Spectral Evidence: Poems -- Gregory Pardlo, Hardcover

A powerful meditation on Blackness, beauty, faith, and the force of law, from the beloved award-winning author of Digest and Air Traffic

Elegant, profound, and intoxicating--Spectral Evidence, Gregory Pardlo's first major collection of poetry after winning the Pulitzer Prize for Digest, moves fluidly among considerations of the pro-wrestler Owen Hart; Tituba, the only Black woman to be accused of witchcraft during the Salem witch trials; MOVE, the movement and militant separatist group famous for its violent stand-offs with the Philadelphia Police Department ("flames rose like orchids . . . / blocks lay open like egg cartons"); and more.

At times cerebral and at other times warm, inviting and deeply personal, Spectral Evidence compels us to consider how we think about devotion, beauty and art; about the criminalization and death of Black bodies; about justice--and about how these have been inscribed into our present, our history, and the Western canon: "If I could be / the forensic dreamer / . . . / . . . my art would be a mortician's / paints."

Author: Gregory Pardlo
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Published: 01/30/2024
Pages: 128
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.61lbs
Size: 8.50h x 6.10w x 0.70d
ISBN: 9781524731786

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 11/01/2023 pg. 65
Publishers Weekly 11/20/2023
Booklist 12/01/2023 pg. 95

About the Author
GREGORY PARDLO's collection Digest won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Pardlo is also the author of Air Traffic, a memoir in essays, and Totem. His poems and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Playboy, American Poetry Review, Boston Review, The Nation, The New York Times, and elsewhere. His other honors include fellowships from the New York Public Library's Cullman Center, the Guggenheim Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Pardlo is poetry editor at Virginia Quarterly Review, codirector for the Study of Global Racial Justice at Rutgers University, and a visiting associate professor of practice in Literature & Creative writing at NYU Abu Dhabi.