World’d Too Much: The Poetry of Russell Atkins

Poetry. African & African American Studies. Edited by Kevin Prufer and Robert E. McDonough. Russell Atkins is a phenomenon, and his writing is phenomenal. Its existence requires us to simultaneously rethink the received histories of the avant-garde and of African American literature, and to reconsider the limits of post-war poetry entirely.–Craig Dworkin This sheaf of anti-Wordsworthian scherzi by Russell Atkins is a pharmaceutical-grade delight–‘the laughter that hags.’ From the manifesto which opens this volume to the noiry/Sublime poetry dramas which close it out, Atkins’s feats and sleights prompt (in me) a Bacchantic response. It’s like when, driving eastbound thru Cleveland on the I-90, at the height of summer, you reach that point where you have to either make a sharp right turn at full speed or drive directly into the lake. For a brainsplitting second, suspended in Atkins’s poetry, I feel myself slip the binary, buck airborne & soar up over Erie’s dazzling, fatal face. This is the sheerest of stuff, and the best.–Joyelle McSweeney

There have yet to be made the proper comparisons between Paul Celan and Russell Atkins–in form, in syntax, in intention, and yes, in content. This book shows that Atkins remains a poet whose eye is as sharp as any blade that cut through the 20th century, and readers who have yet to experience his writing deprive themselves of actually seeing the blood that runs through us all. That blood is dark. It is necessary.–Jericho Brown