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Title details for To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness by Robin Coste Lewis - Available

To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness

by Robin Coste Lewis
Robin Coste Lewis
Audiobook
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A genre-bending exploration of poetry and human migration—another revelatory expedition from the National Book Award–winning poet who changed the way we see art, the museum, and the Black female figure. • Winner of the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry
Twenty-five years ago, after her maternal grandmother’s death, Robin Coste Lewis discovered a stunning collection of photographs in an old suitcase under her bed, filled with everything from sepia tintypes to Technicolor Polaroids. Lewis’s family had survived one of the largest migrations in human history, when six million Americans fled the South, attempting to escape from white supremacy and white terrorism. But these photographs of daily twentieth-century Black life revealed a concealed, interior history. The poetry Lewis was inspired to create stands forth as an inspiring alternative to the usual ways we frame the old stories of “race” and “migration,” placing them within a much vaster span of time and history.
In what she calls “an origin myth for the future,” Lewis reverses our expectations of poetry: “Black pages, black space, black time––the Big Black Bang.” From glamorous outings to graduations, birth announcements, baseball leagues, and back-porch delight, Lewis creates a lyrical documentary about Black intimacy. Instead of colonial nostalgia, she offers us “an exalted Black privacy.” What emerges is a dynamic reframing of what it means to be human and alive, with Blackness at its center. “I am trying / to make the gods / happy,” she writes. “I am trying to make the dead / clap and shout.”

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    October 1, 2024

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780593501665
      • File size: 40465 KB
      • Duration: 01:24:17

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from December 19, 2022
      After her maternal grandmother’s death 25 years ago, Lewis (Voyage of the Sable Venus) discovered a collection of vintage photographs capturing quotidian early 20th-century Black life in an old suitcase under her grandmother’s bed. Lewis weaves a documentary poetic work out of them, what she calls “an exalted Black privacy” that brings to life her ancestors, “to make the dead/ clap and shout.” Evident from the opening pages, one of the central interests of this exceptional collection is migration: “Signs and marks/ and nothing/ with which to apprentice them.// Evolution—/ the migration/ of imagination—// the image just/ illusion: a profound, prehistoric/ technology of leaving.” The pairing of photographs and text expand existing notions of how any single artistic medium or form can capture the nuances of race, family, and history. Shining with Lewis’s trademark lyricism and fueled by resonant and inspired juxtapositions, this exquisite book makes an impact worth sharing widely and rereading.

    • Library Journal

      March 7, 2025

      Narrated by its author, National Book Award winner Lewis (Voyage of the Sable Venus), this work of poetry explores photography and human migration, offering a transformative view of the interaction between language and images. Lewis paints a vivid picture of the photos--ranging from sepia tintypes to Polaroids discovered in her maternal grandmother's possessions 25 years after her death--that anchor her work. Lewis's family survived as part of the migrations of millions of Black Americans who fled the South, attempting to escape white supremacy and white terrorism, and she found that her grandmother's collection of photographs of daily 20th-century Black life revealed a concealed interior history. The poetry that Lewis connects to these stunning images is compelling--exquisitely paced, tenderly expressed, and evocative. Lewis creates an intimate and intricate documentary about Black history, an achievement that will provoke listeners' thoughts and feelings of loss, as well as moments and memories. VERDICT The print version of this exploration of poetry and imagery won the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry and an NAACP Image Award. This audio is equally impactful and is a must for any poetry or photography collection.--Susan McClellan

      Copyright 2025 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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