Glaring

by Benjamin Krusling

Poetry. Drama. African & African American Studies. a sustained look of anger, an obvious fact, a situation of such brightness and intensity that vision is obscured. In his debut book of poems, Benjamin Krusling is concerned with reading domination and violence and entering their psychotic motion, the better to do otherwise. Through the thicket of anti-blackness, militarism, surveillance, impoverishment, and interpersonal abuse and violence, GLARING investigates the things that haunt daily life and make love difficult, possible, necessary.

Genres: Poetry

136 pages, Paperback

Published December 15, 2020

Reviews

[Restfulsimulation · Rating 5 out of 5]

acutely powerful. watching someone try and try to purge themselves of pain and fury, and by the end, i think, start to succeed “the referee lifts my fist up”

[huai · Rating 5 out of 5]

this poetry is electric, sparks off the page & shocks with its precise friction of form and feeling. krusling writes/types with dizzying urgency, rage, and ecstasy in a carceral urban world that shifts suddenly from dazzling luxury storefront lights where "my face will helplessly occur" to the dramatic tension of a Popeyes, where "there's only the hungry and thirsty person shaking so often in sunlight". Over the past few weeks I've read and reread these poems against the motion sick background of nyc transit, I've stared men off of bus benches with the "opposite of generosity", I've prepared my "beauuuutiful armor" for the "pre-turnstile zone of the subway" my reduced fare metrocard hanging out of my designer pant pocket... what can we do in the face of pain and violence and contradiction besides glare, twitch, be dazzled? Or pour our love out like streams??

[Emily Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

brilliant