SARAH BLAKE is the founder of the online writing tool Submittrs, an editor at Saturnalia Books, and a recipient of an NEA Literature Fellowship. Her poetry has appeared in Boston Review, Drunken Boat, FIELD, and The Threepenny Review. She lives outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
"In Blake's collection of lyric meditations, the blend of her own
personal threads against Kanye's public self are intriguing, and
her pop culture commentaries allow the distraction against her
being able to dig further into what, at times, becomes a deeply
personal and revealing work."--Rob McLennan, Rob McLennon's
Blog
"As a work of literary nonfiction, the book conflates the life of
the poet--who began the 46-poem cycle while she was pregnant and
living in Havertown, PA--with the controversial superstar
rapper."--Peter Crimmins, WHYY - Newsworks
"In Mr. West, the complicated relationships between poet and
artist, poet and legacy, poet and source material, artist and
legacy, and any permutations thereof create a new kind of modern
myth--the kind that, even though it may be a fabrication, can
actually have personal meaning."--Douglas Luman, Found Poetry
Review
"Through her poetry, Kanye becomes as sharp and multifaceted as a
diamond, with a reflection that changes every time you look at
it."--Elisabeth Donnelly, Flavorwire
"By putting [Sarah Blake & Kanye West's] lives in conversation, she
provokes her readers to wonder: 'What are we able to know about
superstars, as far as we are from their fabulous orbits? What are
we ever able to know definitively about the experience of someone
else?' Her answer: people have a great deal to learn from their
experience of celebrities, particularly the feeling--familiar to
all who have considered themselves fans--of identifying with a
person whom one has likely never seen in person."--Poetry
Foundation
"Mr. West is no simple rehashing of its subject's well-trod life
story. Rather, Mr. West serves as bible, myth, apology, defense,
and memoir. The whole thing memorably swirls around its enigmatic
and challenging muse, who in turn acts as God, as son, as lover, as
martyr, as monster. The result is engaging and often
dazzling."--Danny Caine, Los Angeles Review
"Impressive for both its hybridity and its ambition . . . Mr. West
is an important entry into the ongoing literary conversation on
race that would be worthwhile to read alongside Claudia Rankine's
Citizen and Kevin Young's The Grey Album."--Kathleen Rooney,
Chicago Tribune
"Neither the cynic nor the realist need worry that Blake is merely
using that mercurial genius as an attention-grabbing gimmick. No,
Mr. West is a book that is in utterly good faith."--Andrew DuBois,
The New York Times Book Review
"As a work of literary nonfiction, the book conflates the life of
the poet--who began the 46-poem cycle while she was pregnant and
living in Havertown, PA--with the controversial superstar
rapper."--Peter Crimmins, WHYY - Newsworks
"The central connection Blake makes . . . is between herself, as
impending mother to a son, and Kanye's mother, Dr. Donda West. A
touching elegiac strain is evident throughout these poems of
motherhood."--New York Times Review
"Mr. West transforms the poet's fascination with the rapper into an
amazing group of poems that explores what she knows or can find out
about West, alongside her own life. The poems construct West as
unmistakably human and larger than life--as much like as unlike the
poet. The work is tender without being sentimental, funny without
being cruel, and obsessive without being exploitative. It is a
study in nuance and it is strangely moving."--Evie Shockley, author
of the new black
"The plagiarism and copyright battles of the twenty-first century
are the equivalent of the obscenity trials of the twentieth. If
you're not making art to be copied, you're not really making art
for the twenty-first century. Taking a page from Kanye West's book,
Sarah Blake embraces and enacts the long history of sharing and
sampling from rap music, single-handedly and elegantly bringing
poetry into the present moment. Media saturated & wildly musical,
brilliantly original & stunningly plundered, this book is
now."--Kenneth Goldsmith, author of Uncreative Writing
"Mr. West transforms the poet's fascination with the rapper into an
amazing group of poems that explores what she knows or can find out
about West, alongside her own life. The poems construct West as
unmistakably human and larger than life--as much like as unlike the
poet. The work is tender without being sentimental, funny without
being cruel, and obsessive without being exploitative. It is a
study in nuance and it is strangely moving."--Evie Shockley, author
of the new black
|
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
