“Now I write beautiful things like I will never touch a beautiful thing again.”
Don’t miss this remarkable poem from Hanif Abdurraqib, performing at his book release at Art Share LA, in Los Angeles. Check out Hanif’s incredible debut book, “The Crown Ain’t Worth Much”.
“& when fall came, boys sat up in their beds alone & gasping while their hearts rattled out the ghosts of every unspoken love that dragged them there & then a whole country crawled itself across the ocean & went to war.”
Don’t miss this magnificent poem from Hanif Abdurraqib, performing at his book release at Art Share LA, in Los Angeles. Check out Hanif’s incredible debut book, “The Crown Ain’t Worth Much”.
In-Depth Look: Hanif Abdurraqib – “At My First Punk Rock Show Ever, 1998”
Appreciating poetry is often about patience: sitting with a poem, meditating on it, and re-reading it multiple times. With spoken word, we don’t always get a chance to do that. This series is about taking that chance, and diving a little deeper into some of the new poems going up on Button.
“We come here to see blood, like all boys who sneak past their sleeping fathers in ripped jeans.” ———
There are a lot of things to comment on in this poem– the power of its opening and closing line, how efficiently it’s constructed, how an entire relationship is illuminated by just a few scenes and lines. I’m particularly struck by how Abdurraqib uses place; right away, the title is evocative, but the first few lines go even deeper into what this place is– and what this place means. It’s one thing to understand “punk show” on an intellectual level; it’s something else to feel it– both in terms of its sights/smells/sounds, and the emotional energy that crackles through the relationships present in the poem.
For aspiring poets (maybe those readying their chapbook submissions), this is a valuable lesson. We sometimes think of “setting” as a fiction term, but poems have settings too, and especially with spoken word, creating a concrete, specific setting can do an enormous amount of work in terms of bringing the audience into the poem. It gives the reader (or listener) some ground to stand on, so they can be more fully present and open to the other elements of the poem.
Find more of Hanif Abdurraqib’s work here, and be sure to check out his new book, “They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us,” here!
“I just woke up one day and I was a still photo in everyone else’s home but my own.”
Don’t miss this week’s Best of Button playlist, featuring the top-viewed recent videos on the Button YouTube Channel. Today’s additions: Hanif Abdurraqib, Muna Abdulahi, Amani Kaur & Vanessa Tahay. Congratulations poets!
“I just woke up one day and I was a still photo in everyone else’s home but my own.”
Don’t miss this astonishing poem from Hanif Abdurraqib, performing at his book release in Los Angeles. Check out Hanif’s incredible debut book, “The Crown Ain’t Worth Much”.
In-Depth Look: Hanif Abdurraqib – “Watching A Fight At The New Haven Dog Park”
Appreciating poetry is often about patience: sitting with a poem, meditating on it, and re-reading it multiple times. With spoken word, we don’t always get a chance to do that. This series is about taking that chance, and diving a little deeper into some of the new poems going up on Button.
“And I too, dress for the hell I want, and not the hell that is most likely coming.” ———
In school, I remember learning about metaphor, but it was always tied to learning about simile. Part of the “lesson” was being able to differentiate the two, and I think that because of that, a lot of us still tend to think about metaphor in an overly specific way. “It’s like a simile, but doesn’t use like.” We so often see metaphor as another tool in the toolbox, and not something more fundamental to the craft of poetry; less screwdriver or pliers, more hands.
As this poem demonstrates, metaphor is so much more than a one-line comparison between two images or ideas. It’s about world-building. It’s about how we interface with reality through the telling of stories, or the sharing of images. And because that process is messy, metaphors can be messy too– they’re not always perfectly-balanced equations. The swirling imagery in this poem– from the dogs, to their owners, to the memory of another fight, to the more concrete flashes of blood, teeth, and fists– it all pushes us deeper into the poem’s reality, closer to the nuanced point that Abdurraqib is making.
