Publisher Description
The Malevolent Volume explores the myths and transformations of Black being, on a continuum between the monstrous and the sublime. Subverting celebrated classics of poetry and mythology and examining horrors from contemporary film and cultural fact, National Book Award winner Justin Phillip Reed engages darkness as an aesthetic to conjure the revenant animus that lurks beneath the exploited civilities of marginalized people. In these poems, Reed finds agency in the otherthan-human identities assigned to those assaulted by savageries of the state. In doing so, he summons a retaliatory, counterviolent Black spirit to revolt and to inhabit the revolting.
Download and start listening now!
“These are strong poems, showcasing a range of moods and affects. Sometimes punctuated, otherwise so neatly joined they don’t need it. Sometimes gentle, in other moments, wielding fury’s high bright tone.”
—
Literary Hub
About Justin Phillip Reed
Justin Phillip Reed is an American poet and essayist. He is the author of Indecency, winner of the 2018 National Book Award in Poetry and a finalist for the 2019 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. He is the 2019-2021 fellow in creative writing at the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics. His work appears in African American Review, Denver Quarterly, Guernica, the New Republic, Obsidian, and elsewhere. He earned his BA degree in creative writing at Tusculum College and his MFA in poetry at Washington University in St. Louis. He has received fellowships from the Cave Canem Foundation, the Conversation Literary Festival, la Maison Baldwin, and the Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis.