Maybe the Saddest Thing: Poems – A Sterling Collection of Contemporary American Poetry and National Poetry Series Winner

by Marcus Wicker

Winner of the 2011 National Poetry Series Prize as selected by D.A. Powell, Marcus Wicker's Maybe the Saddest Thing is a sterling collection of contemporary American poems by an exciting new and emerging voice.

Genres: Poetry, College

96 pages, Paperback

First published October 23, 2012

About the author

Marcus Wicker is the recipient of a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, a Pushcart Prize, The Missouri Review's Miller Audio Prize, as well as fellowships from Cave Canem, and the Fine Arts Work Center. His first collection Maybe the Saddest Thing (Harper Perennial), a National Poetry Series winner, was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. Wicker's poems have appeared in The Nation, Poetry, American Poetry Review, Oxford American, and Boston Review. His second book, Silencer—also an Image Award finalist—was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2017 and won the Society of Midland Authors Award, as well as the Arnold Adoff Poetry Award for New Voices. Marcus teaches in the MFA program at the University of Memphis, and he is the poetry editor of Southern Indiana Review.

Reviews

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chances are, if you don't know about the clock-wearing, public enemy, Flavor Flav and how his lyrics contributed to the campaign against police brutality in America, you won't enjoy this collection.

You hosed down whole crowds
in loudmouth flame-retardant spit.

If you haven't been exposed to the rhythm and poetry of the hip-hop verse or the depths of hip-hop beyond its mainstream controversial language and stereotypical imagery, you could miss these lyrical innuendos. If you haven't received access to hip hop's literary soul and its contemporary contribution to culture and language, you could misunderstand this collection.

So wrap your cultured-up skull around this.

If you haven't bobbed to the rhythm of Langston Hughes' rebellious lines of liberty, or marveled at Countee Cullen's intellectual context of culture, it is possible that you will miss Wicker's homage to his.

If you could care less about
prosody
poetic specifics like the ode poem
poetic devices like iambic pentameter

If you aren't tempted to run your finger across the different types of meters you come across within a collection...it is possible that this one, which has that and more, won't mean a thing to you.

And if none of these things matter, simply take a look at the publishing credits. Tell me, how often do you see a modern collection of poetry published by The Big Ones?

The trailing silence hearkens a boarded-up

project building. And in one great big empty
alleyway after another, people are boxed in

or burning up. Vanishing into thin air. Here
I am again, sketch pad in hand, glued to this spot

[Joel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wicker is a poet that has influenced and encouraged my friends and I from across the table and across the page. He writes to the rhythm of hip-hop and I can almost feel the beat behind each line. With an unashamed love for pop culture and occasional confusion by it, Marcus understands that we are a product of it and it is a product of us.

I enjoyed this collection a lot, but at times, it’s missing some of the punch that his next collection, Silencer has.

[Jeffrey (Akiva) Savett · Rating 2 out of 5]

I tried. I really did. This book of poetry had all the makings of one I'd like. I'm obviously of the same generation and a devotee of the same ouvres as Wicker, though obviously of a different race, because I "got" all of his hip hop, jazz, movie, and other semiotic signposts he planted for us to see.

But, with a few notable exceptions, I didn't like these poems. I found their "hippness" trite and patronizing, if not, to be more cynical, opportunistic. To continue cyncially, I can just imagine editors of various literary magazine receiving poems entitled "Love Letter To Flava Flav," and "Love Letter To Justin Timberlake," salivating and tripping all over themselves to seize the opportunity to publish an obviously smart, literary young author who is ALSO familiar with rap acts as disparate as Wu Tang Clan, J-Live, and Talib Kweli. It's nice that Wicker bridges those worlds--but his inability to develop and sustain focus upon complex HUMAN driven conflicts in favor of rhythmic and auditory slights of hand and poem endings which attempt surprise or epiphany through reliance upon profanity grows tiresome rather quickly.

Wicker's best moments are his human ones. In "The Nature of the Beast," he explores, quite complexly, the routines and chores which couples divide, often with underlying resentment and jealosy. Best of all, the speaker's tone in that poem manages to balance between empathy and overt antagonism, a welcome retreat from the clever-fest which marks so much of the other prosody here. In another rare gem, "I'm a sad, sad, man. So Sad," Wicker explores both his desire and disgust in needing/hating to see everything which happens to him as an opportunity for a poem. He seems trapped between his art and is desire to simply live without comment, and to his credit, he doesn't postulate an escape from this tension, realizing instead, that it is probably the source of his art afterall.

But these moments are few and not frequent enough to justify or reward the time I devoted to reading these poems. A paradigm I often use to decide whether I believe a poem is "effective," or good is whether it can hold up to, or CALLS FOR multiple readings, AND whether I feel a desire for such repeated visits. I'm happy to put this book back on my shelf, knowing that I'm not missing anything I'll need.

[Allison]

Saw an interview with the poet in a magazine and was intrigued by the title of this collection. In the end, I read maybe half the poems. They just didn't resonate with me and didn't seem to display particular skill at the craft.

[Melyssa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this because it had a collage with Bruce Lee on the cover, but then Bruce was just a tiny part of a poem about Flava Flav. I think I'd rather hear these poems.

Read for Book Riot Challenge Task 17: collection of poetry

[Eлина · Rating 1 out of 5]

No. Just no.

[Cheri Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

To write a collection that’s so far-reaching—that includes references to so many people and places, from Richard Pryor to Yellowwood State Forest to Justin Timberlake—and also so personal and revealing takes both skill and blunt courage. Wicker tells us the story of how he’s come to understand himself and the world (or at least to begin to understand it—he doesn’t pretend to have all the answers) by inspecting his own gaze, past and present, on cultural icons, art, and popular culture. The poems are incredibly smart, but Wicker’s no snob; in the prose poem “Everything I Know About Jazz I Learned from Kenny G.,” he’s willing to divulge the questionable tastes of his youth to reveal an experience about fatherhood and race. The poem begins:

"All right, so not really. But the morning my pops found Kenny G lying on my nightstand I did learn a black father can and will enter a bedroom, only to find Kenny’s CD, bad perm and all, cuddled too close to his eighth-grader’s head. He will tiptoe from the room, turn the knob, then kick down the door in slippers. He’ll drag the boy out of bed down two flights of stairs and toss him in front of a turntable. Listen here, he says. When you finish a record put it back in the sleeve and you better not scratch my shit."

And at the end, after the speaker has spent hours listening to Charles Earland, Eric Dolphy, the Freedom Now Suite, feeling the music “crack … [his] ribs” and “shiver all over [his] face,” he hears his father coming again:

"He does not cave the basement door. He walks a dirge down those steps. Gently strokes my neck. Asks, Why are you crying, son? Dad, I ache. Because I’ve been down here forever."

[Savannah Noel · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. likely one of my favorite poetry collections i have ever read. i wish i was in the target audience of this poem– old enough and versed enough to understand all of the references to old jazz and r&b. even though i didn’t fully understand these poems as deeply as i assume wicker would have wanted, the rhythm of his writing had me entirely and utterly captivated. lovely collection that i would highly recommend to anyone interested in r&b

[Caitlin Conlon · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5-ish stars. a really well-organized & cohesive collection about music, race, growth, etc. while I enjoyed this book, nothing really stood out to me as being "amazing" or "remarkable" -- if that makes sense. I'd definitely, however, read more work from this poet in the future.

[David Haydon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wicker’s collection is smart and lively but very reference heavy. I’m sure the “intended reader” would highly enjoy it, but I don’t understand enough of the musical references to really submerge into the poems.

[ems · Rating 3 out of 5]

making pop culture beautiful, one bittersweet love poem to dave chappelle at a time

[Inverted · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe the saddest thing about this is it's agonizing to read. Stopped reading at Self-Dialogue with Marcus because why isn't a poem an internal dialogue. Read this if you like navel-gazing.

[Dmitry · Rating 1 out of 5]

Probably more like 1.5 stars. Absolutely could not finish it after reading Love Letter to Justin Timberlake. I'm sure the rest of the collection was fine or whatever but christ what a garbage poem.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the poem "When faced with the statement 'there are more black men in jail than college,' I think Order of Operations".

[Jack Heller · Rating 3 out of 5]

it's okay

[Ted · Rating 4 out of 5]

Given to me by a Hinge date, who I should have spent more time with.

[Evelyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had the pleasure if hearing Marcus Wicker read from his book on Monday, and I thought he was awesome. He was a very polite guy, and even made suggestions about other books he thought I would like, based on our short conversation. More important though, is that Wicker has generated some well crafted and genuinely entertaining poetry in this collection of works. If you like your poetry teeming with pop culture, there's no doubt that you'll enjoy his style. These poems range from being lighthearted, especially the love letters to various celebrities and characters like Ru Paul and Leroy Brown; to being touching and personal. My favorite was Ars Poetica in the Mode of J-Live. It's a nice twist on a poetic theme that can generally be very tired.

[Bree Hatfield · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for Intro to Creative Writing. 3.5 stars. There was nothing absolutely incredible, but there also wasn’t anything horrendous. Some of the poems were good, and I liked how many modern allusions there were. I like Wicker’s poetic voice. Many poems seemed to drag on longer than I thought was necessary, but none were downright bad. I also don’t think I was the target audience, so that definitely contributed. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this, but if you happen across it, and it’s cheap enough, it’s worth a peak.

[Kristina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I recently heard the author read a number of the poems in this collection, which in turn made reading them that much more enjoyable for me--hearing his voice in my head, remembering the stories he told about the works. I can't say that poetry has been a big part of my life but something about Marcus Wicker's words just pulled me in.

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part Hip hop journey and part great insight- this poetry feels like it has music even in its titles. He certainly knows how to turn a phrase, idea, and celebrity on its head. I felt uber cool reading this book, probably because Wicker himself is the coolest poetry cat around. Read it for fun, read it to learn, read it because maybe the saddest thing is that you haven't read it yet.

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

it was ok. his fascination with rupaul was interesting, some really great rhythm but didnt really care for the content...

[D.A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hell, yes, I love this book! Love poems for Pam Grier and Justin Timberlake--need I say anything more?

[Idris · Rating 5 out of 5]

This dude has bars

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tender and often funny, these poems left me thinking for hours after I'd closed the book. "Love Letter to RuPaul" is a standout.

[Lulu · Rating 2 out of 5]

Poetry is not really my thing but it wasn't bad.

[emma]

i had the privilege of meeting wicker and sitting in on a radio show interview. hearing him read his poems aloud is absolutely cool. i didn’t read this whole book- really feel like his stuff should be read aloud, by him, instead.

[JJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read "Maybe the saddest thing: poems" last night and really loved it. There's something about it that really resonated with me. Although I can't identify what it is exactly, I know it's what I felt was missing from Junot Diaz's recent book of short fiction. Diaz left me cold, although I could see what he was trying to do, with Wicker I have no idea what he was trying to do and it still really worked for me. I don't dislike Diaz, I guess I was just expecting more from the recent offering. Where Diaz felt like specifically stylized stories that interested me but didn't grab my heart, Wicker is like a rhythm, a thumping beat of a moving picture that shows me, shows people I know, shows being part of it and watching it all at once. I "got" Diaz, I just felt excluded, I guess, whereas I think Wicker speaks to some part of the same place but includes me.

I stumbled on this book by accident and didn't read any reviews or expect, well, anything really. I am regular reader of poetry but I find a lot of it just doesn't touch me in exactly the right way. Wickers plays with language and his place in the world and the language he uses. He paints pictures with words sometimes, other times he makes scene that seems like maybe a movie you caught half of that one time and have been trying to figure out the title of ever since so you can see the rest.