Why Wallace Stevensâ Poetry is the Ultimate Guide to Mindful Living and the Antidote to the AI Era
Although he appeared as a poet relatively late in his career, the author left...
âAn essential addition to the American poetic canon.â âBooklist
From an award-winning poet praised for his ârhapsodic, rigorousâ work (The New Yorker) comes an immersive meditation on kindship, collectivity, and environmental thought
We (The People of The United States) is a book-length poem made to the measure of the modern world. Composed of 55 sections, it features a breathtaking range of characters and concerns: The Beach Boys, Gwendolyn Brooks, the invention of the typewriter, Zora Neale Hurston, Sun Ra, life on Mars, Robert Frost, experimental physics, The Jackson 5. Throughout the collection, Bennett summons Virgilâs Georgics as a lens through which to not only tell the story of his family, but a much larger one about the âform of the American mind,â our relationship to the natural world, and the pursuit of a dignified, abundant life. Published the year of the nationâs 250th anniversary, it is a collection that is right on time. One that calls us, as Langston Hughes once did, toward a future America that is not yet here, âand yet must be.â
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âBennett is showing out in the positive Black vernacular sense: demonstrating his erudition for shared delight with the reader . . . Bennettâs poetry combines structural elegance with taut rhythms harking back to his undergraduate days in the New York slam poetry scene . . . In layered metaphor, the text calls to mind the shifting hues of water, the colors of Civil War uniforms and the nation itself, with all its wrath and love and reaching. God bless America, indeed.â âThe New York Times
âAn ode to the America that was, is, and will be.â âThe Boston Globe
âA dazzling, expansive exploration of personal experience and the touchstones that informed it in poems that examine national identity, parenthood, masculinity, popular culture, and the natural world. . . .Bennettâs clever wordplay, wit, and gift for setting the scene permeate the collection and immerse the reader in the journey with vivid clarity. . . .An essential addition to the American poetic canon.â âBooklist, starred review
âAs much as itâs a triple-album-sized poetic performance of the word, Bennettâs book is also a history and theory of the American âwe,â across its myriad inflectionsâfamilial, romantic, local, congregational, coalitional, racial, transhistorical, even universal.â âChristopher Spaide, LitHub
âDonât miss this superb laying bare of Black joy and genius!â âCornel West
âAt a moment in American culture punctuated to a heartbreaking degree by acts of hatred, violence and disregard, I can think of nothing we need to ponder and to sing of more than our shared grief and our capacity not just for empathy but genuine love. Poetry is critical to such an endeavorâand Joshua Bennettâs astounding, dolorous, rejoicing voice is indispensable.â âTracy K. Smith
âHere, a single moment shimmers with a million resonances of attention. So the world is loved this much. And what has been taken has been taken this much. Bennett insists on repair even as he mourns what is utterly irreparable. This book is part of a breathful, bodied fight for Black life. I am emboldened and sharpened by Bennettâs genius and by his love made plain across each of these shimmering pages.â âAracelis Girmay, author of The Black Maria
âWith a singularly expansive and compassionate view of history, Bennett sweeps across generations of joy, suffering, and connection.â âLit Hub
âA tender celebration of vulnerability and the strength that blooms quietly in its presence.â âThe Atlantic