What do you think?
Rate this book
To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness
A genre-bending exploration of poetry and human migration—another revelatory expedition from the National Book Award–winning poet who changed the way we see art, the museum, and the Black female figure. Winner of the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry
Twenty-five years ago, after her maternal grandmother’s death, Robin Coste Lewis discovered a stunning collection of photographs in an old suitcase under her bed, filled with everything from sepia tintypes to Technicolor Polaroids. Lewis’s family had survived one of the largest migrations in human history, when six million Americans fled the South, attempting to escape from white supremacy and white terrorism. But these photographs of daily twentieth-century Black life revealed a concealed, interior history. The poetry Lewis was inspired to create stands forth as an inspiring alternative to the usual ways we frame the old stories of “race” and “migration,” placing them within a much vaster span of time and history.
In what she calls “an origin myth for the future,” Lewis reverses our expectations of “Black pages, black space, black time––the Big Black Bang.” From glamorous outings to graduations, birth announcements, baseball leagues, and back-porch delight, Lewis creates a lyrical documentary about Black intimacy. Instead of colonial nostalgia, she offers us “an exalted Black privacy.” What emerges is a dynamic reframing of what it means to be human and alive, with Blackness at its center. “I am trying / to make the gods / happy,” she writes. “I am trying to make the dead / clap and shout.”
Twenty-five years ago, after her maternal grandmother’s death, Robin Coste Lewis discovered a stunning collection of photographs in an old suitcase under her bed, filled with everything from sepia tintypes to Technicolor Polaroids. Lewis’s family had survived one of the largest migrations in human history, when six million Americans fled the South, attempting to escape from white supremacy and white terrorism. But these photographs of daily twentieth-century Black life revealed a concealed, interior history. The poetry Lewis was inspired to create stands forth as an inspiring alternative to the usual ways we frame the old stories of “race” and “migration,” placing them within a much vaster span of time and history.
In what she calls “an origin myth for the future,” Lewis reverses our expectations of “Black pages, black space, black time––the Big Black Bang.” From glamorous outings to graduations, birth announcements, baseball leagues, and back-porch delight, Lewis creates a lyrical documentary about Black intimacy. Instead of colonial nostalgia, she offers us “an exalted Black privacy.” What emerges is a dynamic reframing of what it means to be human and alive, with Blackness at its center. “I am trying / to make the gods / happy,” she writes. “I am trying to make the dead / clap and shout.”
Audible Audio
First published December 6, 2022
23 people are currently reading
861 people want to read
About the author
Robin Coste Lewis
12 books108 followersRobin Coste Lewis, the winner of the National Book Award for Voyage of the Sable Venus, is the poet laureate of Los Angeles. She is writer-in-residence at the University of Southern California, as well as a Cave Canem fellow and a fellow of the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities. She received her BA from Hampshire College, her MFA in poetry from New York University, an MTS in Sanskrit and comparative religious literature from the Divinity School at Harvard University, and a PhD in poetry and visual studies from the University of Southern California. Lewis was born in Compton, California; her family is from New Orleans.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 58 reviews
December 2, 2022
Later, when people asked us,
Where did you come from?
We could only answer: Water.
from To The Realization of Perfect Helplessness by Robin Coste Lewis
Leaving one’s place of birth casts you adrift. You feel unmoored for a long time, uncertain if you will even take root in the new land. And if, like so many millions, you find yourself once more on the move, seeking a place where you can flourish, it feels like your whole heritage is but a journey.
As a girl, leaving my home was devastating. As a wife, frequent moves left me without a sense of home. I imagine my ancestors, lurching across Europe as war and civil unrest rose up, sailing across the ocean to escape deportation to Siberia.
Since girlhood, I wanted to connect to those who came before me. I loved to open the cheap travel case where Mom kept photographs. I have those photos now. Few who appear in those black and white images are still in this world.
When I opened the box that held To The Realization of Perfect Helplessness, I was awestruck by it’s weight, by the solid beauty of the book. Amazed to see pages of photographs and words printed in white on perfectly black pages. I instinctually knew this was a special book, presented with meticulous care.
The poetry presented with photographs that Robin Coste Lewis shares from her grandmother’s collection had a visceral impact. I was distracted by the faces and figures, the beauty and mystery there, so that on second reading I steeled myself to stick to the words only.
There are so many lines that stuck in my head.
“The way that Time keeps knocking/on my bedroom door, the way/that Death lets her in,/the way that Life pours the tea.”
Lewis addresses Mathew Henson, the African American who first reached the North Pole, hired to be Robert Peary’s valet. The son of free blacks who migrated to escape the Klan, his mother died when he was young. At age twelve he became a cabin boy. He never forgot hearing Frederick Douglas speak. He went with Peary on an expedition to Nicaragua, and trained with Inuit, learning their language in preparation for the expedition to the North Pole.
“Which is to say, the moment I decided there was no such place as home, or what was once home no longer existed, that the continent of my family had been flooded, and the ice on which we had lived and thrived for generations had melted, and everyone was gone, which is to say, the moment I admitted I was living on a vast mass of floating ice–alone–the moment I accepted that, I began to feel better. I was dead, it was true, but I was happier. I stood on the new frozen shore watching the light mingle with the ocean. Everyone had become water. Land was a story the old people had told to frighten the little children, to keep us from running off.”
from The Ark: Self-Portrait as Aphrodite Using Her Dress for a Sail by Robin Coste Lewis
Lewis celebrates Blackness in these pages. She looks back million of years, considering those who came before, the mystery of the countless, faceless dead, and the reality of erasure, of inevitably joining them. “Our black/deep mystery perfect–you and me–sitting here–one hundred thousand years ago–without any possibility–or need–for documentation.”
“Just be here/with me/on this page,” she writes, calling me to be present, to be involved. I am in awe.
Thanks to A. A. Knopf for the free book.
Where did you come from?
We could only answer: Water.
from To The Realization of Perfect Helplessness by Robin Coste Lewis
Leaving one’s place of birth casts you adrift. You feel unmoored for a long time, uncertain if you will even take root in the new land. And if, like so many millions, you find yourself once more on the move, seeking a place where you can flourish, it feels like your whole heritage is but a journey.
As a girl, leaving my home was devastating. As a wife, frequent moves left me without a sense of home. I imagine my ancestors, lurching across Europe as war and civil unrest rose up, sailing across the ocean to escape deportation to Siberia.
Since girlhood, I wanted to connect to those who came before me. I loved to open the cheap travel case where Mom kept photographs. I have those photos now. Few who appear in those black and white images are still in this world.
When I opened the box that held To The Realization of Perfect Helplessness, I was awestruck by it’s weight, by the solid beauty of the book. Amazed to see pages of photographs and words printed in white on perfectly black pages. I instinctually knew this was a special book, presented with meticulous care.
The poetry presented with photographs that Robin Coste Lewis shares from her grandmother’s collection had a visceral impact. I was distracted by the faces and figures, the beauty and mystery there, so that on second reading I steeled myself to stick to the words only.
There are so many lines that stuck in my head.
“The way that Time keeps knocking/on my bedroom door, the way/that Death lets her in,/the way that Life pours the tea.”
Lewis addresses Mathew Henson, the African American who first reached the North Pole, hired to be Robert Peary’s valet. The son of free blacks who migrated to escape the Klan, his mother died when he was young. At age twelve he became a cabin boy. He never forgot hearing Frederick Douglas speak. He went with Peary on an expedition to Nicaragua, and trained with Inuit, learning their language in preparation for the expedition to the North Pole.
“Which is to say, the moment I decided there was no such place as home, or what was once home no longer existed, that the continent of my family had been flooded, and the ice on which we had lived and thrived for generations had melted, and everyone was gone, which is to say, the moment I admitted I was living on a vast mass of floating ice–alone–the moment I accepted that, I began to feel better. I was dead, it was true, but I was happier. I stood on the new frozen shore watching the light mingle with the ocean. Everyone had become water. Land was a story the old people had told to frighten the little children, to keep us from running off.”
from The Ark: Self-Portrait as Aphrodite Using Her Dress for a Sail by Robin Coste Lewis
Lewis celebrates Blackness in these pages. She looks back million of years, considering those who came before, the mystery of the countless, faceless dead, and the reality of erasure, of inevitably joining them. “Our black/deep mystery perfect–you and me–sitting here–one hundred thousand years ago–without any possibility–or need–for documentation.”
“Just be here/with me/on this page,” she writes, calling me to be present, to be involved. I am in awe.
Thanks to A. A. Knopf for the free book.
November 29, 2022
Incredibly beautiful way to write a story. I don’t totally feel the poetry always connected with the pictures and quite a bit of it felt more esoteric than direct (which I think makes a little more sense with a project like this). But once again with reviews of poetry, I am not a trained or talented poetry reader, and my review is mostly based on feelings. Certainly think it’s worth reading if you enjoy poetry, but the hype I had for this style of project was left slightly disappointed because I wanted to see and feel more connection.
December 27, 2022
Feels like an expansion of Voyage of the Sable Venus (this is also, interestingly, a triptych), except entirely focused on art history via Coste Lewis' grandmother's photographs that are rich, quiet, and left entirely uncaptioned. All we are given are the pieces of poems she chooses to parallel with certain photographs. As such, there's a sense of a history that is not entirely lost but instead is being evoked through metaphor. The history of black migration from the South to the West (Coste Lewis is concerned specifically with that horizontal move instead of the typical Great Migration narrative of vertical escape) is shown through calls to the dead and abstract odes to memory and language and a less abstract narrative work calling upon Matthew Henson, a black explorer who reportedly reached the North Pole first, as a father, an inspiration, as an exemplar of motion, as a concept left only partially understood in the midst of historical caesura. So much love for black women. So much interest in the physical/sensuous reality of living. So much ability to describe the way that history ultimately weighs us down and offers us a trodden path to continue finding our way forward.
October 10, 2023
“I was on the Ark with you.
I was the hull.
I was the flood, too.”
So deeply personal and cosmic at the same time. Lewis’ own migrations, The Great Migration, family history, planetary history, the whole book explores what it means to run away, to start over.
The middle section was especially moving, I’m not sure how to feel about the “photo poem” genre as a whole though. The photos definitely added to the mythical feeling but sometimes a page would just have like one word and a baby picture and i’m like 😃how much did i pay for this again
I was the hull.
I was the flood, too.”
So deeply personal and cosmic at the same time. Lewis’ own migrations, The Great Migration, family history, planetary history, the whole book explores what it means to run away, to start over.
The middle section was especially moving, I’m not sure how to feel about the “photo poem” genre as a whole though. The photos definitely added to the mythical feeling but sometimes a page would just have like one word and a baby picture and i’m like 😃how much did i pay for this again
Read
September 24, 2024made me rethink my perception of "poetry" as a form.. the structure & layout of this book is ingenious
Read
July 30, 2024The way I went to sleep with one face \ then awoke the next morning \ with another.
The way you walked into our room \ and said nothing—never mentioned it. \ The way you still recognize me.
The way you walked into our room \ and said nothing—never mentioned it. \ The way you still recognize me.
January 22, 2025
Beautiful collection of poetry on blackness and immigration corresponding to a series of photographs. Lovely to read and experience <3
December 31, 2022
Last book of 2022
February 25, 2025
It’s been a hot sec since I’ve read poetry (sorry Corey) and this was truly stunning. Loved the pictures
December 26, 2022
I loved this beautiful, beautiful poetry/photo collection. Reading it was akin to having a cup of tea at a new friend's house and them telling you the history of their family. The standout piece to me was the evolution of speech which actually brought me to tears.
February 20, 2023
I'm not a great poetry reader and so I didn't understand Lewis's poems anywhere near full capacity, but I liked the feeling I got when some of the lines did seep in. I also enjoyed looking through her shoebox of photos.
I heard about this book from this interview, which was great:
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/...
And the book made me very curious about Matthew Henson:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew...
I heard about this book from this interview, which was great:
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/...
And the book made me very curious about Matthew Henson:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew...
December 31, 2022
I had some trouble getting into Lewis' poetry, but I appreciate how she memorializes Black migration throughout history. I think I personally had some difficulty with the structure, which kept me from enjoying it more than I did.
February 7, 2024
“The effect of such storms of wind, or snow, or rain, is abject physical terror, due to the realization of perfect helplessness”--Matthew Henson, the valet who was the first black man to reach the north pole.
I found this book by National Book Award poet Robin Coste Lewis in the Black History Month display at my library and picked it up because of its title, To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness (2022) and because it is multi-genre, a blend of poetry, photographs and erasures from the writing of Matthew Henson. The first half of the book, with its white type on black pages, emerged from Intimacy, a multimedia collaboration with visual artist Julie Mehretu.
Then, old hotographs? When her grandmother died, Lewis found a box of polaroid photographs in a box and a family member suggested she write a book about them. So she kinda does, meshing it with Henson connections and other pieces. The photographs seem usually unremarkable to me 9though some stand out), partly because I once had bags of such family photos, though I still have numerous albums.
But the point for her is that they represent a secret history, an emblem of a secret black life unknown to most white Americans. She never comments on the photos directly, but instead writes obliquely connected poetry, commentary on her life, her family life, black life.
Then she connects her life with the frozen journey of Henson. And the journey of hundreds of thousands of people in the Great Migration--not north in her family, but west to LA.
I like the artifact, beautifully produced hardcover by Knopf.
What’s one point of the project? “I am trying to make the gods happy.
I am trying to make the dead clap and shout.”
"I remembered you then,
not from the past, but from
a bright inkling
inside my body
that some would later call the future."
“My body a constantly ripening orchard seen only by satellites”
“His face is a whole flock of starlings, which suddenly alights upon me—me, bare winter tree.”
Not just a personal history but black history, private, apart.
A New Yorker article on the project:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...
A MOMA exhibit:
https://www.moma.org/magazine/article...
I found this book by National Book Award poet Robin Coste Lewis in the Black History Month display at my library and picked it up because of its title, To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness (2022) and because it is multi-genre, a blend of poetry, photographs and erasures from the writing of Matthew Henson. The first half of the book, with its white type on black pages, emerged from Intimacy, a multimedia collaboration with visual artist Julie Mehretu.
Then, old hotographs? When her grandmother died, Lewis found a box of polaroid photographs in a box and a family member suggested she write a book about them. So she kinda does, meshing it with Henson connections and other pieces. The photographs seem usually unremarkable to me 9though some stand out), partly because I once had bags of such family photos, though I still have numerous albums.
But the point for her is that they represent a secret history, an emblem of a secret black life unknown to most white Americans. She never comments on the photos directly, but instead writes obliquely connected poetry, commentary on her life, her family life, black life.
Then she connects her life with the frozen journey of Henson. And the journey of hundreds of thousands of people in the Great Migration--not north in her family, but west to LA.
I like the artifact, beautifully produced hardcover by Knopf.
What’s one point of the project? “I am trying to make the gods happy.
I am trying to make the dead clap and shout.”
"I remembered you then,
not from the past, but from
a bright inkling
inside my body
that some would later call the future."
“My body a constantly ripening orchard seen only by satellites”
“His face is a whole flock of starlings, which suddenly alights upon me—me, bare winter tree.”
Not just a personal history but black history, private, apart.
A New Yorker article on the project:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...
A MOMA exhibit:
https://www.moma.org/magazine/article...
Read
November 24, 2022What is ostensibly a family photo album with some poetry next to it becomes so, so much more in the hands of Lewis. Her words take us on a multi-generational journey of Black Americans migrating west, fleeing the racial terrorism of the South. As such it expresses the struggle and systemic oppression of Black Americans but it also shows the particular strength and resilience and joy (forcibly) born out of such a (continued) experience. Through this, we come to know, loosely, her family and their importance to Lewis and a version of them-as-placeholder for versions of all families desiring equal share in life and aspiration (though the scope goes beyond even this, to the very creation of the universe and its people).
The poetry is enough on its own to be excellent, but here it is combined with the aforementioned found-family photo album, and this is a brilliant thing. The words and photos reframe and recontextualize one another, constantly shifting as you read along, creating and adding new meaning, moving through your mind like a dream or surreal movie.
This is a beautiful collection (even the layout with its very intentional black background and white text, bearing meaning and mood) so deftly handled that I don’t really have words for how great it is. I’ve included a few photos to help, and if they do anything for you at all, you’re going to love this. I’ve read it twice now and have been floored both times (noticing more each time like how the credits/publishing information are moved to the back of the book so that it (book) can pull you in right away, eschewing anything resembling business that would separate you from this expression) and look forward to another pass through.
[review copy provided by AA Knopf]
The poetry is enough on its own to be excellent, but here it is combined with the aforementioned found-family photo album, and this is a brilliant thing. The words and photos reframe and recontextualize one another, constantly shifting as you read along, creating and adding new meaning, moving through your mind like a dream or surreal movie.
This is a beautiful collection (even the layout with its very intentional black background and white text, bearing meaning and mood) so deftly handled that I don’t really have words for how great it is. I’ve included a few photos to help, and if they do anything for you at all, you’re going to love this. I’ve read it twice now and have been floored both times (noticing more each time like how the credits/publishing information are moved to the back of the book so that it (book) can pull you in right away, eschewing anything resembling business that would separate you from this expression) and look forward to another pass through.
[review copy provided by AA Knopf]
June 18, 2024
One day, I come out onto a street in New York. A very old man is on the sidewalk selling antique maps. I smile. I walk up to him.
“Sir, do you have any of the Arctic?”
His eyes look into mine more deeply now. For one quick second, we make love, the way strangers who are not really strangers—they just have never met before—touch each other deep inside with their eyes.
“Of course I do, Darling,” he says in a thick and gorgeous Urdu accent. “But,” he hesitates, and holds up his index finger: “I have only one.”
We smile at each other. We are suddenly in love, and we understand our whole love affair—from beginning to end—will take place right here, between our words, for only these few moments.
I look at the map. On the small sheet of paper, there are two frames: the North Pole is on top, the South Pole on the bottom. All the water is white. The scattered lands are green. Besides the fine black print, these are the only colors. In large bold letters across the middle of both poles is the word unexplored.
Later I will think: How like this map I am. The top and bottom of me—both—so unknown. My most essential pivots: uncharted yet toggling in perfect geometry. My heart a country called Greenland, yet always covered in ice. My brain an Iceland, but greener than every sea. Prehistoric elephants embedded beneath my skin, along with carved ivory ornaments ten thousand years old that belonged to me when I was someone’s wife during the last ice age. Always something in me freezing harder, while another part insists on melting. And then this equator in the middle of my body—so hot, so lush—I can visit, but only for a day.
December 7, 2022
Before. It will be Before. Before Robin Coste Lewis’ Ekphrastic Historical Landmark Poetry Work of Art. To The Realization of Perfect Helplessness is the kind of book that could only have been created today and by only this transcendental pioneering poet. The way, Coste Lewis, the Poet perfectly weaves vintage photographs of her family history with her timeless verse. To The Realization is more than a photo album Perfect Helplessness is a work of poetry art, the photographs are flashes from a past that reflect Lewis’ eloquently powerful poems from the present.
With each page, I feel like I am strolling mouth wide open admiring the historical exhibition of Robin Coste Lewis personal photographic poetry exhibit. You will not be able to take your eyes off these beautifully mesmerizing photos and poems. When asked the aim of her collection of poetry and photographs the poet reflected her goal of “trying to make the dead/clap and shout.” They are definitely roaring with pride from the heavens, as To The Realization of Perfect Helplessness is a living riveting historical exhibit of photographs and poems that will inspire you to look back at your own personal history. While gazing amazing at this present, You must experience the breath and majestic beauty of To The Realization of Perfect Helplessness, Robin Coste Lewis vivid portraits of her perpetually poignant and powerfully poetic past that you must revisit again and again.
With each page, I feel like I am strolling mouth wide open admiring the historical exhibition of Robin Coste Lewis personal photographic poetry exhibit. You will not be able to take your eyes off these beautifully mesmerizing photos and poems. When asked the aim of her collection of poetry and photographs the poet reflected her goal of “trying to make the dead/clap and shout.” They are definitely roaring with pride from the heavens, as To The Realization of Perfect Helplessness is a living riveting historical exhibit of photographs and poems that will inspire you to look back at your own personal history. While gazing amazing at this present, You must experience the breath and majestic beauty of To The Realization of Perfect Helplessness, Robin Coste Lewis vivid portraits of her perpetually poignant and powerfully poetic past that you must revisit again and again.
December 15, 2024
Robin Coste Lewis's To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness is a profound fusion of poetry and photography that delves into the intimate and expansive narratives of Black life and migration. The book originates from a trove of family photographs discovered after her grandmother's passing, capturing moments from the Jim Crow South to the family's resettlement in Los Angeles. These images, paired with Lewis's evocative poetry, offer a window into both personal and collective histories.
The centerpiece of the collection is a poignant tribute to Matthew Henson, the Black Arctic explorer, serving as a testament to Black achievement and resilience. This section, alongside the familial photographs, underscores the spectrum of Black experiences, from monumental accomplishments to everyday life.
While some readers may find the abstract nature of certain poems challenging, the overall composition of the book—interweaving visual and textual elements—creates a rich tapestry that celebrates Black life in its many facets. It's a work that invites reflection on the intersections of personal memory and broader historical movements.
To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness offers a nuanced exploration of heritage, migration, and identity through the seamless integration of poetry and photography.
The centerpiece of the collection is a poignant tribute to Matthew Henson, the Black Arctic explorer, serving as a testament to Black achievement and resilience. This section, alongside the familial photographs, underscores the spectrum of Black experiences, from monumental accomplishments to everyday life.
While some readers may find the abstract nature of certain poems challenging, the overall composition of the book—interweaving visual and textual elements—creates a rich tapestry that celebrates Black life in its many facets. It's a work that invites reflection on the intersections of personal memory and broader historical movements.
To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness offers a nuanced exploration of heritage, migration, and identity through the seamless integration of poetry and photography.
December 3, 2022
Thank you to A Knopf for sending me this book to read and review. It's about Robin finding an old suitcase of family photos after her grandmother's death and putting it into a book. The photos are so beautiful, sharing a rich history of her family. Alongside the photos are poems, sharing about their lives, love, feelings, and some of what they went through. She shares a book that documents about "black pages, black space, black time," and black intimacy. Her family survived one of the largest migrations, fleeing from the south. Thank you for sharing some of yours and your family's history with us; it was touching, emotional, and beautiful. A must read for anyone who enjoys poetry, photography, and history. Definitely a 5 star read.
Just one of the quotes from the book I wrote down: "May we never forget the beauty of what we saw and did-- and the untranslatable experience of being loved deeply and blackly." So many of the poems and lines stuck out to me. I connected to some parts of this story, and learned a lot. Thank you for teaching me, and for writing these beautiful poems, and sharing some of your history.
Just one of the quotes from the book I wrote down: "May we never forget the beauty of what we saw and did-- and the untranslatable experience of being loved deeply and blackly." So many of the poems and lines stuck out to me. I connected to some parts of this story, and learned a lot. Thank you for teaching me, and for writing these beautiful poems, and sharing some of your history.
September 9, 2023
Our country is named History
Our Capitol is called Memory
Robin Coste Lewis, p. 297
How many of us are lucky to come across photographs our parents saved from their past which we've found only after they died? And who is left to tell us who the people are in these photographs? How do we put together this history from a memory we do not totally possess?
It is sad to think that the era of photographic memories may disappear in favor of digital ones. What will we leave behind for the next generation?
When she found the suitcase of photographs after her grandmother died, Robin Coste Lewis was told to write a book. What she produced is not only a personal history of her family's move from New Orleans to Compton, CA, but of Black people as every person: nun, baseball player, bride and groom, child. Standing in bassinets, among friends, being held by their parents, their newborn announcements, graduation, the things that most of us go throuh in life (maybe not nuns or baseball players).
These photographs linked together by words, primordial and lyrical make this a powerful book, more than the sum of its parts.
Our Capitol is called Memory
Robin Coste Lewis, p. 297
How many of us are lucky to come across photographs our parents saved from their past which we've found only after they died? And who is left to tell us who the people are in these photographs? How do we put together this history from a memory we do not totally possess?
It is sad to think that the era of photographic memories may disappear in favor of digital ones. What will we leave behind for the next generation?
When she found the suitcase of photographs after her grandmother died, Robin Coste Lewis was told to write a book. What she produced is not only a personal history of her family's move from New Orleans to Compton, CA, but of Black people as every person: nun, baseball player, bride and groom, child. Standing in bassinets, among friends, being held by their parents, their newborn announcements, graduation, the things that most of us go throuh in life (maybe not nuns or baseball players).
These photographs linked together by words, primordial and lyrical make this a powerful book, more than the sum of its parts.
December 31, 2023
I heard Ms. Lewis interviewed on a podcast, and she was so compelling I immediately ordered her book. It could simply be that my expectations were not aligned with the book I received. The photos, the ones she discovered in the suitcase, are treasures. They evoke worlds, tell stories all by themselves. But I was disheartened by the paucity of written words and the relatively large amount of empty space on most of the pages. This could be where my wrong expectations come into play. I was wanting rich and dense poems to match the richness of the images. That is clearly not what the author was after. And judging from the praise and the great satisfaction expressed by other reviewers, I'm in the minority in my disappointment. I love poetry of all sorts, and it could be that I lack the patience, in this case, to embrace the style and pace that Ms. Lewis, a prize-winning poet, has employed to tell her story. If so, then it's my loss. But, crass as it sounds, for a weighty, expensive, hardcover book, I'm not getting the value I was hoping for, I don't want to live with it anymore, and I'm going to give it away to someone, anyone, who feels differently then I do.
April 9, 2023
Erudite but brilliant. Cosmic. The center poem is especially stunning… it took me until then to “get it”.
Through pairing lines of verse with blank spaces and photographs of those known and unknown, Robin Coste Lewis balances intimacy and grandiosity. The result is both novel and profoundly moving. She explores evolution and migration at multiple frequencies — as a species, as a cultural community, as a family, as an individual. Floods, exploration, pioneers, ice floes, red trails, dark matter, stars, births… the poems here are about ruptures, both loud and quiet, from prehistory to post. This is a book that spins galaxies on the axes of Black history and Black futurism.
Through pairing lines of verse with blank spaces and photographs of those known and unknown, Robin Coste Lewis balances intimacy and grandiosity. The result is both novel and profoundly moving. She explores evolution and migration at multiple frequencies — as a species, as a cultural community, as a family, as an individual. Floods, exploration, pioneers, ice floes, red trails, dark matter, stars, births… the poems here are about ruptures, both loud and quiet, from prehistory to post. This is a book that spins galaxies on the axes of Black history and Black futurism.
December 2, 2022
After her grandmother's death, Robin Coste Lewis began writing poetry to accompany the images and artifacts of Black lives. She covers history and time, life and death, and the experience of living as a Black individual in the United States.
This book is absolutely beautiful. The pairings of the poems with the photos blew me away and left me staring at pages for lengthy amounts of time. This book is definitely worth reading and sharing.
Thank you so much to Knopf for the complimentary copy!
This book is absolutely beautiful. The pairings of the poems with the photos blew me away and left me staring at pages for lengthy amounts of time. This book is definitely worth reading and sharing.
Thank you so much to Knopf for the complimentary copy!
February 14, 2023
glad she wrote it and glad I saw & read it - I enjoyed it more each time I flipped thru it - eventually perhaps almost as much as I felt wowed by the title. This book stems from a lovely idea (found a book of great-grandma's photos in a trunk - Aunt told her to write a book and..she did!!
Many wonderful photos going way back into her families history. Many excellent words too tho much of the poetry was of the head-scratching variety for me...and I tend to prefer the poems I think I am understanding...at least a bit.
Many wonderful photos going way back into her families history. Many excellent words too tho much of the poetry was of the head-scratching variety for me...and I tend to prefer the poems I think I am understanding...at least a bit.
April 24, 2024
I don't really know what to say as I'm so out of touch with poetry and thinking about and reflecting on poetry. But this book is beautiful. The photographs are a treasure and it's so lovely that the author has shared her family with us in this way. It's really special to start to recognize faces throughout the book. I especially liked the following lines: "The way that Time keeps knocking/ on my bedroom door: The way that Death lets her in./ The way that Life pours the tea" (132). And "We cannot live/without the danger/ of being this/ utterly beautiful./ And typical./ And proven" (336).
November 23, 2022
This was truly astonishing. First and foremost, to find a suitcase of photos and create something so spectacular with it is incredible. It felt like a handheld exhibit and a peek inside a vast family history all at once. And the words! The WORDS! I mean, COME ON. Some of them felt pulled straight from my chaotic brain; questions of time and existence I knew I couldn’t be the only one contemplating.
This was history and family and imagery and so many things rolled into one stunning work of art.
This was history and family and imagery and so many things rolled into one stunning work of art.
January 26, 2023
Honestly, some of this didn't make sense to me and I didn't have the time to wrestle with it which is my fault.
Overall, however, this is a beautiful book about the diaspora and how people have had history before the written word. It's a beautiful homage to family and Black excellence and I loved the concept of it and was glad to have read it before I needed to return it. It's definitely one to come back to again and again.
Overall, however, this is a beautiful book about the diaspora and how people have had history before the written word. It's a beautiful homage to family and Black excellence and I loved the concept of it and was glad to have read it before I needed to return it. It's definitely one to come back to again and again.
Read
November 23, 2022A difficult book to attach a star review too. This feels like a deeply personal project and is a beautiful book to have in any poetry or photography collection.
Would like to go back and compare the sections where erasure was used from the original texts and now also genuinely curious to learn more about the story of Matthew Hensen.
Thank you to Knopf for the finished copy.
Would like to go back and compare the sections where erasure was used from the original texts and now also genuinely curious to learn more about the story of Matthew Hensen.
Thank you to Knopf for the finished copy.
January 1, 2023
Not as remarkable as Voyage of the Sable Venus, but still a strong work, most especially in its first two thirds or so- some of the individual lyrics that end the collection are less impressive. The pairing of words and photos is good, and the central longest text inspired by Matthew Henson is quite good.
March 31, 2023
Part poetry, part photographs, this beautiful book is about growth and connection with family and with earth over the thousands of years of its existence. There is a trip to the Arctic and across the US. I found much of this the author's personal discoveries of her family; I could often relate and see the family from the inside, New Orleans to California.
Read
February 25, 2024My favorite part was when she bought a map from a man and they made eye contact and she described how in those brief moments of prolonged eye contact they experienced this whole life together. That indescribable feels she made understood with words and that’s a rare beautiful gift I don’t get the opportunity to enjoy often so like the whole book was worth it for that.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 58 reviews