Description: "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.""--
Review Quotes: https: //therumpus.net/2019/12/what-to-read-when-2020-is-just-around-the-corner/?fbclid=IwAR3kvm2bCG1GoDJbQezMwGmLVxtEu4vi-dlL0RKwjrlLMxxXVAP9yt5Pdrs-- "The Rumpus" (12/20/2019 12:00:00 AM)