âYour grief will be useful some day, says no one,â writes Saeed Jones in his poetry collection Prelude to Bruise. Itâs a bleak, true pronouncement in a book that makes many of them as it dives into the wreck of loss, violence rooted in racism and homophobia, and the raw beauty of experience.
That sounds depressing, but Iâm saying you should read it. Jonesâ poetry is evocative and rhythmic, at times tilting into a songlike cadence, and moves uneasily and strikingly between imagery of sex and violence. In this regard, itâs tempting to compare it to Richard Sikenâs Crush, with its emphasis on living and dying within a male body. But Prelude to Bruise is also deeply concerned with raceâfrom a poem that chillingly pulls its language from a newspaper article about sundown towns (âDonât Let the Sun Set On Youâ) to almost-offhanded references to the threat of violent racism (âA bare lightbulb shines above them like a lynched moonâ in âHistory, According to Boyâ).
I canât really tell you what Prelude to Bruise is about (a question I donât like fucking with when it comes to poetry, anyway). What I can say is that it crams numerous disparate universes into 108 pages, and lives comfortably in its varied approaches. Some poets do one thing stylistically to the point of tedium. Jones is not that kind of poet. His is a book of earthbound fixations and dreamlike states, taxonomies of color, whatâs clearly a muddle of narratives both autobiographical and invented, allusions to Greco-Roman myth, and reminders of the edge of violence that skirts the world, from a neighborhood gone missing after Hurricane Katrina (âLower Ninthâ) to the âblack paper bodyâ shot during target practice. Some of Jonesâ poems are abstract and associative, others sketch clear narratives, some just seem interested in experimenting with the possibilities of language, in listing, Stein-esque wordplay.
Jones, who works as executive editor for culture at Buzzfeed, will read at Reed College on Sunday, July 9, along with Margot Livesey and Danielle Evans, as part of the Tin House Writerâs Workshop reading series. The workshop is prohibitively expensive and competitive, but the readings are free. Each summer, I canât wait for the list of readers to come out, but if you can, I donât blame you. All too often, writers are not great readers of their own workâmany of us are wonky and shy and find our strongest voice on the page, not in real life. Whether theyâre comfortably ensconced in academia and so phoning it in, or havenât put out a book in years, or donât seem jazzed to read their early greatest hits, Iâve sat through many a reading from a writer I liked and respected and ultimately left wondering why Iâd bothered at all; I love reading, but I donât universally endorse readings, unless you know the author youâre seeing knows how to make contact with an audience and not devolve into quavering boredom.
So Iâm happy to report that Jones is a powerful reader of his own workâif you are skeptical, you can listen to him reading on a number of recordings Buzzfeed released prior to Prelude to Bruiseâs publication. And if youâre planning to go to one Tin House reading this summer, Iâd make it this one.
Prelude to Bruise
by Saeed Jones
(Coffee House Press)
