Worldly Things (Max Ritvo Poetry Prize) - Hardcover

Kleber-Diggs, Michael

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1571315160 ISBN 13: 9781571315168

Publisher: Milkweed Editions, 2021

Synopsis

Finalist for the 2022 Minnesota Book Award in Poetry
A New York Times Book Review “New & Noteworthy Poetry” Selection
A Library Journal “Poetry Title to Watch 2021”
A Chicago Review of Books “Poetry Collection to Read in 2021”
A Reader’s Digest “14 Amazing Black Poets to Know About Now” Selection
A Books Are Magic “Recommended Reading” Selection
An Indie Gift Guide 2021 Indie Next Selection

“Sometimes,” Michael Kleber-Diggs writes in this winner of the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, “everything reduces to circles and lines.”

In these poems, Kleber-Diggs names delight in the same breath as loss. Moments suffused with love—teaching his daughter how to drive; watching his grandmother bake a cake; waking beside his beloved to ponder trumpet mechanics—couple with moments of wrenching grief—a father’s life ended by a gun; mourning children draped around their mother’s waist; Freddie Gray’s death in police custody. Even in the refuge-space of dreams, a man calls the police on his Black neighbor.

But Worldly Things refuses to “offer allegiance” to this centuries-old status quo. With uncompromising candor, Kleber-Diggs documents the many ways America systemically fails those who call it home while also calling upon our collective potential for something better. “Let’s create folklore side-by-side,” he urges, asking us to aspire to a form of nurturing defined by tenderness, to a kind of community devoted to mutual prosperity. “All of us want,” after all, “our share of light, and just enough rainfall.”

Sonorous and measured, the poems of Worldly Things offer needed guidance on ways forward—toward radical kindness and a socially responsible poetics.

About this title

About the Author

Michael Kleber-Diggs was born and raised in Kansas and now lives in St. Paul, Minnesota. His work has appeared in Lit Hub, the Rumpus, Rain Taxi, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Water~Stone Review, Midway Review, North Dakota Quarterly and a few anthologies. Michael teaches poetry and creative nonfiction through the Minnesota Prison Writers Workshop.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

America Is Loving Me to Death

America is loving me to death, loving me to death slowly, and I
Mainly try not to be disappeared here, knowing she won’t pledge
Even tolerance in return. Dear God I can’t offer allegiance.
Right now, 400 years ago, far into the future–it’s difficult to
Ignore or forgive how despised I am and have been in the
Centuries I’ve been here–despised in the design of the flag
And in the fealty it demands (lest I be made an example of).
In America there’s one winning story – no adaptations. The
Story imagines a noble, grand progress where we’re all united.
Like truths are as self-evident as the Declaration states.
Or like they would be if not for detractors like me, the ranks of
Vagabonds existing to point out what’s rotten in America,
Insisting her gains come at a cost, reminding her who pays, and
Negating wild notions of exceptionalism – adding ugly facts to
God’s favorite-nation mythology. Look, victors get spoils; I know the
Memories of the vanquished fade away. I hear the enduring republic,
Erect and proud, asking through ravenous teeth, Who do you riot for?
Tamir? Sandra? Medgar? George? Breonna? Elijah? Philando? Eric? Which
One? Like it can’t be all of them. Like it can’t be the entirety of it:
Destroyed brown bodies, dismantled homes, so demolition stands
Even as my fidelity falls, as it must. She erases my reason too, allows one
Answer to her only loyalty test: Yes or no, Michael, do you love this nation?
Then hates me for saying I can’t, for not burying myself under
Her fables where we’re one, indivisible, free, just, under God.
Coniferous Fathers

Let’s fashion gentle fathers, expressive―holding us
how we wanted to be held before we could ask.

Singing off-key lullabies, written for us―songs
every evening, like possibilities. Fathers who say,

This is how you hold a baby, but never mention
a football. Say nothing in that moment, just bring

us to their chests naturally, without shyness.
Let’s grow fathers from pine, not oak, coniferous

fathers raising us in their shade, fathers soft enough
to bend―fathers who love us like their fathers

couldn’t. Fathers who can talk about menstruation
while playing a game of pepper in the front yard.

No, take baseball out. Let’s discover a new sort―
fathers as varied and vast as the Superior Forest.

Let’s kill off sternness and play down wisdom;
give us fathers of laughter and fathers who cry,

fathers who say Check this out, or I’m scared, or I’m sorry,
or I don’t know. Give us fathers strong enough

to admit they want to be near us; they’ve always
wanted to be near us. Give us fathers desperate

for something different, not Johnny Appleseed,
not even Atticus Finch. No more rolling stones.

No more La-Z-Boy dads reading newspapers in
some other room. Let’s create folklore side-by-side

in a garden singing psalms about abiding―just that,
abiding: being steadfast, present, evergreen, and

ethereal―let’s make the old needles soft enough
for us to rest on, dream on, next to them.

Edition details

• Publisher: Milkweed Editions
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1571315160
• ISBN 13: 9781571315168
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 96