SUBWOOFER

by Wesley Rothman

Overview

SUBWOOFER makes audible the deep bass of history, for this is a book of vibrant, honest listening: to the voices of Nina Simone, James Baldwin, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Basquiat; to those without names; to the sadness of loss and the bitter silences within privilege and racism; to the luck of being alive. This book of witness, elegy, and renewal makes a noise that is joyful, heartbreaking, and unforgettable.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781936970506
Publisher:	New Issues Poetry and Prose
Publication date:	10/03/2017
Series:	First Book Series
Pages:	78
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

WESLEY ROTHMAN’s work has appeared in Copper Nickel, Gulf Coast, Harvard Review, New England Review, Prairie Schooner, and The Golden Shovel Anthology, among other venues. Recipient of a Vermont Studio Center fellowship, he teaches in Washington, DC, while pursuing a doctorate in literature.

Editorial Reviews

10/02/2017
Rothman probes the realities of his own whiteness through audiocentric language in his debut collection. He opens with an epigraph from Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man: “Who knows, but that, on the lower frequencies I speak.” But where Ellison explored the invisibility of blackness, Rothman suggests that whiteness makes itself invisible by centering itself as a default: “I grew in my white, such a tight clock-wind.” Rothman employs a vast musical glossary and pays deep attention to sonic textures as he nurtures a rhythmic flow. Each poem bleeds into the next with captivating language: “Their cocoon of subwoofers, a spiral of seeds/ Suspended in ruby belief.” Rothman also makes reference to black singers and writers such as Nina Simone and James Baldwin, which provides balance to the more abstract musicality that sometimes diminishes the book’s energy. Although Rothman makes sincere gestures toward the black creatives who have influenced him—and simultaneously makes moves to critique white supremacy and examine how culture is inherited (“Inheritance is a rifle/ We accept with little/ Consideration”)—sometimes those actions are lost in the noise of his sonic stylings. Rothman evinces a willingness to listen and conscientiously seeks the frequencies where whiteness reverberates. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly