(v.)
(v.)
by Anastacia-Reneé
Softcover / 134 p. / Poetry
ISBN: 978-1-939568-34-2
In 1974, when Ntozake Shange first released the cannon of Black girl magic known as For colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf, her opening stanza was a call to all of us.
“somebody / anybody
sing a black girl's song
bring her out
to know herself …”
This book is answer to that call.
Anastacia-Reneé’s words frame so many questions: what is sacred, what is beauty, what is tragedy, what rites of passage have we endured to be initiated into the complexities of our humanity? These poems read like rituals, invoking ancestors and Becky alike in a nuanced honest reflection of this time in life.
These poems are stories of blackness, of queerness, of womanhood, and of all the identities we hold externally and internally that create the tapestry of who we are and who we want to be.
“Anastacia-Reneé’s (v.) broils the alphabet with accents of Zora and bobby pins and tangled braids; she is busy here melding a blackgirl womansong with a backbeat of black jesus and barbie heads; she is weaving a ghosted blues of cop cars and sparrow eyes; she is translating a language of pain to a semaphore of power. Open these pages and “un-fly yourself/ upward to the moonlight/ christen your feet/ within a wrecked nest...” and witness a unique voice that has come into its own.”
“The titles alone suggest the inventiveness of this terrific new book: “An Incomplete Inventory of What You Are Made of,” “Essay Test Questions,” “Psalms from a 16-Year-Old’s Life Bible.” The poems of Anastacia-Reneé synthesize voice and body; prayer and meditation; politics and play; love and sexuality. Even poetic form is synthesized with monologues, glossaries, prose, and fragments. The lyrical, conceptual and formal experiments of (v.) are daring and breathtaking. This is a wonderful collection.”
