play dead

by Francine J. Harris

"This book talks smack. This book chews with its open mouth full of the juiciest words, the most indigestible images. This book undoes me. . . . francine j. harris brilliantly ransacks the poet's toolkit, assembling art from buckets of disaster and shreds of hope. Nothing she lays her mind's eye on escapes. You, too, will be captured by her work."—Evie Shockley Lyrically raw and dangerously unapologetic, play dead challenges us to look at our cultivated selves as products of circumstance and attempts to piece together patterns amidst dissociative chaos. harris unearths a ruptured world dictated by violence—a place of deadly what ifs, where survival hangs by a thread. Getting by is carrying bruises and walking around with "half a skull." From "low visibility": I have light in my mouth. I hunger you. You want
what comes in drag. a black squirrel in a black tar lane,
fresh from exhaust, hot and July's unearthed steam.
You want to watch it run over. to study the sog. You want the stink of gristle buried in a muggy weather.
I want the faulty mirage. a life of grass.
we want the same thing. We want their deaths
to break up the sun. francine j. harris is a 2015 NEA Creative Writing Fellow whose first collection, allegiance , was a finalist for the 2013 Kate Tufts Discovery and PEN Open Book Award. Originally from Detroit, she is also Cave Canem fellow who has lived in several cities before returning to Michigan. She received an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Michigan, and currently teaches writing at Interlochen Center for the Arts.

Genres: Poetry, LGBT, Queer

100 pages, Paperback

First published April 12, 2016

Reviews

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

These poems are like running naked, drunk through a forest. You're lost, but you don't fucking care. Because it all feels amazing. Most amazing line: "I hunger you."

[Amorak Huey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful & violent & so wisely, imaginatively crafted.

[Keith Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read around in this book for the last 4 years, so was ready to sit down and give it a good reading all the way through.

I've known francine's work for a long time, and she took a couple of classes with me when she was at Michigan. She is working very hard and pushing herself all the time. This book has poems that are very different than the first poems of hers that I knew, yet have the same rage (and, yes, the same humor; even amidst the violence of some of these poems, there is genuine humor), and formal inventiveness I've always associated with her. Her images are haunting, sometimes difficult. I'm not sure I can follow them everywhere, but I'm hooked but them, by their vividness and eroticism. By the language that ranges from the completely contemporary to the archaic.

And these poems explode all over the page! The page feels like a restriction for harris and she is always pushing at it. Her first two publishers have felt the need to have wider books, books that break out of the usual measurements. That was a good choice for them, even though it must have been an expensive one.

[Amie Whittemore · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting, complex collection. At times I felt very much on the outside of these poems, a bystander looking in, not quite sure of what to make of what I saw; at other times, the poems were more inviting, asking me to join in a conversation. This sensation seems to do with the tension Harris is creating between lyric and narrative, between clarity and ambiguity, which seem to be central concerns at least in terms of form; in terms of content, I'd say this is a book of 'oblique violence,' to riff off of an amazing AWP panel I saw. These poems are sultry but also sinister, dark, yet with their dexterity, claiming their own light.

[San Diego Book Review · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vital, joyful, erotic, disgusting, sharp, witty, wounding, frightening, or praising whatever Francine J. Harris’s “Play Dead” is trying to do, it certainly is memorable. The collection is divided into three sections, “startle,” “blink,” and “freeze,” and Harris uses every tool in the box. Words streak across the page. There are tight formal stanzas and unpunctuated prose poems.

You can read this entire review at San Diego Book Review

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would. Harris has a really cool way of stringing bizarre images together, but making them work really well somehow. I'm not even 100% how she does it. I assume she's spent a lot of time mixing and matching these images till they "click"? Dang, I'm so articulate right now. This is why you can talk to me about books, but please don't ask me how they work.

[G.G. Silverman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ms. Harris poetry is incisive, hypnotic, and cuts to the quick. A must read for any student of Great American Poetry.

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Startle. Blink. Freeze. The titles of the 3 parts of Harris's book "Play Dead" read like survival instructions for vulnerable prey to avoid injury from a predator. There appear to be hints of a rape or prolonged sexual abuse in childhood that the speaker endured, and a mother who is mentally unstable, who may have also been raped by a neighbor as an adult. I appreciate where this volume sent me to look up words and paintings, for example, but much of it sailed over my head and didn't stick. I was perplexed by some of the punctuation use -- the use of periods instead of commas, in particular. Poems I did enjoy:

wounded, the sway it aches
suicide note #3: instructions on the cat
suicide note #11: at exactly 11:59
I ought to see myself as the noble rider
Study After Velazquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X

[Kassy Lee]

The rhythm, imagination, and music of this collection cut with a razor. I often felt barbaric for being complicit in witnessing these scenes. harris' clipped clauses are often filled with violence and sex, and the intersections of the two. The sentence fragments produce a staccato rhythm, which was fun to read and read aloud to whomever in the house felt like hearing a poem about vibrators. At times, I wondered if the shock value of the images overshadowed the attempts at transformation. I'd be excited to read other works from this poet.

[Shannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

FUN read! Francine J. Harris certainly comes up with original and beguiling ways to present an image. I was a little disappointed with how many poems relied on the "shock" factor of clits and vaginas and graphic sex--guess that's how contemporary poems have to get attention these days--but interestingly enough, the poems where she breaks free from that trope and allows herself to delve deep into lesser explored areas are truly magnifying.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tastes like the blood when you bite your cheek hard. Among the ones that killed me: "afterwards the boys stand in the kitchen" adjusting themselves. (dear god) And "on not knowing the word for solipsism" (neither did I, and this is exactly what it feels like).

I love the intensity and the playfulness that charge through this whole book.

[Oscar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shrouded in chaotic, musical language that sometimes swerves heartstoppingly toward clarity. Why lie, I finally read this to study up before writing a PhD application but it had been on my radar for a while. A heavy read given the subject matter but a good one.

[Audrey Gidman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is endlessly and immortally stunning. I return to it over and over, I turn it over in my hands, I feel it in my body. The ways it punctuates itself, the ways it catches its own breath. Truly a thing of ache and beauty.

[Jessamyn Duckwall · Rating 5 out of 5]

what a gorgeous, difficult, visceral read. the range of subject and form is formidable and brave. these poems are active, meaty, dense and textured. the layers of performance of gender and the force of utterance… truly i will need to reread this one many times.

[avery !! · Rating 3 out of 5]

"i love our small. i love the grasses i don't want to weed."

manifesting grad school harder than anyone has ever manifested anything ever.

[Dana]

recommended by kaveh akbar

[Grace · Rating 2 out of 5]

If a book can be painful to read, this one was it for me. And I don't mean emotionally painful. Overall, the process of reading this book was rather challenging and even excruciating for me at times. Part of this is likely due to my own difficulties with reading - the content of this book is not easily visualized, nor understood, which for me, makes for a less-than-ideal experience. As a whole, this poetry collection is just not for me. However, I can appreciate, and I applaud, francine j. harris's efforts and skill, as well as the power in her poetry. And, there absolutely are poems in this collection that resonated with me - that I really did enjoy, that wowed me, that I found to be especially powerful and emotionally evocative. These poems are "in case," "in Lebanon, a girl who cries crystals," "afterwards the boys stand in the kitchen," "a brief history of scent," "suicide note #3: instructions on the cat," "suicide note #4: to Kevork," "suicide note #10: wet condoms," "in the outfield, daydreaming," "today I watched a porn from Japan where a girl in a straw, blonde wig," and "straw." So, there are ten poems in this collection that I significantly enjoyed. While that is a small percentage of all of the poems in this collection, it shows that I am capable of enjoying harris's poetry. Perhaps for me, I would do better reading her poems individually, as opposed to in chunks/in a single-author book, which I found to be a rather overwhelming feat.

[willowdog · Rating 1 out of 5]

UGH. UGH. UGH. Who could like this? Not even sure of what I suffered through.

[Courtney LeBlanc · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of poems about survival, violence, love, lust, and identity.

from sister, foster: "The man, / who prefers you call him by name, has the eyes of a mole. / His glasses fatten the kitchen. He laughs at anything // anyone wants. If I were older I would tell you to dream / of cooking him. I would tell you that helps."

from in Lebanon, a girl who cries crystals: "A woman / in Oklahoma holds up a two-year-old baby girl // to keep her lover from being tasered, which is also not / an act of God. Science won't disprove a cop // hanging from a man's neck in a choke hold."

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

GORGEOUS book of poetry. It was refreshing to see such masterful writing combined with pop culture and modern life. I highly recommend this collection!

[nikki · Rating 4 out of 5]

note to self: please revisit in the future