Parker shifts gears easily between melancholy, humor, trivialities, power, vulnerability, and grief. Her use of space between her words has visceral impact that only the poetic medium can yield.Ĭertain lines left me nostalgic for a feeling or memory my mind can’t identify, like a line from a poem titled In Search of Morgan, Season 3, Episode 24: “Every morning I scrape hymns from the backs of my teeth.” What does this mean, and do I really need to know? It’s an abstract grasp of struggle and endurance. These poems, originally published in 2015, force the reader to acknowledge the multidimensional complexities and intricacies making up Black America: who is crowned and who is laid out to dry? I find myself racing through Parker’s words and scolding myself to abide by her pace, grammar, and punctuation. These poems ask pointed questions, and Parker doesn’t pull any punches exploring the layers of Black identity. There are five separate poems spread throughout the collection titled Miss Black America. Readers will do themselves a favor by paying attention to this powerful debut.An adept new introduction from poet Danez Smith sums up the ethos of this collection: “Can I live? Can a Black woman be? Where is the love I deserve? Why are you so stupid? What poison will America be today and can I just, like, be for a second?” They add that Parker’s questions “don’t want power, only consideration, peace.” As the US grapples with racial injustice and inequity, Parker’s collection of poems distills her experience as a Black woman to the page. Like theīest poets, Parker moves conversations forward-conversations about poetry, race, femininity. On her hands and knees/ she’s all like,/ Damn why/ I gotta be the man of the house?” Parker displays mettle when, instead of writing a simple ode to the Moon, she spits bourbon at it: “you said you’d never disrupt space/ I said hell I own it.” It’s all the more exciting because that mettle reveals itself to be vulnerable and desirous, to be as set on understanding the world as on changing it. The poems inhabit a world of Real Housewives and Jay-Z, repurposed song lyrics and emptied drinks, where “Touching you on the shoulder/ is the most honest I’ve been/Īll week.” These declarations have their own style of confident fun, as “Cinderella jams to Curtis Mayfield/ while scrubbing her/ own vomit from the bathroom/ tiles. In this debut collection, 2013 winner of the Gatewood Prize from Switchback Books (selected by Eileen Myles), Parker plays with pop culture and personal history to craft poems of deep intelligence and quick wit.
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