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Anodyne (Paperback)

Anodyne by Khadijah Queen

Sale Date
ISBN
9781947793804
Page Count
104
Language
English
Dimensions
6⅛ x 9
Imprint
Tin House
Khadijah Queen
Colorado Book Awards Finalist for Poetry

Shortlisted for the Reading the West Poetry Book Award


The poems that make up Anodyne consider the small moments that enrapture us alongside the daily threats of cataclysm. Formally dynamic and searingly personal, Anodyne asks us to recognize the echoes of history that litter the landscape of our bodies as we navigate a complex terrain of survival and longing. With an intimate and multivocal dexterity, these poems acknowledge the simultaneous existence of joy and devastation, knowledge and ignorance, grief and love, endurance and failure—all of the contrast and serendipity that comes with the experience of being human. If the body is a world, or a metaphor for the world, for what disappears and what remains, for what we feel and what we cover up, then how do we balance fate and choice, pleasure and pain?

Through a combination of formal lyrics, delicate experiments, sharp rants, musical litany, and moments of wit that uplift and unsettle, Queen’s poems show us the terrible consequences and stunning miracles of how we choose to live.
  • “Khadijah Queen outdoes herself with captivating poems examining the dualities of joy and pain, love and loss, knowing and ignorance.”
    Ms. Magazine
  • “Her lines dance, yes, but they also stumble, pick themselves back up, stop and start in ways that call to mind an inventive M.C. riding a dozen different beats in succession.”
    T: The New York Times Style Magazine
  • “Insightful on every level, Anodyne will stay with you long after you turn its final page.”
    Bustle

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