The Malevolent Volume

by Justin Phillip Reed

Subverting celebrated classics of poetry and mythology and examining horrors from contemporary film and cultural fact, National Book Award winner Justin Phillip Reed engages darkness as an aesthetic to conjure the revenant animus that lurks beneath the exploited civilities of marginalized people. In these poems, Reed finds agency in the other-than-human identities assigned to those assaulted by savageries of the state. In doing so, he summons a retaliatory, counterviolent Black spirit to revolt and to inhabit the revolting.

Genres: Poetry, Horror, Queer, LGBT, Audiobook, Abuse

104 pages, Paperback

First published April 7, 2020

About the author

Justin Phillip Reed is an American poet living in St. Louis. His work appears in African American Review, Best American Essays, Callaloo, The Kenyon Review, Obsidian, and elsewhere. He holds a BA in creative writing from Tusculum College and an MFA in poetry from Washington University in St. Louis. The author of the chapbook A History of Flamboyance (YesYes Books 2016), he has received fellowships from the Cave Canem Foundation and the Conversation Literary Festival. Reed currently organizes the St. Louis community-based poetry workshop series Most Folks At Work. He was born and raised in South Carolina.

Reviews

[el · Rating 5 out of 5]

a feat of language (bending and blending and breaking open and kneading, over and over again)—for alliteration nerds and linguistics majors and anyone fascinated by the limits of the english language (and how those limits might be tested/courted/bulldozed past). so sickeningly genius, at times best read aloud, and always perfectly (wailingly) incoherent. but also…(always) perfectly lucid/logical/narrative. i am OBSESSED.

some favorites:

No reason now but to believe I sprang / fully grown into madness. That I crawled along / a canyon floor, ear to the rough for traces / of the river my mother was, was yesterday’s / dream. Today is a new grave to upset. / That dragged man’s head, on the heels of what / is no longer recognizable as a man, molts— / its over-marched boot now tongue, mostly,

—

Even the gods can be made / so unlike themselves under the right blade. / I was he who heaven most favored because / I most favored heaven: my interminable blues, / my interludes of silver oblivion, my purple rage / a shock veined through my brow’s bucking umbrage.

—

Have I expected too many blessings to admit / I desire it, the knowledge of dying? And dug out / the trench, and emptied over it a thousand throats to keep / the kingdom from being my own.

—

I assured my children / they would live if they / quit growing, kept moving, stayed / out of the sun, stopped / only in well-lit areas, rearranged / their skeletal scaffolding.

—

I was given / an immature god and told to be / grateful.

—

I paid taxes to be / more effectively terrorized. / Long-Range Acoustic Devices for all / the local precincts. I had a gun / because they had a gun / because I had the manner of a thing / on which a gun was found / planted. The bodies of activists / turned up shot in locked cuffs / and burned in locked cars / in the century after / a century of lynchings.

—

Other than my mother / who else can braid a wealth from rain and smoke?

—

Surely killing everything had felt for them like having / survived it.

—

AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 4 out of 5]

My second read for National Poetry Month is this collection by South Carolina born poet Justin Phillip Reed, which comes out April 7th from Coffee House Press - Reed’s poems are all in conversation with other poems, and you could almost start in the list in the back, study those poems first, and then do several deep readings of this collection, and still I feel you would only scratch the surface of the multiple layers of meaning and connection. But that’s not to say that the poems are purely academic, they effuse emotion and experience.

Here’s a taste from “When I Was a Poet”:
“And then fell the fallacy that the dirt
I worked and from which I ate

and into which I was delivered
to be devoured could not possibly

vibrate the notes of my brute living;
so spoke the beast out of the void

in its god costume.”

Or try "Of Someone Else Entirely" which is in conversation with "The Jailer" by Sylvia Plath.

I had a copy from the publisher through Edelweiss.

[Never Without a Book · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of poetry is complex, yet brilliant. Don’t rush through this one, I had to go back and reread a few poems to fully understand what was being said. I still would recommend you give it a go, it's worth the read.

[Steph Medlock · Rating 2 out of 5]

i’m not smart enough for this book.

[Areeb Ahmad (Bankrupt_Bookworm) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Violation
Wildflowered up the dreams of my captors,
Decorous men, half-moon bedded in my bloodstream.
The object is without objection. It was said
Such knowledge sharpened the Garden's blurred shush.
The serpent also whispered in the field.
Abandon, the house of the lord, is
Abandoned. Its painted columns leer behind my heels.
The yellow apples underfoot, the flies they waste.

I am entering the wood.
The goat goes with.
A panic trills, and though the trees throw their limbs
I have no stupefaction for that flute.
I have poured salt in and already set fire to the cloth."

// I Will Guide Thy Hand


Justin Phillip Reed is clearly in a class of his own, as clearly evidenced by his cerebral collection. He frequently writes in creative conversation with other poets & their pieces, from Walt Whitman, Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson to Audre Lorde, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, weaving them strikingly together with fresh insights and incorporate their words & works completely into his own. He isn't flashy & his poems are considered & precise, showing deep intellect that does not sacrifice depth & wealth of meaning for superficial pop.

I was really impressed by all the pieces rooted in myth, from Achilles to the Gorgons to the Lorelei to the Bible, and other ones inspired by movies. His usage of language is instantly remarkable, verbing & adjectivising words to force them to do his bidding, spin anew, inventing new ways of saying the same old things through linguistic dexterity & inventiveness. I won't say I understood all of it. It's not a book to be rushed but reread, deliberated upon, gleaned for meaning & manna.




(I was sent a finished copy of the book by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.)

[Bernie Gourley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This multifarious collection of poetry is stirring and evocative. While much of the poetry is free verse, Reed pays a great deal of attention to structure in his poetry. The overall tone tends toward the dark and somber, and much of the poetry requires intuition rather than intellect to glean nuggets of insight. That said, it’s pleasant to read and employs some stunning use of language.

At times, Reed engages in a kind of dialogue with other poets, which I appreciated. These included the founders of the American poetic tradition, Whitman and Dickinson, and Harlem Renaissance great, Langston Hughes.

I enjoyed this collection. Reed has a message, but it doesn’t come across as whiny or self-obsessed (which are traits I see too often for my own preference in new poetry collections.) Instead, there is a humanity and a depth to the way he makes his points. If you enjoy poetry, this is a great collection and you should check it out.

[S P · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I came to place my voyeurism under black gaze.

How could I stand the pastoral, standing
on stolen land, propped like a rifle?

The idyll was a metropole of violence. Verses from
the vantage point of frost were purely blank, not free.

Suddenly the valley was disaster, every chasm
unconsenting. I could not recover a peace to rest in."

—'When I Was a Poet'

[Tori · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this is my favorite poetry collection I've ever read. I'm already reading it again. Absolutely amazing.

[Marc Nash · Rating 4 out of 5]

Video review https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZB5c...

[Stephen Lamb · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the pleasures I get from Justin Phillip Reed’s new collection, The Malevolent Volume, is the way slow-building crescendos of dread break suddenly, by way of an unexpected line break, into meditative reflections on memory and history. As in the poem “How Many Model Mutilations Make a Single Slave,” made up mostly of three long sentences. The first, 70 words long, ends thusly: "and now the winter pipes the poltergeists knock / tympanic with their gnarled knuckles, / the neighbor’s bath occasioning their demonic groan."

The second, consisting of 110 words, includes a section in the middle of mounting anxiety caused by walking past “the medical school police in cruisers / and the metropolitan police in SUVs / and the metropolitan police on bicycles” before turning to an experience with airport security.

And then the third sentence, 65 words long (followed by a couple of shorter sentences of conclusion) goes like this: “What poetry might exist in this has little to do with / any right to my body I sacrifice to ride / the sky in a condensed fiction of safety / to the city where I witness a murder // [here there’s both a line and a paragraph break] // of crows quietly chandeliered in the plead-reaching crown / of a white oak the cemetery unrolls / its hills of tended grass and gray gradient teeth / like a tablecloth underneath.”

One other line I keep thinking about, from When I Was a Poet: “Among what I was forced to abandon: belief / that there would ever again be / postwar poetry, or a poet born other / -wise than in the time of war, or an alibi / for where I was if not brutally living / in and off of war.”

[Greg Bem · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful convergence of horror and distance. Thoughts on how whiteness came to create the stereotypes of the Black man and each poem dismantles and responds in growth.

[Jessie (Zombie_likes_cake) · Rating 2 out of 5]

So, this started off way over my head. WAY over my head. The vocabulary here is impressive, so much that I had a hard time keeping up with the flow and what these poems were trying to say. I mean, I was intrigued to pick up the collection because it uses Horror film and imagery as hook to dive deeper into societal issues, and I often (but luckily not always) missed the references and even started to wonder if that was Horror angle would ever happen....

Thing is that the middle parts seemed to work better for me. Suddenly I got into the rhythm, a few more things clicked and the poems were no longer too complex word structures on a page but started to make sense, started to have meanings and I started to enjoy reading them. Towards the later pieces I seem to lose that connection again, so who knows: was it the poems, was it my state of my mind while reading this collection? Was the middle section truly the better part of this collection? I couldn't tell you. It was good to have Notes section at the end, where the authors gives a few insights into the inspirations behind some of these but I shouldn't need that to understand the basics of a poem, should I?

One thing that factors into my personal rating and judging poetry collection is how likely I am to get back and reread a few of these and honestly right now that chance feels slim. While subjectwise these should have been appealing to me, the overcomplicated writing holds me at bay and keeps from sinking into them.

Here is the list of my favorites: What's left behind after a hawk has seized a smaller bird/ This is really happening/ I will guide thy hand/ The personal animal/ When I made a monster/ Beneficence/ Leaves of Grass (which was the biggest stand out to me)

2.5*

[David]

I don't know how to rate this one. There are some brilliant lines and startling imagery, along with some excellent use of textual flow and rhythm.

That said, the language and imagery is often so complex and ornately articulated that it's hard to figure out what, if anything, is actually meant. Sometimes, I understand, poetry is more about a feeling or an image or an identity than an actual point or meaning or definitive answer, but that approach doesn't always do much for the reader.

I feel like this was written for other poets, not for readers, and, as I am only a mediocre poet at best, it wasn't written for me.

[Nadine Lucas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Exquisite imagery abounded in this compilation of poems but, I am afraid, these works as so abstract as to be maddening and I am a person who normally enjoys experimental poetry. The poet has an obvious facility with meter and language. I liked the way the stanzas flowed, but, while I don't think poetry should be dumbed down , poetry that is deliberately inscrutable to all but the most educated of readers is not my cup of tea either. Perhaps, where poetry is concerned, I am, as the cool kids say, "a basic". The language in this collection is unrelentingly lofty. Unless you have a doctorate in mythology, you likely won't understand these works. This, book, for all the skill employed in its creation, and it IS skillfully written, left me unmoved. More is the pity, as some of the language is gorgeous. This one just wasn't for me.

[Carolyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I usually mark poetry finished after I've read the collection two or three times. I've read through this one at least five or six times now...and there are still poems I cannot find a way in to.

The poems I understand = I'm completely in love with. My very favorites are: Leaves of Grass, Beneficence, Open Season, and If We Must Be the Dead.

The whole collection is full of really intense and intriguing imagery. But there are quite a few poems here that--despite thinking they have a very cool image, or finding particular lines to be very moving--I cannot quite find my way in to. Reading this collection, I often had that feeling of when you can't remember a word and you say "it's on the tip of my tongue." I'm circling around something that somewhere my brain intuitively understands but can't put the words to.

Basically, this collection makes me feel poetry dumb. I went online and read a few of his essays (go to the Poetry Foundation for "In My Defense, Monsters" or Catapult for "Melancholia, Death Motion and the Makings of Marilyn Manson" and have concluded that this guy is just so much smarter than me, there will probably be poems here I will never understand no matter how many times I read them.

It's so lovely to be so challenged so much by someone's writing.

[Courtney Ferriter · Rating 4 out of 5]

** 4 stars **

This is a challenging and sometimes difficult-to-understand volume. I'm not going to pretend like I fully understood every poem in this collection, but I appreciated the goals of Reed's aesthetic and poetics here. In a poem toward the end of the volume called "When I Was a Poet," Reed most clearly articulates (to me, anyway) his project in this collection, which is to rail against the notion that the Black poet should attempt to humanize Black folks for readers or to elicit sympathy for Black folks by leaving a "treasure trail of sufferings" (line 90) in the poem. Instead, Reed leans into the darkness of his own thoughts, the creation of his own poetic forms, and white fears of Black monstrosity, all of which combine to create a disturbing and somewhat uneasy atmosphere to these poems. As a reader, I felt challenged by both the content and form of these poems, but in a way that I ultimately found instructive and rewarding.

Would recommend for readers of contemporary African American poetry and/or readers who appreciate a more experimental poetics. I will be interested to see what Reed publishes next, and this volume makes me want to read his debut collection Indecency.

[Renee Morales · Rating 5 out of 5]

haunting. unrelenting. dangerous. justin phillip reed is a mf G he has no mercy here and is so fucking sharp it makes your stomach drop with a heaviness you don’t expect. frank got me to read this and i lack the words to actually describe it’s genius to you. like genuinely believe me. this is not a book you wanna die having not EXPERIENCED.

“He loves to say / he hates me, meaning his need to use me / confuses him. I want to say I love me / in the language of a place where // it is possible… He is talking about my bullet- // casket carcass, or he is talking about how fuckable I look laid roadside in red.”

“Lemme pretend I don’t let it in, / the cornered vermin of my brain meat all sag and screech / like a cot under coitus. Pretend I don’t still / want its hand in me.”

a horror movie. erotic asf and gay. dark. read it now.

[Bill]

Although I enjoy revisiting a few poems that are meaningful to me in some way, I really don’t read much poetry. I have to admit that it’s because I’m usually not willing to put in the work, the close reading and thinking, and then rereading that poetry deserves or demands. (Maybe I’m a lazy reader but I will proudly struggle through a difficult and challenging prose text, and then appreciate its poetic qualities.) So...I skimmed through this volume and read once about 8-10 of the poems. Mostly the ones with mythological or literary referenced titles. They were all intense and wordy and seemed angry. I so liked the one entitled “Leaves of Grass” that I made a copy to keep. Nevertheless, I feel a rating by me is inappropriate.

[Jendi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Truly a virtuoso performance. The syntax of this poetry collection is thorny and twisted, and the word choice demands slow re-reading to discern the full meaning and appreciate the muscular rhythm. Reed is fond of using words that could be either nouns or verbs, placing them in such a way that you would mistake one for the other until the context becomes clear. I see this style as a political choice in keeping with the book's passionate reclaiming of Blackness as an aesthetic. Reed is asserting that he deserves the reader's close attention. He is as important, and as intellectually accomplished, as the writers in the white literary canon that these poems deconstruct with wicked cleverness.

[Julian · Rating 5 out of 5]

i still don't really know how to review poetry, but i loved this. i listened to the author read it himself and am continually learning that poetry is very different read aloud as compared to read. what i enjoyed about this collection is that it was much less prosaic than the poetry i've been reading lately - it felt like the first bit of poetry that i've read in a while that made sense of the adage that poetry is the highest form of art.

as an aside, if anyone has any respectable "how to read poetry and how to critique it" books they recommend, lmk!

[Samoyes · Rating 2 out of 5]

The poems in this collection operate in a visceral level. The body is at the Center here, and the author evokes such cutting imagery! There are lines in some of these poems that will gut you. However, for me, I didn’t get much of these poems. I like his descriptions of place, but the poems were interrupted by me having to look up several words. The poems also began to feel like they were just too much of the same over and over again, for me. Perhaps I just did not understand this text. This was not the collection for me.

[Phobean]

This seems masterful, but I barely comprehended a lick of it. I'd read a line and not understand, and then some other line or stanza would roll in ominously like mist while I was trying to parse the first ten concepts (all contained in three lines of poetry packed with verb-ified nouns), and I'd think I understood what was happening, or what I was intended to feel or take away, and then I'd be at the end of the poem, completely forgetting any of what I experienced. I tried reading the poems aloud but understood them even less, and tripped over the phrasing more often than not. Maybe this is poetry for poets, like contact improv is dance for dancers, not really spectator dance? The interior book design is incredible and that cover, wow! Overall, I felt the malevolence, but in a good way, I think. I felt what the poet was leading me towards.

[Meaghan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Truly beautiful language. This collection is monstrous and deliberate, and so incredibly rich. I enjoyed it very much.
.
My favorites:
-"The Hang-Up"
-"Considering My Disallowance"
-"Minotaur"
-"Gothic"
-"How Many Model Mutilations Make a Single Slave"
-"Leaves of Grass"
-"I Will Guide Thy Hand"
-"When I Am Queen"
-"The Man in Black"
-"Beneficence"
-"Open Season"
-"Blackguard"
-"When I Was a Poet"
-"If We Must Be the Dead"
-"When What They Called Us Was Our Name"

[Nathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I usually prefer to read poetry in a physical book, but I did an audio book for this experience. The author narrated his work, but did so in only one tone throughout the whole thing which was unfortunate. Made his writing sound worse in my opinion. Good usage of biblical imagery throughout. Interesting.I think I would have liked it more had it been a regular book so I could go back and re read several of the poems.

[K.C. Bratt-Pfotenhauer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I will echo the sentiments of others here and say that you shouldn't read this collection in one go. Let it sit with you, heavy and deliberate, and then you might begin to understand what happens within its pages. There is so much complexity and lexical genius in this collection that I very well know it's going to take at least two more reads to sink in.

[Angela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful seems like the wrong word to describe this, but there is something beautiful in the sheer force of this writing. Reed emphasizes the macabre of myth and science fiction, tunes everything to a minor key, and makes the horrors of the modern day evident. What a journey, emotionally and linguistically.

[Leah Rice · Rating 3 out of 5]

This took me like over 3 months to read bc I didn’t understand a single word of it which was sad but I could tell it was saying something important!! So very heavy and full of intentionally hidden meaning. Veryyyyyy beautiful writing, gorgeous style delightful word games, but simply not accessible to me. And I’m trying to be ok with that 😌 poetry is hard.

[Dominique · Rating 3 out of 5]

I almost hate to rate this anything below a 3 but unfortunately this book wasn't for me. I feel as though for every poem I did enjoy there was a few that I didn't. Maybe this poet isn't for me, maybe its this collection of poems, or perhaps its just me? I think Justin is a great writer and I hope others enjoy this more than I did.

[Fluencer · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I am the hydra of I
and soon I will be the next thing."
- When I was a Poet

This is my first experience reading modern interpretation of classical mythology. This collection was a serve. Spellbinding.

[Simon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Would not have considered horror to be a framework for poetry before, but, yes, of course (can think of others now too), esp. with his subject matter. Fascinating and exciting and always a pleasure in how he uses language and imagery.