Anodyne

by Khadijah Queen

Overview

The poems that make up Anodyne consider the small moments that enrapture us alongside the daily threats of cataclysm. Formally dynamic and searingly personal, Anodyne asks us to recognize the echoes of history that litter the landscape of our bodies as we navigate a complex terrain of survival and longing. With an intimate and multivocal dexterity, these poems acknowledge the simultaneous existence of joy and devastation, knowledge and ignorance, grief and love, endurance and failure—all of the contrast and serendipity that comes with the experience of being human. If the body is a world, or a metaphor for the world, for what disappears and what remains, for what we feel and what we cover up, then how do we balance fate and choice, pleasure and pain? Through a combination of formal lyrics, delicate experiments, sharp rants, musical litany, and moments of wit that uplift and unsettle, Queen’s poems show us the terrible consequences and stunning miracles of how we choose to live.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781947793804
Publisher:	Tin House Books
Publication date:	08/18/2020
Sales rank:	300,134
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Khadijah Queen is the author of Conduit, Black Peculiar, Fearful Beloved, Non-Sequitur, and I’m So Fine: A List of Famous Men & What I Had On. A finalist for the National Poetry Series, the Balcones Poetry Prize, and the CLMP Firecracker award in Fiction, she is an assistant professor of creative writing at University of Colorado at Boulder, and serves as core faculty for the low-residency Mile-High MFA program at Regis University.

Table of Contents

In the event of an apocalypse, be ready to die 1

Of all the things I love 3

Erosion 5

Double windlass 7

Live unadorned 8

Monologue for personae 9

Copper men 11

Something about the way I am made is not made 13

Dementia is one way to say fatal brain failure 15

I have a method of letting go 16

A tiny now to feed on 17

Horizon erasure 19

Ut pictura poesis 20

X 21

The rule of opulence 23

Antediluvian 24

Sestina for personae 26

Sky erasure 29

Synesthesia 30

Ode to 180 pairs of white gloves 34

I dreamt you at the Tate 36

Retreat 37

Reclusionary 39

In the quiet 41

Declination 42

If gold, your figure as mirror on the ground is 44

Eclogue for personae 54

The world says not to expect the world 56

I watch exact in disconnect 58

Ode to the accuracy of intuition 59

Precipitation erasure 61

Anodyne 62

Imminence 63

NJ Transit passenger ode 65

Ancient mother I keep teaching us new ways to find joy 68

Afterlight erasure 70

Common miracles 71

I watch the endless breakage of wings 72

Route 73

Double life 76

Epilogue for personae 80

I slept when I couldn't move 81

Notes & Acknowledgments 85

Editorial Reviews

06/15/2020

In the formally adventurous fifth collection from Queen (Non-Sequitur), poetry serves as a space for dialogue and investigation about disparate ways of seeing the world. Juxtaposing the quotidian and the extraordinary, the joyful and the violent, and philosophy with the tangibles of lived experience, Queen’s poetics invite wild revisions of artistic tradition: “You feel the sun of unknown experiments,” her speaker warns the reader. The poems in this accomplished volume suggest that limitations in thinking begin in language: “The violence of language in every space/ I enter... I think I am losing everything but my mind.” For Queen, the possibility of social justice begins in language, which she frames as the very foundation of the social order: “Her mother had vision/ & the power in a Black woman’s name/ saves us all.” Like much of the collection, this passage memorably considers the various judgments implicit in language and speech. While maintaining a purposeful relationship between experimental style and socially engaged, lyrical writing, Queen’s collection reads as a testament to the power of poetry to raise awareness and shape the world. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

Anodyne captivates with poignant, resilient poems; ones that face toughness with lucidity: of losing family and facing landscapes full of ‘untended loveliness of the forsaken.’ All of which builds an affective and luminous sense of record, of observing and perceiving. . . . Queen’s commanding style: building the poetic edges that are laced with endeavors, hurdles, grace, and truth into an eye-wide and powerfully deep poetry collection.

Prageeta Sharma

Anodyne is a study of form & cavedwell, feminism as foresight, and archives the articulation of black excellence & resilience. . . . Many (re)discoveries are assured with the preciseness of Queen’s poetic legend.

Mahogany L. Browne

Khadijah Queen is a brilliant poet. I recommend this book to anyone who ever had a child or a parent, who ever had a body or loved, to anyone who was ever sick or tried to sleep a good night’s sleep, and failed, and tried again. . . . This is a powerful and dazzling collection, filled with wisdom and experience. Anyone who reads Anodyne will remember it for a long time.

Ilya Kaminsky

Khadijah Queen’s poems are fire and sacred song. From heart-stopping familial narratives—a son awash in sadness, an aging mother’s boulder-smiting love, a brother turned to dust by a bullet—to formal inventiveness and experimentation, this is writing that makes the hardship of being alive transcendent. . . . Anodyne is urgent and fragile, manifesting the beautiful danger in being alive.

Alex Lemon

Exploring themes of body as metaphor and as physical being, joy, grief, love, ignorance, endurance, and choice, Queen once again shows herself to be a master of zooming in on small moments and panning out to big questions.

Shondaland

Khadijah Queen outdoes herself with captivating poems examining the dualities of joy and pain, love and loss, knowing and ignorance.

Ms. Magazine

Insightful on every level, Anodyne will stay with you long after you turn its final page.

Bustle

These poems are a reminder of all that is still possible in this world, no matter how much tragedy surrounds us.

Refinery29

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