Dark Days: Fugitive Essays / Roger Reeves / 2023
Roger Reeves is one of my favorite poets, so I came into this collection with high hopes that were somewhat dashed. Don't get me wrong, Reeves has moments of absolute brilliance and I frequently turned over ideas. “Through the Smoke, Through The Veil, Through the Wind,” “A Little Brown Liquor,” and “Peace Be Still” I may even consider more or less flawless. I would teach some of these essays in a heartbeat. I have already recommended others to friends. But his essays frequently had me asking “where are you going with this?” as he weaved disparate, though artful, allusions from hiphop to theory to the canon to social media in a sometimes dizzying and ultimately unsatisfying way. At times, these hiccups are minor, like when Reeves overreads Future, attributing a cool interpretation of a lyric to Future's intention rather than the Reeves’ own genius. At other times, the hiccups sour entire essays, even when Reeves's insights and close readings are otherwise pretty damn sharp. Take his essay “Poetry Isn’t the Revolution, but a Way of Knowing Why It Must Come,” where he discusses enunciation and the power of the word that puts the speaker at risk of death. His argument then takes a turn straight into a wall as he uses LOOK by Solmaz Sherif as his most contemporary example. While LOOK is undeniably an excellent work of art, enunciation it is not. Rather than exploring the ways poetry can assert itself in the political arena to take on true, necessary risks, Reeves acts like the literary salon is the battlefront. But lemme watch my unlettered mouth and just get to the rating. Can't believe I gotta give my favorite poet a 3.25 out of 5.