Perennial Fashion Presence Falling

by Fred Moten

“some ekphrastic evening, this’ll be both criticism and poetry and failing that fall somewhere that seems like in between.” So writes poet, critic, theorist, and MacArthur fellow Fred Moten in his latest poetry collection perennial fashion   presence falling .  Much like the poems found in The  Feel Trio (Letter Machine 2014), which was a National Book Award finalist, and All That Beauty (Letter Machine, 2019), the poems here present Moten’s “shaped prose” on the page and the dizzying brilliance of both polyphonies and paronomasia. Within this collection, the poems hold an innate quantum curiosity about the infinitude of the present and the ways in which one could observe the history of the future. Poems beget poems, overflowing and flowering, urging deeper etymological investigations. In perennial fashion   presence falling , Moten approaches the sublime, relishing that intermediary space of microtonal thought.

Genres: Poetry

128 pages, Paperback

Published May 2, 2023

About the author

Fred Moten is author of In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition (University of Minnesota Press), Hughson’s Tavern (Leon Works), B. Jenkins (Duke University Press), The Feel Trio (Letter Machine Editions) and co-author, with Stefano Harney, of The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study (Minor Compositions/Autonomedia). His current projects include two critical texts, consent not to be a single being (forthcoming from Duke University Press) and Animechanical Flesh, which extend his study of black art and social life, and a new collection of poems, The Little Edges.

In 2009 Moten was Critic-in-Residence at In Transit 09: Resistance of the Object, The Performing Arts Festival at the House of World Cultures, Berlin and was also recognized as one of ten “New American Poets” by the Poetry Society of America; in 2011 he was a Visiting Scholar and Artist-in-Residence at Pratt Institute; in 2012, he was Whitney J. Oates Fellow in the Humanities Council and the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University and a member of the writing faculty of the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, Bard College; and in 2013 he was a Guest Faculty Member in the Summer Writers Program at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, Naropa Institute. He was also a member of the Critical Theory Institute at the University of California, Irvine from 2002 to 2004 and a member of the Board of Directors for the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at the City University of New York from 2001 to 2002.

Moten served as a member of the Board of Managing Editors of American Quarterly and has been a member of the Editorial Collectives of Social Text and Callaloo, and of the Editorial Board of South Atlantic Quarterly. He is also co-founder and co-publisher (with Joseph Donahue) of a small literary press called Three Count Pour.

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

a third of the way through i gave up trying to decipher the poems and just sat back and let the words pummel me, as one pummels flour and water into a smooth dough.

favorites are “the color field” (quote 1), “got ‘im!”, “the abolition of art, the abolition of freedom, the abolition of you and me”, “asé” (quote 2)

“black art vs. black abstraction // is a lie again and again, // like you get not to see// all that brutality in all // that blue. you don’t get // to not see, motherfucker, // but what happens when you // act like you do? somebody // black and poor can’t // breathe, everybody dying // of their dying breath // nobody laying with them “

“in spite of // everything, // a little of // which now // I can call // my own, // is how I // got here.”

[Zoee.Net84 · Rating 5 out of 5]

“let me make / you over in the / image of my dream / of who i am when / i dream of being / me at the center / of all dreaming, a / circle of dreamers / of the center all / dreaming of me / in lemon yellow / sun, a picture of / another world”

[Fraser Siu · Rating 4 out of 5]

need to read again this hurt my brain sometimes

[Marije de Wit · Rating 5 out of 5]

'art don't work
for abolition.
art works for bosses, like you
and me. if "let's
abolish art" sounds
too close to "let's
abolish you and
me," it's 'cause it
is. I love art and
i love you, too,
and this is a love
song, so it's got
to be too close.
freedom is too
close to slavery
for us to be easy
with that jailed
imagining. we've
been held too close
by that too long
in all that air they
steal in our eyes
while we swarm in
common auction.
in my eyes, art had
me from hello it's
me when ronni
isley oversays it.'

[Klara Plessis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliantly sonic.

[Cecilia]

Vibes tbh