A fortune for your disaster

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. It's a book about a mother's death, and finally admitting that Michael Jordan pushed off in the '98 finals. It's about forgiveness, and how none of the author's black friends wanted to listen to "Don't Stop Believin'." It's about wrestling with histories, personal and shared, and how black people can write about flowers at a time like this. Abdurraqib writes across different tones and registers, with humor and sadness, and uses touchstones from the world outside--from Marvin Gaye to Nikola Tesla to his neighbor's dogs--to create a mirror, inside of which every angle presents a new possibility." --… (more)