#I've heard this book described as vast and uncomfortable. as uncomfortable as the evolving ever-changingn quest Coates freely admits to

[ravencromwell]

I was learning the craft of poetry, which really was an intensive version of what my mother had taught me all those years ago—the craft of writing as the art of thinking. Poetry aims for an economy of truth—loose and useless words must be discarded, and I found that these loose and useless words were not separate from loose and useless thoughts. Poetry was not simply the transcription of notions—beautiful writing rarely is. I wanted to learn to write, which was ultimately, still, as my mother had taught me, a confrontation with my own innocence, my own rationalizations. Poetry was the processing of my thoughts until the slag of justification fell away and I was left with the cold steel truths of life.

--Ta-Nehisi Coates, From Between The World and Me

#Ta-Nehisi Coates #poetry #(sorry to those who saw this multiple times; tumblr is being a bastard to screen readers tonight and I finally gave up on formatting #I've heard this book described as vast and uncomfortable. as uncomfortable as the evolving ever-changingn quest Coates freely admits to #when it comes to living free in a black body. and I think so many folk think of it as uncomfortable because Coates himself craves #ambiguity; ergo he will force us into ambiguity. but I find the book far from uncomfortable; challenging. yes. but more provocative. at #times I agree with it ferociously. at times I wanna argue with it. but it always makes me think. hold lines close for a long time until #I've plummed a meaning from them. it's a book I take in sips because I'm constantly re-examing: my own conclusions; Coates' earlier #conclusions! in light of new information; and its refusal to flinch; deliberate provocative style feels like a gift. a gift that was never #meant for us. but instead only for his son. urging those questions; urging a boy to think beyond his father and then granted with both #immense generosity and precisely zero fucks for holding our hands through the complicated. profoundly thorny and uncomfortable. often #gut-churning bits; I love it a lot. y'all. in so many ways I didn't expect to #n