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About Worldly Things
Product Description A New York Times Book Review "New & Noteworthy Poetry" Selection A Library Journal "Poetry Title to Watch 2021" A Chicago Review of Books "Poetry Collection to Read in 2021 A Reader's Digest "14 Amazing Black Poets to Know About Now" Selection A Books Are Magic "Recommended Reading" Selection “Sometimes,” writes Michael Kleber-Diggs writes in this winner of the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, “everything reduces to circles and lines.” In these poems, Kleber-Diggs names delight in the same breath as loss. Moments suffused with love―teaching his daughter how to drive; watching his grandmother bake a cake; waking beside his beloved to ponder trumpet mechanics―couple with moments of wrenching grief―a father’s life ended by a gun; mourning children draped around their mother’s waist; Freddie Gray’s death in police custody. Even in the refuge-space of dreams, a man calls the police on his Black neighbor. But Worldly Things refuses to “offer allegiance” to this centuries-old status quo. With uncompromising candor, Kleber-Diggs documents the many ways America systemically fails those who call it home while also calling upon our collective potential for something better. “Let’s create folklore side-by-side,” he urges, asking us to aspire to a form of nurturing defined by tenderness, to a kind of community devoted to mutual prosperity. “All of us want,” after all, “our share of light, and just enough rainfall.” Sonorous and measured, the poems of Worldly Things offer needed guidance on ways forward―toward radical kindness and a socially responsible poetics. Review "The full-throated poems in this debut collection see the world whole, allowing daily intimacies against a backdrop of social injustice." ― New York Times Book Review "In his debut poetry collection, Worldly Things, Kleber-Diggs takes his lived experience as a Black man in America, and with his pen, unpacks it . . . There are poems in the collection about Kleber-Diggs' father's death; his wife's miscarriage; about race and racism. Because these are the sorts of subjects he feels compelled to discuss . . . in ways that are candid, open-minded and openhearted. Through these hard conversations, he feels our most profound connections are made." ― Minneapolis Star Tribune "You should read [ Worldly Things]. Because the work is so good and original and quiet and piercing . . . More than anything, you should read this book because if a neighbor spends decades trying to find the right thing to say to you, you should listen." ― Mpls.St.Paul Magazine "A remarkable book . . . Kleber-Diggs attempts to 'hew hope from a mountain of despair,' offering the world this plea: 'Let me bloom . . . let me be lovely.' A truly moving, and very midwestern, collection." ― Books Are Magic, "Recommended Reading" "Though Michael Kleber-Diggs' Worldly Things . . . is his debut poetry collection, his prowess as an essayist and literary critic isn't new. His prose is especially honest, engaging and descriptive, and this collection is sure to offer similar meaning and pleasure, with the sound, voice and impact that only poetry can deliver." ― Chicago Review of Books, "Twelve Poetry Collections to Read in 2021" "Loss laps at the edges of Worldly Things . . . The book as a whole, though, even as it decries the life cut short, relishes our being mortal, our having the chances to 'bloom and recede." Which is, in the end, what I suspect these poems want for all of us . . . that somehow we will all find our way into becoming 'lovely yet / temporal.'" ― Plume "Michael Kleber-Diggs's Worldly Things shows how he is sustained by family and nature in poems giving shape to the Black middle-class experience and continuing political tumult." ― Library Journal "This debut poetry collection shines with moments of unexpected brilliance in scenes of domesticity, rural life, and African American experiences . . . Kleber-Diggs revels in evocative simplicity . . . A stunning new poeti
