Citizen: An American Lyric
A hybrid text of poetry, prose poem, and visual art documenting the experience of anti-Black racism in contemporary America, from microaggressions in casual conversation to the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner to Serena Williams's treatment by tennis officials. Won every major American poetry prize available to it. The most politically urgent American poetry collection of the 21st century, and formally one of the most inventive.
Call it poetry and half the book argues back: the Serena Williams section is a sports essay, the situation scripts are video art transcripts, and lyric appears mostly in the closing pages. The relentless second person ('you') is the signature device, and it wears; each microaggression lands at the same volume, which blunts the accumulation the book depends on.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
