A Fortune for Your Disaster

by Hanif Abdurraqib

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Pub Date Sep 03 2019 | Archive Date Aug 31 2019

Tin House Books

Multicultural Interest | Poetry & Verse

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Description

In his much-anticipated follow-up to The Crown Ain't Worth Much, poet, essayist, biographer, and music critic Hanif Abdurraqib has written a book of poems about how one rebuilds oneself after a heartbreak, the kind that renders them a different version of themselves than the one they knew. It's a book about a mother's death, and admitting that Michael Jordan pushed off, about forgiveness, and how none of the author's black friends wanted to listen to "Don't Stop Believin'." It's about wrestling with histories, personal and shared. Abdurraqib uses touchstones from the world outside—from Marvin Gaye to Nikola Tesla to his neighbor's dogs—to create a mirror, inside of which every angle presents a new possibility.

In his much-anticipated follow-up to The Crown Ain't Worth Much, poet, essayist, biographer, and music critic Hanif Abdurraqib has written a book of poems about how one rebuilds oneself after a...

Available Editions

EDITION	Other Format
ISBN	9781947793439
PRICE	$15.95 (USD)
PAGES	108

Additional Information

Average rating from 7 members

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Featured Reviews

Reviewer 510282

Is the best thing about poetry books how you can read them backwards?
No.
(Though that is nice.)
The best thing about poetry books is finding someone who speaks your language, who revels in the same source material, the same melodic progressions as you; who can make you feel—for lines or pages at a time—like your preoccupations and obsessions are other people’s. Like your weird lonely brain places aren’t actually population: 1. Like your ugliest convictions also deserve the light.
🗯
In A FORTUNE FOR YOUR DISASTER, Hanif Abdurraqib writes primarily about heartbreak, but also about people living inside of songs, and what it means to leave a place that has its teeth in you and what it means to return, and what it is when the thing with teeth is a person or a
country,
a memory or
a song.
🗯
The best poetry is like being on really good drugs, the kind that crack open your gates and fill you with a power like the unknowable sensation of running across a water’s surface. Hanif’s poems are that for me: a conduit to emotion and the freedom of gracelessness forgiven.
🗯
What a gift that is, to feel high, and loved, and free, all thanks to typeset on a page. And what a gift given. Thanks to Hanif Abdurraqib and @tin_house for the gift (& @netgalley for approving my ARC request...after I managed to snag this at #ALAac19). I couldn’t pre-order this fast enough.

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Amanda B, Librarian

Once again Hanif Abdurraqib delivers a beautiful collection of poetry, His words touch on identity and reflections on life that drip with authenticity and beg to be read. He plays with the past and the present and weaves together the personal and interpersonal. This is a must-read.