I was immediately drawn to The Collection Plate because of that beautiful cover! However, while I was reading, the main question I continued to ask myself while reading this was “Do I not understand poetry or is this book just not good at all?”

These poems were not easily readable. I usually enjoy poems that are more straightforward, but lyrical. I don’t like poetry where I have to decipher every single line. But maybe that’s just me. I’d recommend it to someone who enjoys poems with a more complicated writing style.

There were a few poems that I enjoyed though, like “I’m Tired of Yo Ass Always Crying” and “Happy 100th Birthday”. I think this collection just wasn’t my style.

I received this ebook via netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This is a collection of poems that explores the various topics of finding identity, sex, relationships etc.

It was quite complex but powerful at the same time. I am not someone to read poetry often but it was a good one.

It liked reading this book but it was a bit complicated for my taste. Still I would recommend it if you like reading poetry.

The collection plate was a book of poetry that rocked me to my 🦴 bones. It is very rare that I read something that has a voice like this one. There wasn’t any great romance that broken her heart. There wasn’t some man/woman that left her. She was fully aware and conscious in this one🙌🏽.

I have never read a book of poetry that reminded me of a younger Toni Morrison until this. When I read this I couldn’t stop 🛑 thinking about "The Bluest Eye".

This had old south written all over it. A little danger and fire. This was nitty and gritty but honest. There were parts of this book that took my breath away. However, there were just as many that had me begging for more. This is riddled in culture and the harshness that is the BLACK experience.

Especially this quote from Nannie Helen Burroughs.

"white men offer more protection for their prostitutes than black men offer to their best women”

I took away a star ⭐️ because I wanted to see a note from author at the end to give us a little backstory on the timeline and what made her write this book of poetry. I feel that because poetry has such a personal voice. It is harder sometimes to assume what something is in relation to so it’s great to see where the author wanted you to go with their writing.

That is my only honest complaint here and it was still a joy to read. I think when this comes out in audio it will be just as lovely.

I received an ARC from NetGalley, and I am leaving an honest review.

I enjoyed this collection of poems from Kendra Allen but found myself deeply moved by the cover. It's eerie, inviting, beautiful and complex just like the poems presented. The voice is particularly Black/African-American and Southern; very relatable for this Black, Southern girl. By no means am I someone that reads poetry for the depths and philosophical ideals, I simply like the experience of exploring a new literary voice. I will revisit The Collection Plate for reference but found the audio book a lot easier to digest.


Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Must Read... This book is fantastic. Food for the thought. The poems in this book are powerful! Great addition to my library.

I couldn’t stop myself from moving through this collection quickly. There was a publisher’s disclaimer at the beginning about potential problems with poems in the ebook form, but I found that apparent format issues actually drew me in more, making me dig more for meaning.

This is a book that I will keep coming back to for reflection, for memory, and for clarity.

I could see this being a source of discussion on speaker, allusion, and identity in a high school classroom.

Kendra Allen’s debut, The Collection Plate hits the poetry scene with a forceful slam. Weaving together personal experience and cultural exploration she examines themes that emote expressions of angst, loss, sorrow, and grief in a calculated and meaningful way. Each poem has its own unique bop in a sense and rhythm that when read aloud is absolutely phenomenal!

”Ain’t no rallies—ain’t no protests—ain’t no local night news bout a ghetto girl head wound with three babies at home and a daddy on his second strike”

There are poems that explore freedom, imprisonment, sexuality, and simply what it means to black in the context of today’s society. A few of my favorites included: #FreeMyNiggas but Free My Niggas, I Come To You As Humbly As I Know How, Naked & Afraid, Afraid & Naked, Happy 100th Birthday, and I’m Tired of Yo Ass Always Crying”

Thank you to NetGalley and Ecco for gifting me this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Publication Date: July 6, 2021

Thanks to NetGalley and Ecco for this e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

This is an intimate poetry collection that is so lyrically beautiful and profound. I feel that if I read this in paperback format, it would be even more engaging than on my Kindle. There is a note in the beginning of the book pretty much stating this because digital formatting for a book like this can be difficult with the different types of reading devices and stuff--totally understandable. So yes, there were moments of weird formatting but it wasn't that difficult to look over due to the fact it was written so well.

I am not an expert of poetry or anything but I thought this was a really good collection and unique. I liked the authors style and cadence through all the poems.

4/5

Thank you NetGalley for an advanced readers e-copy of this book. This collection is full of clever, honest poetry and takes a reader through a full range of emotions without saying much at all. The series of themes that spans the collection is abuse, sexism, sex and love, home and death and content warnings apply. The words themselves aren't graphic at all but they're vivid. I'd personally love to see them being performed some day.

Poems filled with passion, agony, and anguish reveal the emotions of black lives. This writer's bold and demanding tone emerges powerfully with infinitive phrases and genuine craft.

My favorite poems are ‘Solace by Earl’, ‘I am the note Held Towards the End’, ‘Gifting back Barn and Bread’, and ‘I come to You as Humbly as I Know’. Black Lives Matter, the message not the movement are words I as a black woman announce say proudly!

There seems to be a connection between poetry and pain. Kendra Allen’s “The Collection Plate” is no exception.

Poems carved with passion, agony and anguish reveal the experiences and emotions of black lives. Her bold and demanding tone emerges powerful with apt phrases and genuine craft.

Poetic expressions like ‘A family name can mean something; that way we can share the same death bed
that way I work for cheap….. and request to forget mornings…’, ‘digging her dynasty out of me so she can save it….’, Yet I still don’t know the difference between pleasure and penetration’ certainly leave a solid impact on the reader.

My favorite poems are ‘Solace by Earl’, ‘I am the note Held Towards the End’, ‘Gifting back Barn and Bread’ and ‘I come to You as Humbly as I Know’.

In 2018, award-winning essayist Kendra Allen picked up the Iowa Prize for Literary Nonfiction for her debut essay collection "When You Learn the Alphabet," a timely collection that unquestionably announced Allen as a bold new voice demanding to be heard.

With a two-book deal now in hand with Ecco, a HarperCollins imprint, Allen prepares for the debut of her first poetry collection in July 2021 called "The Collection Plate: Poems." It is soon to be followed by a memoir.

"The Collection Plate: Poems" swings and swivels with the rhythms of the Black experience in America, an experience I certainly don't know as a disabled white man but an experience that has been captured by others from Baldwin to Kendi to Brown and others. It still seems like a rarity when we find a collection that surveys the Black experience actually through the Black lens. It's refreshing, yet it's also uncomfortable.

You can practically feel Kendra Allen's presence while reading the words contained within "The Collection Plate," whether reading the extended stanzas of the emotionally resonant "Happy 100th Birthday" or becoming immersed in "The Maybe Memory" or the stunning "If You Throw Me in This Water What You're Telling Me is You Want Me Dead."

Blackness, sex, and girlhood come vividly to life in these pages that feel as if they should be spoken because you cannot help but feel their rhythms and their demanding of recognition. The Dallas-born Allen finds the light within beauty and brutality, decayed relationships and fragile intimacies.

I found myself reading a poem, then reading it again. I often found myself reading "The Collection Plate" aloud and wondering about the person behind these words. There are short poems here, poems like "Our Father's House (IV)," that feel like whispers of life and culture and experience. I occasionally laughed, "I Ain't Never Baked a Thing From Scratch a Day in My Life" comes to mind, while I also shuddered from something close to recognition with "The Super Sadness! Feels Like Anger Which Feels Like."

"Afraid & Naked" left me deep in thought. Deep in emotion. "Collection Plates," the same.

It takes a mastery of life and love and the written word to capture one's life experiences and one's culture in poetry, but this is precisely what Kendra Allen has done. She has done so masterfully. "The Collection Plate: Poems" is a collection that captivated me and captivates me still as her words became images and these images have seared themselves into my brain and into my heart and into my mind.

A fresh new voice seems so incredibly cliche', yet as a young woman in her mid-twenties this is the only phrase I can think of to describe this newcomer whose voice feels older and wiser and like a voice I want to hear from again and again and again.

The Collection Plate is a perfect title for this offering of wise words and poetic craft. Kendra Allen weaves personal history and experience into the form of verse of this gathering of lines and titles. Well worth visiting for poetry lovers, and well worth sharing. I particularly enjoyed Allen's use of line breaks, both at the end of stanzas and within them, to emphasize meaning.

i really enjoyed this poetry collection! allen's wordplay and use of line breaks are so refreshing and compelling. i loved the references to many modern pieces of media in evoking her personal experiences of womanhood and Blackness in America. never did i think i would read a poem written after Tiffany Pollard. truly magnificent. kendra allen has this special way of painting brutality without being exploitative and expressing joy without being naive. it's hard to explain but it's so well done and i would definitely be on the lookout for more of her work!

my favorite poems would have to be "Evening Service", "Naked and Afraid" and "Afraid and Naked", "The Super Sadness! Feels Like Anger Which Feels Like", "I'm Tired of Yo Ass Always Crying", and "Gifting Back Bread & Barren Land", but there wasn't a poem that i didn't like!

This delightful, powerful collection of poetry has been one of my favorite to read. It’s transformative electric and relatable at the same time. If you are a poetry reader this is one you have to read. I absolutely recommend it.