WINNER OF THE 2018 FLORIDA BOOK AWARDS GOLD MEDAL FOR POETRY
O, THE OPRAH MAGAZINE‘S 17 OF THE BEST POETRY BOOKS
When Rap Spoke Straight to God isn’t sacred or profane, but a chorus joined in a single soliloquy, demanding to be heard. There’s Wu-Tang and Mary Magdalene with a foot fetish, Lil’ Kim and a self-loving Lilith. Slurs, catcalls, verses, erasures—Dawson asks readers, “Just how far is it to nigger?” This book-length poem confronts the tragedies of Trump, black lives, belief, and the boundaries of being a woman. Both grounded and transcendent, the book is reality and possibility. Dawson’s work has always been raw; but, When Rap Spoke Straight to God is as blunt as the answer to that earlier question: “Here.”
Sometimes abrasive and often abraded, Dawson doesn’t flinch. A mix of traditional forms where sonnets mash up with sestinas morphing to heroic couplets, When Rap Spoke Straight to God insists that while you may recognize parts of the poem’s world, you can’t anticipate how it will evolve. With a literal exodus of light in the book’s final moments, When Rap Spoke Straight to God is a lament for and a celebration of blackness. It’s never depression; it’s defiance—a persistent resistance. In this book, like Wu-Tang says, the marginalized “ain’t nothing to fuck with.”
Praise for When Rap Spoke Straight to God
“Again, Erica Dawson has expanded the possibilities of what we think poetry can do. The lusciously long poem, When Rap Spoke Straight to God, is sensual and openly political and so well-crafted in epic blank verse that we begin to see how the contemporary moment has yet to fully correct far too many historical moments. And it does this with a lyric intensity that I dare say can only be achieved by a poet fully aware of her place in time and its potential . . . or as Dawson herself says, this is “the story of a woman. How the skies/came out of her wherever. Spacious skies/Dark skies. Grown woman skies.”
—Jericho Brown, author of The New Testament
“When Rap Spoke Straight to God is utterly transporting. In language both elevated and slangy, saucy and tender, Dawson lovingly weaves the reader around her finger.”
—Jennifer Egan, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Visit from the Good Squad
“The move is “characteristic” of Erica Dawson’s poetry: She is devoted to filling in the cultural blanks that hover around such phrases. In a country where power has been persistently defined as white and male, she writes from the perspective of a black woman. She shows us scenes that might otherwise remain unseen: “When I was young, in our basement, where Africa/hung on the wall, my parents danced to Isaac Hayes’s/Hot Buttered Soul.” Her subject, in a way, is blanks: needs unmet, crimes unacknowledged, thoughts unexplored. By writing, she begins to fill them.”
—The New York Times Magazine
“It’s a labyrinth of race, religion, rap, and wonder. As a labyrinth, as a thoroughly modern epic of trauma and resilience, there is an ecstatic end and yet there’s no way out. It’s words and worlds are all encompassing, and have continued to stay with me like a revelation. I love this book as I love Erica: honest, brilliant, bold, with a kind of devouring humor.”
—Tommy Pico, author of Junk
“Dawson grapples with the weight of identity in her brief third collection, expounding upon what it means to be a black woman in a country ruled by institutions of whiteness. This single lyrical poem, nominally divided into four parts, reveals a blackness born from resilience rather than suffering. Dawson writes of the everyday violence inflicted on black bodies: “Today, the paper boasted this—/ Five Local Policemen Tied to KKK—/ italicized as if to shout, It’s new.” Later, she paints a scene of police brutality involving her own father, when he “tried/ to race a smoke on the side of the house he thought/ we couldn’t see, maybe hoping the wind/ would wash off the smell of a cop’s nightshift, maybe/ refill the sockets of his knocked-out teeth.” The physical and emotional violence that characterizes white supremacy simultaneously attempts to reduce black womanhood to a singular narrative: pain. Dawson writes, “It’s then/ I’m most colored./ Bleeding.” Despite the pressures of a dominating culture determined to see her fail, Dawson can “walk through civilizations/ of fire ants. No lamentations.” For the poet, the scars of history are powerful reminders of how blackness rises above the cruelty of oppression, always reaching for the light.”
—Publishers Weekly
“The stanzas brew and burst, but they build across pages. It feels like a book born to be read aloud. Dawson has said there’s “nothing wrong” with poetry that’s “difficult or strange.” Those descriptors can be applied, quite positively, to her new book: an athletically sure trip that begins with Wu-Tang and ends in an oneiric place, “a dark and empty heaven.” The speaker of Dawson’s continuous poem is witty, wise, hilarious, enchanting. She wonders about a Lady Jesus, who dares Peter to deny her. Who commands: “When I asked for grace / the dust hid all the stars and not / a single thing happened. But now/ I am the dust.” She concludes the section suggesting that now “the Holy Spirit finds its voice.” This voice has many varieties; some sections pun presidential, while others are satirical shreds of identity—“Let’s ball, / white boy. Next time I get exotic, I’ll call / You Hoss. Third person. You’re beside yourself.” Dawson’s fluidity is her function: When Rap Spoke Straight to God barrels across a wide plane. “You won’t believe what happened to the angels,” the narrator says. “They never speak the language of the body. / I have a dream I corner Gabriel and tell / him how, one time, I cored the moon and lived, / for a month of Sunday’s, warm inside its curve.” Read this book and you’ll want Dawson to sing of everything.”
—The Millions
“Harsh but never hard, unflinching but never violent, she speaks to the experiences of black women, celebrating the best of black culture and lamenting its struggles. Wrapped in and elevated by exquisite religious allusions, Dawson’s poetry shines.”
—World Literature Today
“Dreamlike, polyphonic, multivoiced, sacred, and profane—Erica Dawson’s book-length poem When Rap Spoke Straight to God encapsulates the multifaceted presence of black womanhood in America. In a book that feels both lyrically reminiscent of the past’s formal poetry and distinctly of this moment, Dawson reclaims the black female body through a layered chorus of allusions and voices ancient and modern. The lyric turns of phrase—one minute sounding as if intoned from a pulpit, the next from a dazzlingly lit stage or from a bedroom at night, the narrator exhorting herself or whispering to a lover—beg to be read aloud, and, like an ancient tapestry, the poem holds many hidden meanings woven into its tight brocade.”
—Ploughshares
“Dawson examines what it means to live in a country that fails to reckon with its past, and the way trauma of racism and the resilience of the Black community can impact the mind, body, and soul. Dawson’s collection is prophetic and vibrant. Every poem feels like a testimony. Each stanza is holy. When she writes, “I see the exodus of light,” readers won’t just believe her. They’ll shout amen.”
—Signature
“When Rap Spoke Straight to God is a complex and transcendent response to our dangerous era.”
—The Arkansas International
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