Dark Testament
Blackout Poems
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
In this extraordinary collection, the award-winning poet Crystal Simone Smith gives voice to the mournful dead, their lives unjustly lost to violence, and to the grieving chorus of protestors in today’s Black Lives Matter movement, in search of resilience and hope.
With poems found within the text of George Saunders's Lincoln in the Bardo, Crystal Simone Smith embarks on an uncompromising exploration of collective mourning and crafts a masterwork that resonates far beyond the page. These poems are visually stark, a gathering of gripping verses that unmasks a dialogue of tragic truths—the stories of lives taken unjustly and too soon.
Bold and deeply affecting, Dark Testament is a remarkable reckoning with our present moment, a call to action, and a plea for a more just future.
Along with the poems, Dark Testament includes a stirring introduction by the author that speaks to the content of the poetry, a Q&A with George Saunders, and a full-color photo-insert that commemorates victims of unlawful killings with photographs of memorials that have been created in their honor.
"I love this tremendously skillful, timely, and dazzling repurposing of passages of my novel, Lincoln in the Bardo. Crystal Simone Smith has, with her amazing ear and heart, found, in that earlier grief, a beautiful echo for our time." —George Saunders, New York Times bestselling author of Lincoln in the Bardo and Tenth of December
"Written in response to the murder of George Floyd...this touching memorial to the Black lives lost to systemic racism is a rousing homage to those protesting in their honor, who refuse to let these deaths be in vain." - Publisher's Weekly
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Poet Smith presents an affecting collection of blackout poems—pieces developed by redacting sections of an existing work to create something new—using passages from George Saunders's Lincoln in the Bardo, which the author notes was chosen due to the work "eerily articulating the despair I held." In an opening call to action that reverberates throughout the rest of the collection, Smith implores the reader to light a "conscience flame in honor of those killed by violence" and carry that flame "into a more just future." Several pieces are named for victims of unjust killings, including Ahmad Arbery, Tamir Rice, and Breonna Taylor. Smith's clever use of blackout poetry works as a visual counterpart for the book's themes surrounding resistance against erasure while examining the close-knit bonds between family members and their deceased loved ones, such as Trayvon Martin and his mother in "Sybrina Fulton" ("Please know/ that you were a joy"), and serving as appeals to lawmakers, as in "Mr. Politician" ("We are/ angry,/ our hopes/ dead"). Written in response to the murder of George Floyd, according to the author's introduction, this touching memorial to the Black lives lost to systemic racism is a rousing homage to those protesting in their honor, who refuse to let these deaths be in vain. Photographs feature throughout; a conversation between Smith and Saunders concludes. Ages 14–up.
