The Crown Ain't Worth Much (Button Poetry)

If Mary Oliver is the poet who channels the wildness of the natural world into images that are comprehensible to us mortals, then Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib is the poet who telescopes the Pop (Punk) landscape across streets and highways, in cars and at parties, in the barber's chair. He fixes his own joy and pain to songs and celebrities and ideas of family that we all share, shining a light on memories and nostalgia, revealing a depth and power that we knew were there, but couldn't fully see. These poems are gifts, helping us see the poetic in each of our engagements with music and film and television and life. Simultaneously, these same poems set out for all, the experience of being a young black man in America. I like to think that I think things like, "Oh, it must be crazy to be a black driver or a black kid or do anything, really, as a black person in this country." Like, that thinking that thought makes me a maybe "woke" white guy. Reading these poems made me realize there's so much I don't understand and I don't even know if understanding *that* lack of understanding is helpful. Yet, this work (this book of poetry) is so good and so open, it makes us return to the pain that is here, trying to find an answer. To paraphrase Rumi: Outside, beyond ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing, there is a club, they're playing Tribe. I will meet you there.

I generally read poetry with a pack of sticky notes to mark passages that particularly speak to me. I had to lay that practice aside with this collection because there were getting to be so many I wasn’t going to be able to properly close the book. I could go on with reactions, but I will spare you. The important takeaway is that this is a very special piece of work that I am very happy to have found.

I really enjoyed this! The poems were great and they were raw and from the heart. Great read for poetry month.

I settled into bed for the night with my fiance asleep, head on my chest, as I grabbed this collection off my pile of books on my bedside table and cracked it open for the first time. I wouldn't put it down for an hour. "AT THE HOUSE PARTY WHERE WE FOUND OUT WHITNEY HOUSTON WAS DEAD," has stirred up more emotions than any poem I've encountered save , "The Gate," by Marie Howe. You know a poem is good, when you can cry over it through every reading, and just upon thinking about it. You know a poem is great when it moves you to tears, but you can't name why immediately, and a month later you're still sorting out just what this poem is trying to surface, and that work may take a while, but you know there will be life found in the uprooting. Hanif weaves pop culture effortlessly with the lived in city of Columbus, and his own family life, as if the three can be separated. Perhaps thats the beauty of this collection. It feels universal, contextual, and personal all at one, offering multiple entry points into any given poem.

My Momma told me...Never Fall in Love With A Poet. My Abu is A Poem Unfinished and I was Born A poem Yet to Be written. I knew Hanif would break my heart before I even read this work. Still I wasn't expecting that he would steal my heart. Am I the only one who gets stuck on elevators because I am having one sided conversations with Hanif, reciting his words or trying to catch them from floating around in my mind? Asking for a friend.

vulnerable, creative, true expression on a page! these works expand what we do with the written word and how we present it.

I can't put words to the feeling of flipping through a book and seeing references to the music through which you've long understood the world and carved out your path through life and at the same time receiving brilliant new poems with which to do the same. If you want to feel understood, if you want to understand, if you want to see the dots of your experiences and other people's experiences and the soundtrack to all experiences connected so thoughtfully and masterfully that you'll wonder how you didn't see them before, buy this book. Buy this book, full stop.

Abdurraqib is a fearsome poet and essayist both. He can make you see, hear, and feel in powerful new ways; with Danez Smith he is a chronicler of out darkness and the broken and emptied bodies it's produced; he honors the power of love, memory, and music. An unforgettable collection--but it AND his essay collection, They Can't Kill Us Til They Kill Us.

Made a great gift My Dad loves it.

Hanif's way of intertwining personal memories with visceral and vivid descriptions and punchy pop culture references makes for an immaculate exercise in remembrance and catharsis.

Fantastic collection of poetry. Different to anthologies I have read previously but just as beautiful. Every line is golden.