![]() ![]() Instead, we focused all our energy into listening to Rankine, who, with the quiet intensity of her elegant and singular voice, was cutting through all the bullshit and bringing us into the present moment. ![]() Everyone stopped worrying about feeling awkward in such a fancy place, stopped wondering if Biscayne Bay was night swimmable, stopped wondering how long the open bar would stay open. Not even the tropical if cologne-choked glory of the Standard Spa could distract the audience members. Two years ago, I saw Rankine read from Citizen at a book festival in Miami. It became that rarest of creatures: a poetry book on the nonfiction New York Times best-seller list. Last year, when an audience member at a Donald Trump rally in Springfield, Illinois, quietly protested the bullying she saw onstage by conspicuously reading, the book she was reading was Citizen. (It won the poetry award.) It was a finalist for the National Book Award. When the National Book Critics Circle nominated Citizen in two different award categories-poetry and criticism-that was a feat no other book had ever accomplished. ![]() It's a collage about death, media, and race, much like Rankine's 2004 book, Don't Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric, but Citizen has punctured the consciousness of the country in a way few books do. Some of it looks like prose, some of it looks like poetry, and some of it doesn't involve words at all. Claudia Rankine's book Citizen: An American Lyric resists traditional categories. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |