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    Prelude to Bruise
    Unavailable
    Prelude to Bruise
    Unavailable
    Prelude to Bruise
    Ebook103 pages46 minutes

    Prelude to Bruise

    By Saeed Jones

    4.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Praise for Saeed Jones:

    "Jones is the kind of writer who's more than wanted: he's desperately needed."—FlavorWire

    "I get shout-happy when I read these poems; they are the gospel; they are the good news of the sustaining power of imagination, tenderness, and outright joy."—D. A. Powell

    "Prelude to Bruise works its tempestuous mojo just under the skin, wreaking a sweet havoc and rearranging the pulse. These poems don't dole out mercy. Mr. Jones undoubtedly dipped his pen in fierce before crafting these stanzas that rock like backslap. Straighten your skirt, children. The doors of the church are open."—Patricia Smith

    "It's a big book, a major book. A game-changer. Dazzling, brutal, real. Not just brilliant, caustic, and impassioned but a work that brings history—in which the personal and political are inter-constitutive—to the immediate moment. Jones takes a reader deep into lived experience, into a charged world divided among unstable yet entrenched lines: racial, gendered, political, sexual, familial. Here we absorb each quiet resistance, each whoop of joy, a knowledge of violence and of desire, an unbearable ache/loss/yearning. This is not just a "new voice" but a new song, a new way of singing, a new music made of deep grief's wildfire, of burning intelligence and of all-feeling heart, scorched and seared. In a poem, Jones says, "Boy's body is a song only he can hear." But now that we have this book, we can all hear it. And it's unforgettable."—Brenda Shaughnessy

    "Inside each hunger, each desire, speaks the voice of a boy that admits "I've always wanted to be dangerous." This is not a threat but a promise to break away from the affliction of silence, to make audible the stories that trouble the dimensions of masculinity and discomfort the polite conversations about race. With impressive grace, Saeed Jones situates the queer black body at the center, where his visibility and vulnerability nurture emotional strength and the irrepressible energy to claim those spaces that were once denied or withheld from him. Prelude to a Bruise is a daring debut."—Rigoberto González

    From "Sleeping Arrangement":

    Take your hand out
    from under my pillow.

    And take your sheets with you.
    Drag them under. Make pretend ghosts.

    I can't have you rattling the bed springs
    so keep still, keep quiet.

    Mistake yourself for shadows.
    Learn the lullabies of lint.

    Saeed Jones works as the editor of BuzzfeedLGBT.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCoffee House Press
    Release dateAug 18, 2014
    ISBN9781566893848
    Unavailable
    Prelude to Bruise
    Author

    Saeed Jones

    Saeed Jones is the author of Prelude to Bruise, winner of the 2015 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry and the 2015 Stonewall Book Award/Barbara Gittings Literature Award. The poetry collection was also a finalist for the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award, as well as awards from Lambda Literary and the Publishing Triangle in 2015. Jones was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and grew up in Lewisville, Texas. He earned a BA at Western Kentucky University and an MFA at Rutgers University-Newark. He lives in Columbus, Ohio, and tweets @TheFerocity.

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    Reviews for Prelude to Bruise

    4.5/5

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    • 4/5
      To say that Saeed Jones is intense, is an understatement. Just when I think that I cannot have a more emotional response to a poem, the next poem hits me in the guts again. I am not one to typically read a book of poetry, but I am glad this one fell into my lap when it did. Dealing with gender, race, and loss, Jones' poems take readers on an emotional tailspin if you take the time to listen. Poetry isn't for everyone, but this is poetry worth reading.

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