)

At times, stanzas lean towards the cryptic and opaque, but the apparent chaos is more of a feint. The incoming images and rhetorical flourishes open a space for her voice to lift off.

Careful with that
face of yours: You know
this weather
is my fault.
Trains get lost, roads flood
worry and charcoal.
Motherfuckers
better duck.
(From “Morgan What, Morgan Who?”)

She uses bold metaphors to push what is familiar past our comfort zone into something freshly awakened:
We go downstairs
brush from our necks a smell
like honey burned in the bottom of a pan.
[From “The Housecleaners, Early Wednesday Morning Downtown (after Gwendolyn)]

It is as if she would rather not get too cozy in a conventional poetic territory and instead posits an aesthetic of refusal to play by others’ rules.

We expect a poet’s first book to draw on a well of influences, and I do pick up echoes of The New York school, here. Poems such as “I Was Trotting Along And Suddenly” call to mind Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems. Like O’Hara, Parker has a sharp eye for suggestive detail, well-suited to nailing impressions as they pulse along the course of a day. Her work is rife with nods to pop culture, too, especially breakbeat / hip hop culture. In “Boys, Boys, Boys (after Jay Z)”, the speaker confesses what she gets from men and what she expects, closing with the funny, stabbing “I can make a mixtape my own / damn self.” In “Real Housewife Considers Feminist Theory While Sketching Designs For Her Handbag Line” Parker deconstructs the semiotics of handbag ownership with gusto. “Miss Black America”, a series of five poems spread across the collection, riffs on the vintage Curtis Mayfield song, questioning how the beauty queen (and alter ego) will fare under the ubiquitous gaze of white supremacy and existential dread.

Occasionally, it seems like Parker’s idiosyncratic voice will slide into a vortex of excessively private ego-performativity, but she skirts the edge and tacks away from the confessional perspective, tempering it by thinking through identity as social construct. The title poem “Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night” begins with self-loathing, then bifurcates into an agonistic dialogue with the personified nervous breakdown. Raw and isolated in a room behind the closed curtains, the sound of rock ‘n roll filters in from the distance:

Singing enters me, becomes the window.
Baby think of my skin
as the best part of the song. Take me
by the ribs and lay me at the bottom
of a dirty creek where I can
get a good view.

Now more than ever, we need viewpoints like this. Parker’s debut collection reclaims the defiantly affirmative power of self-assertion and fresh vision. Extricating the self from the baggage that 21st century late capitalism saddles us with is no easy task. Morgan Parker inspires us to be honest with ourselves and carves open a space where the hard work of self-remaking can begin.

This shouldn't be seen as an easy read or one that won't linger. There's multitasking of words here spoken and unspoken alike.

Reading this book was an experience. Obviously your mind is processing the words, but it was such a visceral reaction. This book feels so Deep South. It feels raw, and angsty, and like this woman is taking back her power - confronting all the wrong that she has ever experienced. There was so much relating to living as a Black person in this country, to living as a woman, and I think this collection comes at a perfect time. This author explored the dark sides of the church, familial relationships, grief, love. It’s a heavy read, but worth it. There were a few poems that really stuck out to me, but I really liked “Nobody Told Her About the End of Love.”

I was given an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.