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Tenderness: Be Human. Emotionally Connect. Serve Selflessly.
In a country where violence and the threat of violence is a constant weather for queer black people, where can the spirit rest?
With lush language, the meditative poems in the Isabella Gardner Award-winning Tenderness examine the fraught nature of intimacy in a nation poisoned by anti-Blackness and homophobia. From the bedroom to the dance floor, from the natural world to The Frick, from the Midwest to Florida to Mexico City, the poems range across interior and exterior landscapes. They look to movies, fine art, childhood memory, history, and mental health with melancholy, anger, and playfulness.
Even amidst sorrow and pain, Tenderness uplifts communal spaces as sites of resistance and healing, wonders at the restorative powers of art and erotic love, and celebrates the capaciousness of friendship.
With lush language, the meditative poems in the Isabella Gardner Award-winning Tenderness examine the fraught nature of intimacy in a nation poisoned by anti-Blackness and homophobia. From the bedroom to the dance floor, from the natural world to The Frick, from the Midwest to Florida to Mexico City, the poems range across interior and exterior landscapes. They look to movies, fine art, childhood memory, history, and mental health with melancholy, anger, and playfulness.
Even amidst sorrow and pain, Tenderness uplifts communal spaces as sites of resistance and healing, wonders at the restorative powers of art and erotic love, and celebrates the capaciousness of friendship.
76 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 21, 2021
4 people are currently reading
211 people want to read
About the author
Derrick Austin
10 books15 followersDerrick Austin was born in Homestead, Florida. He received a BA from the University of Tampa and, in 2014, an MFA from the University of Michigan. He is the author of Tenderness (BOA Editions, 2021), winner of the 2021 Isabella Gardener Award, and Trouble the Water (BOA Editions, 2016), selected by Mary Szybist for the 2015 A. Poulin Jr. Prize. A Cave Canem fellow, he is the recipient of fellowships from The Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing and Stanford University. He currently lives in Oakland, California.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
September 21, 2021
Shared through contemplative musings, as well as rich, evocative language, the poems in this collection share themes of love, companionship, intimacy and the bonds we form, as well as the hate shown to those whose skin is Black, or Brown, or any variation from White, and those who choose to love who they love, regardless of race or sex.
There’s an occasional matter-of-fact-ness to some of these poems, sharing feelings and thoughts we can, or should be able to, relate to. A relatability that allows us to absorb how much we have in common, and focus on those rather than the differences. It’s raw, real, and lovely.
This is the first of his work that I’ve read, so I opened these first pages somewhat tentatively, knowing little about him, except after reading that he is a contemporary poet, the winner of the 2021 Isabella Gardener Award, as well as the 2015 A. Poulin Prize, A Cave Canem fellow, as well as reading that he’d previously published Trouble the Water. The following excerpt is from that collection.
’Persian Blue’
’Tonight, our thousand and second night, tell me the story of our laughter through sudden summer rain. Tell me the story of salt: on your shoulder, chest, and chin. Tell me how that first week we seemed to know our pasts by heart, where we’d been and where we planned to go.’
There’s a raw, sensuous beauty to his writing which speaks to me, makes my heart quicken, my focus on these words that move me, teach me, make me feel, make me want to read more by him, and let him break my heart over and over again. There’s a relatability in these poems, as well, allowing us to see these things, feelings, hopes and dreams that we have in common. We love, we break, we heal again, we learn and go on to live in celebration of this gift.
Published: 07 Sep 2021
Many thanks for the ARC provided by BOA Editions Ltd. / Consortium Book Sales & Distribution
February 6, 2022
So, so aptly named, both for the tenderness of a wound and the tenderness of the heart. Made me want to wander around a museum, and write more poems about my friends.
February 22, 2023
absolutely beautiful. i felt so carried away by the words that i read this in one sitting at powell’s.
July 29, 2023
I love poetry about friendship and queerness. I loved getting to read more poetry about black queerness as well. Lines about the poet’s mother worrying about his safety in certain scenarios really alerted me of my own privilege in the same scenarios. This was beautiful. This was tender.
April 28, 2024
Tenderness by Derrick Austin as a sequence of poems takes you out for a stroll along the Floridian coastline, insists on you dipping your toes in a lake, chats with you over a luxurious dinner (plenty of red wine), slips its hands around your waist at a nightclub, all the while you’re lovingly pulled along by a brutal grip on your very heartstrings- there’s a sting you can’t shake. For many, this read would at times be uncomfortable, but maybe that’s the risk- especially relatable in its niche situations and settings if you’re queer or a person of color. Meditation on the concepts, raw experiences, lush visuals, and hesitant-to-adamant hopefulness that Austin presents could do many of us some peace. It’s no wonder a collection this strong and dedicated received Austin the 2020 Isabella Gardner Poetry Award.
Derrick Austin has a fantastic eye for imagery, selectively and tastefully using intimate descriptions when the narrative of the poem can be most assisted by them, letting the reader feel deep interconnectedness with the folks present in the piece. All throughout this collection of works is an ever-present and diversely interpreted backbone of queer interconnectedness, as seen in “Cachet & Compassion” with descriptions of gay unity. The prose-like structure of this piece flows like meeting old friends you had never knew you’d had. In its closing line, Austin visualizes “…a pear and a knife, its handle made lustrous through the passing of hands,” where, four to five lines prior, ‘Brother Javier’ is described to have “survived the plague” and returned from “death’s strange land.” (Austin, lines 6-7). It’s easy to extract the reference to the AIDs crisis that closed out the twentieth century for the queer community and concern ourselves with its aftermath for those carrying on the legacy of those that came before. In the air of this melancholy bordering on despair comes a much more vivid fear, presented primarily in the sonnet “Late Summer.” The piece opens heavy, hard-hitting, with a reflection on the Pulse nightclub shooting, the murder of Philando Castile, and the grief that would follow for a queer Black individual experiencing all of that. The narrator questions: “Was I an I?” (Austin, line 5). With trauma and mourning comes desensitization. However, with the grief of being queer and black comes also the euphoria- the pride in not only what you are but what you have allowed that to signify.
“Letter to Cody on Walpurgisnacht” takes a moment to visualize the absolute decadence one craves when aspiring for and admiring the feminine form, the dream of the ‘Femme,’ and the wickedness cast upon those who seek it: mentions of German witch trials soon follow. There is a richness, a downright praise, in how Austin describes the femme, but here we fall back into that foreign feeling that the femme is forbidden, pagan, demonic to those whose grasp of gender doesn’t stray far from the binary and rigid-stale. Many of these works describe fabulous black women, queer or not, and appreciates them through a lens not unfamiliar to the glamour of queer spaces. However, there is nuance to appreciation and consumption of other people, as described by Austin in “Son Jarocho.”
The sequence in “Son Jarocho” details many of this book’s themes (Christianity, skin color, art, romance and sex, idealism, etc.), mainly, though, the interactions between humans as observers and the culture they invoke as a collective, or more broadly and less definitively stated, how we are socialized and how we use escapism.
Quite possibly the most intriguing poetic structure in this book comes from “7. Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe” in “Son Jarocho.” Austin interpolates at either side of the page his experience at a basilica in Mexico City with a prayer geared towards America. This body of work really designates this prayer as a plea once you consider its release comes directly after the year 2020, and all of the unfathomable violences towards people of color that occurred that year.
It’s pleasurable in the ironic sense of the word that Austin so often entrusts nature-oriented imagery to describe closeness to blackness, as, this year was the year of the popularization of ‘cottagecore’ and the ‘simple life’ where folks online would emulate simple-living foragers, not unlike the black foragers of our world’s past, to feel more in tune with nature and our ecosystem. Oftentimes, this romanticization was done by people of privilege, which, is an often occurrence for people of color to have to undergo. Instead of chasing the blind simplicity of nature, Austin invites us into a verdant and exuberant world where black and brown people can find happiness- a world where sun-ripeness is not just consumed but praised. From “The Marina” on page 56: “the water wishing to be consumed and / nothing changes. A black couple camps on a pier- / bubble and rush, flirt and withdraw-” (Austin, lines 21-24). Dense and flowery vocabulary constantly spills out of Austin’s work, rhythmic hums and hisses, reinvigorating a reader with hope every so often. The beauty of Austin’s work is truly reflective of his experiences, his voice, as well as his boundless talent to put his voice to use. As written in “5. Adult Film Festival”:
Uncut, no shame-inducing fruit; humans
Made fluid, out of dew and rain, not dust,
Mask for mask no more, and vulnerable. (Austin, lines 12-14)
Derrick Austin has a fantastic eye for imagery, selectively and tastefully using intimate descriptions when the narrative of the poem can be most assisted by them, letting the reader feel deep interconnectedness with the folks present in the piece. All throughout this collection of works is an ever-present and diversely interpreted backbone of queer interconnectedness, as seen in “Cachet & Compassion” with descriptions of gay unity. The prose-like structure of this piece flows like meeting old friends you had never knew you’d had. In its closing line, Austin visualizes “…a pear and a knife, its handle made lustrous through the passing of hands,” where, four to five lines prior, ‘Brother Javier’ is described to have “survived the plague” and returned from “death’s strange land.” (Austin, lines 6-7). It’s easy to extract the reference to the AIDs crisis that closed out the twentieth century for the queer community and concern ourselves with its aftermath for those carrying on the legacy of those that came before. In the air of this melancholy bordering on despair comes a much more vivid fear, presented primarily in the sonnet “Late Summer.” The piece opens heavy, hard-hitting, with a reflection on the Pulse nightclub shooting, the murder of Philando Castile, and the grief that would follow for a queer Black individual experiencing all of that. The narrator questions: “Was I an I?” (Austin, line 5). With trauma and mourning comes desensitization. However, with the grief of being queer and black comes also the euphoria- the pride in not only what you are but what you have allowed that to signify.
“Letter to Cody on Walpurgisnacht” takes a moment to visualize the absolute decadence one craves when aspiring for and admiring the feminine form, the dream of the ‘Femme,’ and the wickedness cast upon those who seek it: mentions of German witch trials soon follow. There is a richness, a downright praise, in how Austin describes the femme, but here we fall back into that foreign feeling that the femme is forbidden, pagan, demonic to those whose grasp of gender doesn’t stray far from the binary and rigid-stale. Many of these works describe fabulous black women, queer or not, and appreciates them through a lens not unfamiliar to the glamour of queer spaces. However, there is nuance to appreciation and consumption of other people, as described by Austin in “Son Jarocho.”
The sequence in “Son Jarocho” details many of this book’s themes (Christianity, skin color, art, romance and sex, idealism, etc.), mainly, though, the interactions between humans as observers and the culture they invoke as a collective, or more broadly and less definitively stated, how we are socialized and how we use escapism.
Quite possibly the most intriguing poetic structure in this book comes from “7. Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe” in “Son Jarocho.” Austin interpolates at either side of the page his experience at a basilica in Mexico City with a prayer geared towards America. This body of work really designates this prayer as a plea once you consider its release comes directly after the year 2020, and all of the unfathomable violences towards people of color that occurred that year.
It’s pleasurable in the ironic sense of the word that Austin so often entrusts nature-oriented imagery to describe closeness to blackness, as, this year was the year of the popularization of ‘cottagecore’ and the ‘simple life’ where folks online would emulate simple-living foragers, not unlike the black foragers of our world’s past, to feel more in tune with nature and our ecosystem. Oftentimes, this romanticization was done by people of privilege, which, is an often occurrence for people of color to have to undergo. Instead of chasing the blind simplicity of nature, Austin invites us into a verdant and exuberant world where black and brown people can find happiness- a world where sun-ripeness is not just consumed but praised. From “The Marina” on page 56: “the water wishing to be consumed and / nothing changes. A black couple camps on a pier- / bubble and rush, flirt and withdraw-” (Austin, lines 21-24). Dense and flowery vocabulary constantly spills out of Austin’s work, rhythmic hums and hisses, reinvigorating a reader with hope every so often. The beauty of Austin’s work is truly reflective of his experiences, his voice, as well as his boundless talent to put his voice to use. As written in “5. Adult Film Festival”:
Uncut, no shame-inducing fruit; humans
Made fluid, out of dew and rain, not dust,
Mask for mask no more, and vulnerable. (Austin, lines 12-14)
December 14, 2023
It’s always a sign that I loved a poetry collection if it takes me a while to get through and this collection demanded attention. There was so many beautiful turns of language to sift through and a breadth of form and meaning throughout the collection. Excited to read more of this poet!!
/////
Late Summer
He returned me to simplicity, lust, selfishness
- Of the powers that separate us from animals, cruelty.
He kissed me and groped between my legs.
I stopped desiring him months ago.
My pleasure was in his not knowing and wanting me still.
Epithalamium
Mosquitos drain me good.
Let them be not what they were made for
Wilgefortis,
With your strong arms like Christ, with your milk and wonder
like Christ, bring heaven down, briefly, sweetly now, where
there are words for everything. A heaven wider than androgyny
is sugar on my tongue. Of the dead man, who will claim him?
Was he ever a man? He’s not unlike a tree now. If I can imagine
my own blossoms, listen for my rightful name and say it, then
spring? Of the living man—the opposite of winter is the sea.
Adult Film Festival
A perfect kind of sacrilege, I thought,
this global festival of sex, delight,
in porn that’s nothing less than Genesis uncut, no shame-inducing fruit; humans made fluid, out of dew and rain, not dust, mask for mask, no more, and vulnerable.
Knight of Cups
Sweeping the floor, I still feel the sweet hum
from before you left, the morning
we drifted from bed to the shower to the kitchen
and back again to watch Joanna Hogg, or Jane Campion, and it wasn’t the sex exactly,
but the ordinary dailiness, I loved.
We came or we didn’t, nothing changed. What a marvel
to share my body, comfortable in it,
with you, my rushlight, who did not hurt me.
I lean the broom near a vase of white peonies.
Apricot jam. Less warm now, the bread.
/////
Late Summer
He returned me to simplicity, lust, selfishness
- Of the powers that separate us from animals, cruelty.
He kissed me and groped between my legs.
I stopped desiring him months ago.
My pleasure was in his not knowing and wanting me still.
Epithalamium
Mosquitos drain me good.
Let them be not what they were made for
Wilgefortis,
With your strong arms like Christ, with your milk and wonder
like Christ, bring heaven down, briefly, sweetly now, where
there are words for everything. A heaven wider than androgyny
is sugar on my tongue. Of the dead man, who will claim him?
Was he ever a man? He’s not unlike a tree now. If I can imagine
my own blossoms, listen for my rightful name and say it, then
spring? Of the living man—the opposite of winter is the sea.
Adult Film Festival
A perfect kind of sacrilege, I thought,
this global festival of sex, delight,
in porn that’s nothing less than Genesis uncut, no shame-inducing fruit; humans made fluid, out of dew and rain, not dust, mask for mask, no more, and vulnerable.
Knight of Cups
Sweeping the floor, I still feel the sweet hum
from before you left, the morning
we drifted from bed to the shower to the kitchen
and back again to watch Joanna Hogg, or Jane Campion, and it wasn’t the sex exactly,
but the ordinary dailiness, I loved.
We came or we didn’t, nothing changed. What a marvel
to share my body, comfortable in it,
with you, my rushlight, who did not hurt me.
I lean the broom near a vase of white peonies.
Apricot jam. Less warm now, the bread.
April 7, 2022
4 stars
Not a new favorite, but I liked the overall vibe of Austin's poems. I was tempted to read this collection by the poem that's actually the closing poem, "Lilting," (having read it somewhere else... maybe just Twitter? Can't recall), and it's still the favorite for me after having read the rest of the collection. It has a seriously perfect line in it: "For once, I didn't hear you / From the room called / Memory." All the individual lines in this poem start with a capital letter anyway, but I chose to hear that as Memory with a capital M. Just feels right that way. I also loved the multi-part poem "Son Jarocho," which describes a trip with friends to Mexico in all its intricacies and contradictions. Another standout was "Sadness Isn't the Only Muse" which concludes, "I still love books where nothing happens, / good or bad. The page is one landscape I move through." Really I just love poems where a sense of the speaker's interior life comes through strongly. There's a self-deprecating self-consciousness in Austin's poems that I also connected with. Definitely give this collection a read!
This was my first poetry read for NaPoWriMo 2022, seven days into the month. I am slipping!
Not a new favorite, but I liked the overall vibe of Austin's poems. I was tempted to read this collection by the poem that's actually the closing poem, "Lilting," (having read it somewhere else... maybe just Twitter? Can't recall), and it's still the favorite for me after having read the rest of the collection. It has a seriously perfect line in it: "For once, I didn't hear you / From the room called / Memory." All the individual lines in this poem start with a capital letter anyway, but I chose to hear that as Memory with a capital M. Just feels right that way. I also loved the multi-part poem "Son Jarocho," which describes a trip with friends to Mexico in all its intricacies and contradictions. Another standout was "Sadness Isn't the Only Muse" which concludes, "I still love books where nothing happens, / good or bad. The page is one landscape I move through." Really I just love poems where a sense of the speaker's interior life comes through strongly. There's a self-deprecating self-consciousness in Austin's poems that I also connected with. Definitely give this collection a read!
This was my first poetry read for NaPoWriMo 2022, seven days into the month. I am slipping!
October 7, 2021
"What a marvel / to share my body, comfortable in it, / with you, my rushlight, who did not hurt me."
Just great. I didn't really care for the series of poems following the author's travels with friends through Mexico, but the best of the poems in this collection are memorable, precise, and fantastic. From the voice of a queer black American, some recurring themes are intimacy, art, religion, and trauma.
"Whistler painted The Peacock Room / 140 years ago. Slavery had no been exised / from the Americas. I've wanted / to be hurt into gold."
Damn. As with most poetry, you either feel it or you don't, but if you feel it enough you go back to read it over and over. That was me with "Black Docent."
*I received a copy of this book from the publisher through LibraryThing's Early Reviewers
Just great. I didn't really care for the series of poems following the author's travels with friends through Mexico, but the best of the poems in this collection are memorable, precise, and fantastic. From the voice of a queer black American, some recurring themes are intimacy, art, religion, and trauma.
"Whistler painted The Peacock Room / 140 years ago. Slavery had no been exised / from the Americas. I've wanted / to be hurt into gold."
Damn. As with most poetry, you either feel it or you don't, but if you feel it enough you go back to read it over and over. That was me with "Black Docent."
*I received a copy of this book from the publisher through LibraryThing's Early Reviewers
November 25, 2023
Pretty poetic prose. As poems tho… they often pronounced themselves too much for my taste. Every now and then, I could see the Themes poking out from underneath their skirts… Which, is no crime. Every poet has to walk the fine line between flashing and striptease. But I personally prefer poems that err on the side of the latter.
To me, Derrick Austin is at his best when he’s telling stories- using dreamlike imagery to weave us into the narrative with him. My favorite moments were in Letter to Cody on Walpurgisnacht, Sadness Isn’t the Only Muse, Son Jarocho, and Taking My Father and Brother to the Frick.
I’m also aware these poems aren’t for me. So take all of this with many grains of salt xx
To me, Derrick Austin is at his best when he’s telling stories- using dreamlike imagery to weave us into the narrative with him. My favorite moments were in Letter to Cody on Walpurgisnacht, Sadness Isn’t the Only Muse, Son Jarocho, and Taking My Father and Brother to the Frick.
I’m also aware these poems aren’t for me. So take all of this with many grains of salt xx
December 5, 2021
It is a good collection of poems but it is not complete. I feel something is missing, something that will give this collection a better shape. I searched poet on internet and found more interesting than his this book. His poems are at time, so deep and realistic but at other times it's peripheral.
In some of his lines I can see the world he pictures, and in some lines I am like 'what did you say???' or 'what is he even trying here?'
I am happy for the book but I still want to expect more from the poet in future.
The most beautiful line for me is:
Now that I have survived when does the living begin?
In some of his lines I can see the world he pictures, and in some lines I am like 'what did you say???' or 'what is he even trying here?'
I am happy for the book but I still want to expect more from the poet in future.
The most beautiful line for me is:
Now that I have survived when does the living begin?
March 17, 2024
A collection of poems about race, identity, sexuality, romance, and love.
from The Devil's Book: "Meanwhile, the Earth's sick / of our ego. It will outlast us. We'll burn / ourselves our and no one will grieve / and good riddance— / Devil take us."
from Hotline Bling (Voicemail): "Can I dance inside a SAD lamp? My feelings are obsidian, opaque. // Two things don't abandon black people: death and style."
from Remembering God After Three Years of Depression: "Insomnia watched me, / wild-haired and unwashed, like an officer. / Perhaps the light through the keyhole / was you, floorboards straining in another room."
from The Devil's Book: "Meanwhile, the Earth's sick / of our ego. It will outlast us. We'll burn / ourselves our and no one will grieve / and good riddance— / Devil take us."
from Hotline Bling (Voicemail): "Can I dance inside a SAD lamp? My feelings are obsidian, opaque. // Two things don't abandon black people: death and style."
from Remembering God After Three Years of Depression: "Insomnia watched me, / wild-haired and unwashed, like an officer. / Perhaps the light through the keyhole / was you, floorboards straining in another room."
November 1, 2023
I did not finish this book. I left it off at page 40, Derrick works as a short story writer, but not as a poet. Some of his poetry was hard to follow, many of which lacked any resolute form or grace. It was ramblings that induced many of my stumbling through the work, prose fantastic poetry vacuous and a little invidious of self-indulgent musings over the quality of life, modern-day poetry is not like Lord Bryon poetry where we would follow the thread of it, themes were explicitly shown, no comment.
November 4, 2023
"I had no space in me for less than life"
Easily my favorite non-Ada Limon, poetry collection. Tenderness is such a lovely word and thing, which is exactly how I would describe this book. A lovely collection of words and things.
Easily my favorite non-Ada Limon, poetry collection. Tenderness is such a lovely word and thing, which is exactly how I would describe this book. A lovely collection of words and things.
October 26, 2021
Beautifully written, honest and raw. Although, it felt like something was missing…
November 11, 2021
This was lovely. Full of pain and beauty and lots of tender moments.
December 16, 2021
Very good.
July 16, 2023
Inspiringly evocative
January 18, 2022
A second collection from a Cave Canem fellow that also has an accompanying playlist? Count me in.
Some highlights:
- Days of 2014: "This is how I escaped the world. A little foam."
- Tenderness: "If I sent a postcard to everyone I loved
it's say, Sometimes I think you're just too good for me."
- The Witching Hour: "hive—imagine if bees were nocturnal,
making physical what night is
on their patrols: possibility. Imagine centuries of women
(burned), living foreign and old (jailed), naming
names (_____)."
- Flies
- Letter to Brandon "Is this how you write fiction? Plot isn't fate exactly."
- Birth Chart
- The Devil's Book: "I simply asked to die
on my own terms."
- Villiers
- Dear & Decorations: "Let my farewell and arrival
tease the same gasp from you. Let your sound
surprise you every time."
- Poem for Julián: "Being in the world, loss is first and least and awe."
- Lilting
Some highlights:
- Days of 2014: "This is how I escaped the world. A little foam."
- Tenderness: "If I sent a postcard to everyone I loved
it's say, Sometimes I think you're just too good for me."
- The Witching Hour: "hive—imagine if bees were nocturnal,
making physical what night is
on their patrols: possibility. Imagine centuries of women
(burned), living foreign and old (jailed), naming
names (_____)."
- Flies
- Letter to Brandon "Is this how you write fiction? Plot isn't fate exactly."
- Birth Chart
- The Devil's Book: "I simply asked to die
on my own terms."
- Villiers
- Dear & Decorations: "Let my farewell and arrival
tease the same gasp from you. Let your sound
surprise you every time."
- Poem for Julián: "Being in the world, loss is first and least and awe."
- Lilting
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews