Saeed Jones Knihy

"'Elegy with grown folks' music' by Saeed Jones first appeared in Tin House #69."

Written from the crossroads of sex, race, and power in America, How We Fight for Our Lives is a stunning coming-of-age memoir.

Shot through with grief and charged with history, this new poetry collection from the award-winning author of Prelude to Bruise and How We Fight for Our Lives sings its way through the awe of living alongside everyday apocalypses. In these incisive, dynamic poems, Saeed Jones explores the public and private betrayals of living in a world poisoned by white supremacy. With wit and elegant craft, Jones strips away American artifice, revealing the intimate grief of a mourning son alongside the collective grief brought on by pandemic lockdowns, televised police murders, and the deaths of cultural icons like Cecily Tyson, Little Richard, and Toni Morrison. Drawing inspiration from Afropessimism and the legacies of Black artists and performers, Jones confronts the everyday perils of white supremacy with a finely tuned poetic ear, identifying moments that feel unremarkably routine even as they open chasms of hurt. As Jones and his speakers seek ways to love and survive through America's existential threats, Jones ushers his readers toward the realization that the end of the world is already here--and the apocalypse is a state of being.

Exploring themes of sexuality, race, and shifting identity, the author employs a unique blend of rootless cosmopolitanism, formal rigor, and the dynamic style of slam poetry. This approach enhances the depth of the narrative, inviting readers to engage with complex social issues through a fluid and innovative lens.

Focusing on the black, queer literary community, this collection showcases poetry and conversations among prominent contemporary poets. It emerged from a blog by Jericho Brown, highlighting young, black, and gay voices that enrich the literary landscape often dominated by white queer writers. Featuring works and dialogues from Darrel Alejandro Holnes, Saeed Jones, Rickey Laurentiis, Phillip B. Williams, and L. Lamar Wilson, the book aims to diversify the poetic discourse. Jericho Brown's introduction sets the stage for this vital contribution to literature.

Poetry. LGBT Studies. African American Studies. In his debut chapbook of poetry, Saeed Jones walks on the periphery of the South, those places on the outskirts of town, in bars after midnight, and on dangerous backroads where most people keep their heads down or look the other way. Through Texas and Tennessee, Alabama and the riverbeds of the Mississippi, these poems wrap themselves in cloaks of masks and comfort; garments we learn are flammable if we stand too close to flames. D. A. Powell says of Saeed's work: "Like Aeneas carrying his father from the ruined city of Troy, Saeed Jones brings all of his beginnings—the roots and tendrils of the kudzu vines, the 'sky burned to blazing,' the lore and pain and wisdom of salvation—into a new space where art and beauty stagger the mind; where the story of transformation becomes part of the cultural body of who we are. I get shout-happy when I read these poems; they are the gospel; they are the good news of the sustaining power of imagination, tenderness and outright joy; they are the birth of a new poetry that baptizes with the Holy Spirit and with fire."