PARKER'S 2019 COLLECTION Magical Negro was a favorite around here. She has since published a book of essays and a YA novel (and perhaps an analysis of Project 2025--can that be the same Morgan Parker?), and they certainly look worth investigating, but while waiting for the successor to Magical Negro I thought I would look into her back catalogue.
The cover of There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé offers Carrie Mae Weems in bed, in a nightgown, legs splayed, cigarette in hand and wicked look on her face...as if to say, "if you can't deal with this, just go on back to that Mary Oliver book you were looking at." Somewhat like Roger Reeves and Shane Book, Parker can go from the canonical (W. B. Yeats, Wallace Stevens) to in-your-face contemporary ("99 Problems") in an eyeblink--no apologies, no explanations. She can be funny and furious at the same time ("99 Problems" again, or "Heaven Be a Xanax," or "13 Ways of Looking at a Black Girl").
Her verbal invention never flags.
when moon rises peach
over Mom's kitchen table
some grasses bending
homegirl way("Beyoncé, Touring Asia, Breaks Down in a White Tee")
It hits me first thing: I've never been cool.
I am driving with glass eyes and lead feet.
I jetpack into the heaviness alone.
My bare face hanging out all over the kitchen counter.
("My Vinyl Weighs a Ton")I'm sorry. Let me fucking mourn me.
For the diamonds that didn't shake loose.
("Funeral for The Black Dog")
The collection's leading theme is Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, named in at least a dozen of the book's poems. I wish I knew enough about Beyoncé to say something credible about Parker's analysis of her place in the culture, but I just don't. I gathered she matters somewhat more than Barack Obama does, an insight that rearranged my own sense of the cosmos in what I suspect is a very healthy way.
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