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"A writer traces his history-brushes with violence, responses to threat, poetic and political solidarity-in poems of lyric and narrative urgency. John Murillo's second book is a reflective look at the legacy of institutional, accepted violence against African Americans and the personal and societal wreckage wrought by long histories of subjugation. A sparrow trapped in a car window evokes a mother battered by a father's fists; a workout at an iron gym recalls a long-ago mentor who pushed the speaker "to become something unbreakable." The presence of these and poetic forbears-Gil Scott-Heron, Yusef Komunyakaa-provide a context for strength in the face of danger and anger. At the heart of the book is a sonnet crown triggered by the shooting deaths of three Brooklyn men that becomes an extended meditation on the history of racial injustice and the notion of payback as a form of justice. "Maybe memory is the only home / you get," Murillo writes, "and rage, where you/first learn how fragile the axis/upon which everything tilts."--
About the author
John Murillo is the author of the poetry collections,
Up Jump the Boogie (Cypher 2010, Four Way Books 2020), finalist for both the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the Pen Open Book Award, and
Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry (Four Way 2020). His honors include two Larry Neal Writers Awards, a pair of Pushcart Prizes, the J Howard and Barbara MJ Wood Prize from the Poetry Foundation, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Cave Canem Foundation, and the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. Recent poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in such publications as
American Poetry Review, Poetry, and
Best American Poetry 2017, 2019, and
2020. He is an assistant professor of English and director of the creative writing program at Wesleyan University and also teaches in the low residency MFA program at Sierra Nevada University. He lives in Brooklyn.
