Hanif Abdurraqib

* 2018 "12 best books to give this holiday season" —TODAY (Elizabeth Acevedo)
* A "Best Book of 2017" —Rolling Stone (2018), NPR, Buzzfeed, Paste Magazine, Esquire, Chicago Tribune, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, CBC, Stereogum, National Post, Entropy, Heavy, Book Riot, Chicago Review of Books, The Los Angeles Review, Michigan Daily
* American Booksellers

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In his much-anticipated follow-up to The Crown Ain't Worth Much, poet, essayist, biographer, and music critic 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.

"In an age of confusion, fear, and loss, Hanif Abdurraqib's is a voice that matters. Whether he's attending a Bruce Springsteen concert the day after visiting Michael Brown's grave, or discussing public displays of affection at a Carly Rae Jepsen show, he writes with a poignancy and magnetism that resonates profoundly. In essays that have been published by the New York Times, MTV, and Pitchfork, among others--along with original, previously unreleased...

"A regular columnist for MTV.com, Abdurraqib brings his interest in pop culture to these poems, analyzing race, gender, family, and the love that finally holds us together even as it threatens to break us. Terrance Hayes writes that Abdurraqib 'bridges the bravado and bling of praise with the blood and tears of elegy.' The poems in this collection are challenging and accessible at once, as they seek to render real human voices in moments of tragedy...

In 1988, when Robert Clark was in his early twenties, he traveled to Odessa, Texas, to create a visual element for a book about a high school football team. That book was Buzz Bissinger's Friday Night Lights-the chronicle of a season with the Permian Panthers, one of the state's winningest teams of all time. About twenty photos appeared in Bissinger's book, but Clark shot 137 rolls of film during his time with the Panthers. Friday Night Lives collects...

"Curated by award-winning and best-selling poets, this wide-ranging poetry anthology represents twenty years of poetry from the students and alumni of Chicago's Oak Park River Forest High School Spoken Word Club."--

Vienna in the 1880s. Paris in the 1920s. Memphis in the 1950s. These are the paradigm shifts of modern culture. Memphis then was like Seattle with grunge or Brooklyn with hip-hop—except the change was more than musical: Underground Memphis embraced African American culture when dominant society abhorred it. The effect rocked the world. We're all familiar with the stars' stories, but It Came From Memphis runs with the the kids in that first rock...