#a fortune for your disaster
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hanif abdurraqib, from “THE GHOST OF MARVIN GAYE STANDS OVER HIS FATHER’S GRAVE AND FORGETS TO ASK FOR AN APOLOGY” in A Fortune For Your Disaster
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#poetry#all the things im not#doc luben#14 lines from love letters or suicide notes#charles bukowski#mahmoud darwish#f. scott fitzgerald#sally rooney#conversations with friends#ryan o'connell#david wojnarowicz#a memoir of disintegration#sylvia plath#three women#mieko kawakami#heaven#hanif abdurraqib#a fortune for your disaster
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“...I'm kind of buzzed. I'm kind of buzzing. I'm kind of a hive with no begging and hollow cavities.”
It Is Once Again the Summer of My Discontent & This Is How We Do It by Hanif Abdurraqib
#It Is Once Again the Summer of My Discontent & This Is How We Do It#Hanif Abdurraqib#Quote#A Fortune for Your Disaster#Poetry
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there is intimacy in the moment where the eyes of two enemies meet. there is a tenderness in knowing what desire ties you to a person, even if you have spent your dreaming hours cutting them a casket from the tree in their mother’s front yard. it is a blessing to know someone wants a funeral for you.
A Fortune for Your Disaster, Hanif Abdurraqib
#quotes#beautiful words#lit#literature#books#excerpt#a fortune for your disaster#hanif abdurraqib#intimacy#enemies
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A Fortune for Your Disaster, poems by Hanif Abdurraqib
Excerpt from One Side of an Interview with the Ghost of Marvin Gaye
#a fortune for your disaster#hanif abdurraqib#one side of an interview with the ghost of marvin gaye#theme: death#poetry#words
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"I am in the mood
to be forgotten."
Hanif Abdurraqib, "FOR THE DOGS WHO BARKED AT ME ON THE SIDEWALKS IN CONNECTICUT," A Fortune for Your Disaster
#hanif abdurraqib#for the dogs who barked on me on the sidewalks in connecticut#a fortune for your disaster#poetry#poem#words#spilled ink#writing#spilled thoughts#dark academia#spilled writing#spilled poetry#quote#spilled words#spilled journal#dark academia poetry#dark academia poem#dark academia quote#dark academia writing#hanif abdurraqib poetry
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[Blog #3] Fall 2022, Hanif Abdurraqib’s A Fortune for Your Disaster (2019)
This week’s centerpiece is Hanif Abdurraqib’s A Fortune for Your Disaster (2019).
Before we unravel Abdurraqib’s 103-page journey, I would love to greet anyone who happens to stumble upon this blog post.
This is the link to my first blog post on Ada Limón's The Carrying (2018):
My Contemporary Poetry Seminar professor assigned a poetry book collection every other week. My main objective was to dissect a few poems (4-5) that left an impression on me while using his T.R.I.F.F.I.D. method.
Tone: the voice, mood, or attitude the reader believes the author is conveying through subject and word choice.
Rhythm: the pattern and beat between the stressed and unstressed word syllables.
Imagery: the details told through the five senses (touch aka physical, sound aka auditory, sight aka visual, taste aka gustatory and smell aka olfactory).
Figure: or figure of speech, is the non-literal expression of language. Figures of speech include hyperbole, irony, metaphor, simile, anaphora, antithesis and chiasmus.
Form: the way a poem is presented on paper or a screen. Think of how the author physically shapes the poem -- the use of dialogue, line spacing, paragraph breaks, rhythms and patterns.
Idea Density: how the author expresses their ideas throughout their poem. Can be literal (concrete) and/or figurative (vague or hidden).
Diction: the word choice and arrangement within a piece.
These were the results for Hanif Abdurraqib’s A Fortune for Your Disaster (2019):
The tone in Hanif Abdurraqib’s poem, “Welcome to Heartbreak” is nostalgic, sorrowful and bittersweet as seen in lines 1-3 when the narrator says,
it is the version of me fading in the photos that I most wish to dance with. Just once before the coughing
black makes a ghost of him. No one asks me to smile these days & so here is my mouth, again
straight line.
All 3 tones correlate to the poem’s title and message: Abdurraqib reminiscing about an old flame and missing -- not only his lover, but the happier, loved version of himself.
He reiterated his feelings again in the last three lines of the poem when he offers the reader his perspective on love and heartbreak:
Imagine, instead: the place where you have a bed of your own & a table to sit across from someone
who laughs thick & echoing as an open palm at your smallest joy & then / the fingers close. (8-10)
In other words, Abdurraqib describes love and heartbreak as an “open palm” -- love and “fingers close” -- heartbreak; the hand metaphor representing how sudden and unexpected feelings can change.
One day there is love, the next day it is gone.
Abdurraqib’s “Glamour on the West Street/Silver Over Everything” uses visual, auditory and tactile imagery, which altogether, conveys the hectic heatwave the narrator experiences (resembles and references Spike Lee’s 1989 movie, Do the Right Thing).
Readers are shown visual imagery in physical objects such as the building, cardboard box and pizza: “from the humid brick building below my humid brick building” (1), “no cheese atop the crust & its red river of sauce,” (2-3) and “warmth spilling from the edges of a cardboard box” (7-8).
For auditory imagery, the poem illustrates sound from dialogue, actions (yell, shout, etc.) and environmental sounds: “a woman bellows at the pizza man” (1-2), “as he shouts above the sirens of State Street” (1-2) and “man yells there are only three ingredients. you can’t even get that right” (19).
Abdurraqib utilizes tactile imagery through the heat of the pizza/box upon skin contact: “lonely people who will seek the warmth spilling from the edges of a cardboard box & onto their laps & into their fingers” (7-8).
Abdurraqib’s poem, “With Boxes Piled at the Foot of the Stairs, I go to see Logan” is dense with its subtle ideas of love, betrayal, trust, brotherhood and mental health (suicide) through the narrator recounting his friend’s death and funeral as well as his role in the overall matter:
my pal died not when the pill bottle
rolled empty from his unfurling
palm. It was sometimes after
that, when I told his old girlfriend
I have maybe been in love
with you the whole time. (12-16)
The readers can only insinuate from the clues given that the narrator’s friend took his own life, which the narrator insists was his (Abdurraqib) fault.
This all started when the narrator confessed to having feelings for his friend’s girlfriend -- one can only speculate that caused a betrayal between the narrator and his friend.
Moreover, in terms of form, Abdurraqib’s poem, “With Boxes Piled at the Foot of the Stairs, I go to see Logan” is 8 stanzas, 2 couplets each. In the narrative, the poem is split into 4 parts: the narrator’s notes to the reader, the funeral, the suicide and the confession (the inciting incident).
The first part features the narrator providing exposition about an “ending” to the poem’s subject:
I will not spoil
the ending, though
what is there to spoil. (lines 1-3)
The second part focuses on the speaker attending a funeral and highlights how the funeral (the intended ending if the events of the poem were told chronologically) is not the main point of the poem:
but to say there was
a casket in the place
you would imagine
a casket to be.
depending on how
you define burial, ending is unspectacular. (4-10)
The third part reveals the narrator’s friend’s cause of death (physical death) and the narrator denying it as such:
my pal died not when the pill bottle
rolled empty from his unfurling
palm. it was after that. (line 11-14)
The final part conveys the inciting incident or what the narrator genuinely believes was the ‘ending’ -- not just the poem but of his friend’s life (emotional/spiritual/metaphorical death):
when I told his old girlfriend
I have maybe been in love
with you the whole time.
Overall, Abdurraqib purposely made the poem out of order to showcase what he believes was the emotional gravity of the poem and of his friend’s life: the confession portion negatively impacted his friend’s love life and made him feel dead inside (numb).
Who is Hanif Abdurraqib?
Many of Abdurraqib’s poetry and prose works have been a finalist, nominated, long-listed and/or recommended by numerous journal and literary outlets. Reading his book, especially his poem, “Welcome to Heartbreak,” I understood Abdurraqib’s it factor: how easily he displays the euphoria, fleetingness and heartbreaks of love.
Lastly, are there any poems that makes you feel happy, nostalgic or heartbroken?
Feel free to comment some below?
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Drowning people
Sometimes die
Fighting their rescuers.
—Octavia Butler
quoted in Hanif Abdurraqib’s poems, A FORTUNE FOR YOUR DISASTER
#quotes#poems#Hanif Abdurraqib#Octavia Butler#A FORTUNE FOR YOUR DISASTER#human nature#people#mary karr
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#A Fortune for Your Disaster#Hanif Abdurraqib#succession#kendall roy#roman roy#shiv roy#parallels#inky cargo#long post#dog motif#hbo succession#collage#web weaving
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hanif abdurraqib, from “IT’S NOT LIKE NIKOLA TESLA KNEW ALL OF THOSE PEOPLE WERE GOING TO DIE” in A Fortune For Your Disaster
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“...I tell my boys there is a reason songs from the 90s are having a revival and it's because the heart and tongue are the muscles with the most irresistible histories...”
It Is Once Again the Summer of My Discontent & This Is How We Do It by Hanif Abdurraqib
#It Is Once Again the Summer of My Discontent & This Is How We Do It#Hanif Abdurraqib#Quote#Poetry#A Fortune For Your Disaster
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i could learn to pity fools as i’m the worst of all and i can’t stop feeling sorry for myself. truly one of my favorite fob lyrics of all time.
#and i’m just a painter and i’m drawing a blank. and a fortune for your disaster of hanif abdurraqib fame. thank you pete.#fob
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i wish more people understood the concept of activism burnout and compassion fatigue. you do like genuinely have to pick your battles, and that usually means something local that you can make a real difference with. if you get overwhelmed with every problem nothing is going to change.
#i have friends in organizations similar to DWB and the like. and when there are disasters they are sent overseas to go help.#whereas my focus remains here because i cant handle more disaster relief tbh and thats. thats okay.#i still take part in programs for queer rights in local politics and providing aid to those without permanent residence#i get that like. its frustrating to hear people not talking ab whatever Your thing is#but they also have Their things#absolutely fucking no one on this website has ever spoken about the rising houseless and opioid problems in new hampshire. but i still help#headspace hotel is right. if you hear about every disaster and think you have a personal responsibility to do something for all of them.#youre going to lose hope so so so fast bc it feels like the world is unfixable#but its not. its just only fixed a little bit at a time. on a very individual level.#everyone talks ab activism and caring but theyd make more change by googling ''charities in my area''#unrebloggable for now bc im mostly just venting tbh#fortunately this is pretty much only an issue online so i know when i do my next thing itll feel like the world is okay again.#until then this is a worrying rise and im really worried that younger people will think activism is useless#or worse that if you see someone not talking ab a specific issue youll assume they dont care at all#when theres just nothing they can do.
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「Oh what's that saying。。。 If that dick slaps his thighs when he walks, then I shall listen when he talks？」
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