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OPPRESSORFACE
Winner of the 2019 Michael Rubin Book Award, selected by Diana Khoi Nguyen.
...at once formally inventive, linguistically rigorous and surprisingly brave…the poet willingly holds up a mirror, reverses the gaze to see his own privilege enacted in place, in language, and in poem. This debut collection marks the arrival of an important new voice. - Truong Tran
Rob Hendricks trains his kaleidoscopic eyes to both behold and convey the fault lines present in contemporary social spaces, all while acknowledging the colonial (and post-colonial) histories and oppressors who lurk in anxious shadows. Here the poet is a new breed of cartographer and culinary-ethnographer: mapping and documenting not only what gathers, concentrates, and is carried along in urban bioswales, but raiding the menus and impulses existent in suburban spaces as well. - Diana Khoi Nguyen
While the word "oppressor" has become a ‘catch-all’, there is nothing ‘catch-all’ or clichéd or expected in this enactment, through the first person, of an '"oppressorface." Instead this voice uses humorous, idiosyncratic, yet always-believable enactments of the particulars of a life to articulate poses readers can recognize as uncomfortably close to their own. Hendricks is a writer who, as [Giorgio] Agamben describes, has eyes that are "struck by the beam of darkness that comes from his own time" - Rusty Morrison
...at once formally inventive, linguistically rigorous and surprisingly brave…the poet willingly holds up a mirror, reverses the gaze to see his own privilege enacted in place, in language, and in poem. This debut collection marks the arrival of an important new voice. - Truong Tran
Rob Hendricks trains his kaleidoscopic eyes to both behold and convey the fault lines present in contemporary social spaces, all while acknowledging the colonial (and post-colonial) histories and oppressors who lurk in anxious shadows. Here the poet is a new breed of cartographer and culinary-ethnographer: mapping and documenting not only what gathers, concentrates, and is carried along in urban bioswales, but raiding the menus and impulses existent in suburban spaces as well. - Diana Khoi Nguyen
While the word "oppressor" has become a ‘catch-all’, there is nothing ‘catch-all’ or clichéd or expected in this enactment, through the first person, of an '"oppressorface." Instead this voice uses humorous, idiosyncratic, yet always-believable enactments of the particulars of a life to articulate poses readers can recognize as uncomfortably close to their own. Hendricks is a writer who, as [Giorgio] Agamben describes, has eyes that are "struck by the beam of darkness that comes from his own time" - Rusty Morrison
95 pages, Paperback
Published December 13, 2019
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 1, 2020
These poems are inventive, lovely, thoughtful and moving. I really enjoyed all the depictions of food throughout.
Displaying 1 of 1 review