Ebook86 pages35 minutes
Silencer: Poems
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5/5
()
About this ebook
“Tough talk for tough times. Silencer is both lyrical and merciless–Wicker’s mind hums in overdrive, but with the calm and clarity of a marksman.”
—Tim Seibles, author of One Turn Around the Sun and finalist for the National Book Award
A suburban park, church, a good job, a cocktail party for the literati: to many, these sound like safe places, but for a young black man these insular spaces don’t keep out the news—and the actual threat—of gun violence and police brutality, or the biases that keeps body, property, and hope in the crosshairs. Continuing conversations begun by Citizen and Between the World and Me, Silencer sings out the dangers of unspoken taboos present on quiet Midwestern cul-de-sacs and in stifling professional settings, the dangers in closing the window on “a rainbow coalition of cops doing calisthenics around/a six-foot, three-hundred-fifty-pound man, choked back into the earth for what/looked a lot, to me, like sport.”
Here, the language and cadences of hip-hop and academia meet prayer—these poems are crucibles, from which emerge profound allegories and subtle elegies, sharp humor and incisive critiques.
“There is not a moment in this book when you are allowed to forget the complexities of a black man's life in America. These poems evoke so much—strength, beauty, passion, fear. There is the quiet, ironic pleasure of life on a cul-de-sac juxtaposed with the tensions of always wondering when a police officer's gun or fists might get in the way of the black body. The stylistic range of these poems, the wit, and the intelligence of them offers so much to be admired. There is nothing silent about Silencer. What an outstanding second book from Marcus Wicker.” —Roxane Gay
“Marcus Wicker’s masterful and hard-hitting second collection is exactly the book we need in this time of malfeasance, systemic violence, and the double talk that obfuscates it all... He writes the kinds of vital, clear-eyed poems we can turn to when codeswitching slogans and online power fists no longer get the job done. These are poems whose ink is made from anger and quarter notes. They remind us that to remain silent in the face of aggression is to be complicit and to be complicit is not an option for any of us.”
—Adrian Matejka, author of The Big Smoke and finalist for the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize
“Silencer is an important book of American poetry: wonderfully subtle, wholly original, and subversive. Politics and social realities aside, this is foremost a book that delights in language, how it sounds to the ear and plays to the mind. We have suburban complacency played against hip-hop resistance, Christian prayers uttered in the face of dread violence, real meaning pitted against materialism, and love, in its largest measure, set against ignorance.To say Silencer is a tour de force would be an understatement. What a work of true art this is, and what a gift Marcus Wicker has given to us.”
—Maurice Manning, author of One Man’s Dark and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize
"Silencer disarms and dazzles with its wisdom and full-throated wit. [This] collection snaps to attention with a soundtrack full of salty swagger and a most skillful use of formal inventions that’ll surely knock you out. Here in these pages, sailfish and hummingbirds assert their frenetic movements on a planet simmering with racial tensions, which in turn forms its own kind of bopping and buoyant religion. What a thrill to read these poems that provoke and beg for beauty and song-calling into the darkest of nights."
—Aimee Nezhukumatathil, author of Lucky Fish and poetry editor at Orion Magazine
—Tim Seibles, author of One Turn Around the Sun and finalist for the National Book Award
A suburban park, church, a good job, a cocktail party for the literati: to many, these sound like safe places, but for a young black man these insular spaces don’t keep out the news—and the actual threat—of gun violence and police brutality, or the biases that keeps body, property, and hope in the crosshairs. Continuing conversations begun by Citizen and Between the World and Me, Silencer sings out the dangers of unspoken taboos present on quiet Midwestern cul-de-sacs and in stifling professional settings, the dangers in closing the window on “a rainbow coalition of cops doing calisthenics around/a six-foot, three-hundred-fifty-pound man, choked back into the earth for what/looked a lot, to me, like sport.”
Here, the language and cadences of hip-hop and academia meet prayer—these poems are crucibles, from which emerge profound allegories and subtle elegies, sharp humor and incisive critiques.
“There is not a moment in this book when you are allowed to forget the complexities of a black man's life in America. These poems evoke so much—strength, beauty, passion, fear. There is the quiet, ironic pleasure of life on a cul-de-sac juxtaposed with the tensions of always wondering when a police officer's gun or fists might get in the way of the black body. The stylistic range of these poems, the wit, and the intelligence of them offers so much to be admired. There is nothing silent about Silencer. What an outstanding second book from Marcus Wicker.” —Roxane Gay
“Marcus Wicker’s masterful and hard-hitting second collection is exactly the book we need in this time of malfeasance, systemic violence, and the double talk that obfuscates it all... He writes the kinds of vital, clear-eyed poems we can turn to when codeswitching slogans and online power fists no longer get the job done. These are poems whose ink is made from anger and quarter notes. They remind us that to remain silent in the face of aggression is to be complicit and to be complicit is not an option for any of us.”
—Adrian Matejka, author of The Big Smoke and finalist for the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize
“Silencer is an important book of American poetry: wonderfully subtle, wholly original, and subversive. Politics and social realities aside, this is foremost a book that delights in language, how it sounds to the ear and plays to the mind. We have suburban complacency played against hip-hop resistance, Christian prayers uttered in the face of dread violence, real meaning pitted against materialism, and love, in its largest measure, set against ignorance.To say Silencer is a tour de force would be an understatement. What a work of true art this is, and what a gift Marcus Wicker has given to us.”
—Maurice Manning, author of One Man’s Dark and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize
"Silencer disarms and dazzles with its wisdom and full-throated wit. [This] collection snaps to attention with a soundtrack full of salty swagger and a most skillful use of formal inventions that’ll surely knock you out. Here in these pages, sailfish and hummingbirds assert their frenetic movements on a planet simmering with racial tensions, which in turn forms its own kind of bopping and buoyant religion. What a thrill to read these poems that provoke and beg for beauty and song-calling into the darkest of nights."
—Aimee Nezhukumatathil, author of Lucky Fish and poetry editor at Orion Magazine
Related to Silencer
Related ebooks
The Tushey Wushy Club Book Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhen You’re Deep in a Thing Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsInseminating the Elephant Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Street Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Horrible Dance Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDanger Days Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Stand-In Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Amish Spaceman Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Blue Ibis Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTUND: Short Stories by Thor Garcia Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNo Sign Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Ditty Bag of Navy Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSurf Music Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings70% Acrylic 30% Wool Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5My Own Seasons: Twenty Four Illustrated Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCrimeucopia - The I's Have It Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsYouth Lasts Forever: Recollections of an Aging Author Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPig Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTartarus Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBoom: An Autobiography For A Generation Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Feral Detective: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Sonnets from a Cell Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSelf-Portrait with a Million Dollars Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Defendant Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDiet of Nails Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStill Working It Out: Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPlowing the Dark: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Souls of Black Folk Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Poetry For You
Love Her Wild: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Things We Don't Talk About Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Daily Stoic: A Daily Journal On Meditation, Stoicism, Wisdom and Philosophy to Improve Your Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Way Forward Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Japanese Death Poems: Written by Zen Monks and Haiku Poets on the Verge of Death Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bedtime Stories for Grown-ups Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Beyond Thoughts: An Exploration Of Who We Are Beyond Our Minds Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5You Better Be Lightning Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dream Work Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Edgar Allan Poe: The Complete Collection Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Prophet Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Inward Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Enough Rope: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Leaves of Grass: 1855 Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tao Te Ching: A New English Version Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Odyssey Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBeowulf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Twenty love poems and a song of despair Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Collection of Poems by Robert Frost Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems of John Keats (with an Introduction by Robert Bridges) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey: (The Stephen Mitchell Translation) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Road Not Taken and other Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gilgamesh: A New Rendering in English Verse Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Iliad: The Fitzgerald Translation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dante's Inferno: The Divine Comedy, Book One Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for Silencer
Rating: 4.3 out of 5 stars
4.5/5
5 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Silencer - Marcus Wicker
ϐe book_preview_excerpt.html Wnz
f Yk-IĎnn7iE}؏K~ @"@>e$Zk y1dUuuSJS2To/ӫν+ѫν;}KKG-~>})B7Xo؋U|a RǰP++uBIKK24H5}2+Tb( o2.++ pJ1Q͒cU$Q0Z~=Q]?l&[nլs*爂&"~όi5A2KL(
m{"˔F<~^dY;%r03qUʚkM,Q!+tL--"n&It S+ It3$>%GcuL
.$ئrzl)?_d3Lig9ZZ EV
/_;4b-4 qǞuY8>$YȨU^ȄBJ@'S~fPMuwD$|18ܨ%4J)wX:͎MOk!A5%9nil*Q6DvBr8"5uDAUgbC~[yij/]/p_@_lvY([?jdD|fs2=K^@x2z*YopR
/)Ca6߃FrTc) PhϷd+UWJ8p5_=bjw{$5gsfH@)Kvb)ƹ@hd5nz,ZO>0UQd2Yօ?R+42G9k." '&H