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Dear Angel of Death
Simone White
June 2018
In reverse of rejection revulsion reversion restrospection redrawing review remind recognize reminisce remembrance recollection
stubbornly persistent contextual negativity beginning knowledge of consistently pleasing immemorial connection
staging or reconstructing the human qualities which, for us, form the basis of what has been considered the same as
“it is super R&B and you won’t like it because it is too slow and a tad boring.”
I get this pinwheel relationship to wisdom & history when I read Simone White.
Eileen Myles
Half poems, half prose, Dear Angel of Death braids intimate and public thinking about forms of togetherness. Is one woman a mother, a person in an artworld, a “black”? What imaginary and real spirits are her guides? The title essay proposes disinvestment in the idea of the Music as the highest form of what blackness “is” and includes many forms: philosophical divergence on the problem of folds for black life, a close reading of Nathaniel Mackey’s neverending novel From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate, and an impassioned defense-cum-dismissal of contemporary hip hop’s convergence with capitalism.
About the Author
Simone White is the author of Dear Angel of Death, Of Being Dispersed, and House of Envy of All the World, and the chapbooks Unrest and Dolly (with Kim Thomas). Recent poems and prose have appeared in BOMB, New York Times Book Review, Harper’s, and Frieze. In 2017, she received the Whiting Award for poetry. She lives in Brooklyn.
Praise
[White] brings to her writing a range of legal, political, literary, lyrical, and lived knowledge, along with an incisiveness marked by candor and care.
Maggie Nelson, Vela
I get this pinwheel relationship to wisdom & history when I read Simone White. I'm in her dream, but it's a remarkable solidly packed one informed by the quotidian rarity of for instance a prose disquisition on lotion and skin and haircare especially in winter. Like Dana Ward's, her work sends me searching…
Eileen Myles
Probing the relationship between blackness and displacement, White... concludes that the creation of a personal identity does not happen in a melting pot, but rather in a compressor. As she slips in and out of forms, dialects, and registers, White demonstrates that various cultural influences collide in a single individual, producing an ever-shifting foundation.
Publishers Weekly
In the News
Links
Other UDP titles by Simone White here
Simone White interviewed in the LA Review of Books blog
Video lecture on erotic power / erotic punishment
Simone White’s page on the Poetry Foundation
A conversation with Simone White & Tina Campt at School for Temporary Liveness
Publication Details
ISBN: 978-1-937027-67-4
Trade Paperback
Smyth-sewn. 160 pp, 5.75 x 8.75 in
Publication Date: June 01 2018
Distribution: Asterism Books (US), Coach House Books via Publishers Group Canada (Canada), Inpress Books (UK)
Series: Dossier