Owed

De: Joshua Bennett

Narrado por: Joshua Bennett

From a 2021 Whiting Award and Guggenheim Fellow recipient, a “rhapsodic, rigorous poetry collection, which pays homage to everyday Black experience in the U.S.” (The New Yorker)

Gregory Pardlo described Joshua Bennett's first collection of poetry, The Sobbing School, as an "arresting debut" that was "abounding in tenderness and rich with character," with a "virtuosic kind of code switching." Bennett's new collection, Owed, is a book with celebration at its center. Its primary concern is how we might mend the relationship between ourselves and the people, spaces, and objects we have been taught to think of as insignificant, as fundamentally unworthy of study, reflection, attention, or care. Spanning the spectrum of genre and form--from elegy and ode to origin myth--these poems elaborate an aesthetics of repair. What's more, they ask that we turn to the songs and sites of the historically denigrated so that we might uncover a new way of being in the world together, one wherein we can truthfully reckon with the brutality of the past and thus imagine the possibilities of our shared, unpredictable present, anew.

another beauty

it’s always a joy to consume a work by joshua bennett, and this one was no exception. stunning from beginning to end

Phenomenal poet

Joshua has been a very powerful prolific poet for many years I am happy to call him a friend. His words always motivate me and remind me it is a gift to be black.

Poetry that makes you feel...

I loved this collection of poetry. I felt like I was with Me. Bennett in every scene and every moment.