Morgan Parker ’10’s new book of poetry is “a love letter to black women”
Browsing Morgan Parker ’10’s poems, one might assume she has been scribbling free verse since childhood. Her style is easy, imagistic and fluid; Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith calls Parker’s writing “acrobatic.” The turbo-charged speed of Parker’s literary rise only increases the sense of a discipline derived, like athleticism, from a hardcore, lifelong practice. Parker has already published two books and was selected for the all-star lineup in The Best American Poetry 2016, as well as for a prestigious 2017 NEA Literature Fellowship. Her celebrity fans include Lena Dunham and counterculture poet Eileen Myles.
But poetry is a genre Parker fell into as a College student. She grew up in Highland, Calif., a conservative suburb of Los Angeles, the child of a firefighter and a county employee (“really, really regular people,” she told The New Yorker in April). Parker wrote stories and essays and daydreamed about moving to New York City and becoming a writer — but not, ugh, a poet, she recalled for CCT: “Poetry is a weird genre, and I didn’t feel like it was for me.” That all changed in a creative writing seminar taught by visiting poet Josh Bell. The class read contemporary poems, not the “horrible” works from her high school syllabus. Parker wrote a poem each week, responding to different prompts. She made jokes and talked about herself — “things I wouldn’t say out loud.” Something opened up for her.
She still talks about the oddness of poetry, but now it’s with affection. It’s clear how much the genre has given her — how it allows her to reach out and self-reveal in a way that’s both extroverted and inclusive. When Parker’s poems are described in interviews or reviews, the word “invitation” recurs. “I’m trying to invite the reader to get to the thing with me … creating a space where they’re feeling what I’m feeling,” she says. She praises poetry’s flexibility and its ability to pinpoint the inexpressible. “A really successful poem — you almost can’t put your finger on what’s so good,” she adds. “You’re not saying the thing, you’re swirling around it.”
The works in her latest book, There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé (Tin House Books, $14.95), combine vivid life observations and pop references from a young New York City woman’s point of view, spiraling them into expressive, emotionally rich designs. Twelve poems about the many-faceted Beyoncé — a celebrity who represents, for Parker, “every black woman” — blend with more personal riffs on love, race, therapy, martinis and music. Parker sees her new book as, ultimately, a “love letter to black women.” Poem after poem depicts their strength, their potential, their fatigue and anger — “everything they have been and are and will be and could be.” As she told New York magazine last spring: “I just want this to be a reminder that, look, you have permission to be as dope, as fly, as beautiful, as naked, as sad, as fucked up as you want to be.”
— Rose Kernochan BC’82
The President Has Never Said the Word Black
To the extent that one begins
to wonder if he is broken.
It is not so difficult to open
teeth and brass taxes.
The president is all like
five on the bleep hand side.
The president be like
we lost a young boy today.
The pursuit of happiness
is guaranteed for all fellow Americans.
He is nobody special like us.
He says brothers and sisters.
What kind of bodies are moveable
and feasts. What color are visions.
When he opens his mouth
a chameleon is inside, starving.
Another Another Autumn in New York
When I drink anything
out of a martini glass
I feel untouched by
professional and sexual
rejection. I am a dreamer
with empty hands and
I like the chill.
I will not be attending the party
tonight, because I am
microwaving multiple Lean Cuisines
and watching Wife Swap,
which is designed to get back
at fathers, as westernized media
is often wont to do.
I don’t know
when I got so punk rock
but when I catch
myself in the mirror I
feel stronger. So when
at five in the afternoon
something on my TV says
time is not on your side
I don’t give any
shits at all. Instead I smoke
a joint like I’m
a teenager and eat a whole
box of cupcakes.
Stepping on leaves I get
first-night thrill.
Confuse the meanings
of castle and slum, exotic
and erotic. I bless
the dark, tuck
myself into a canyon
of steel. I breathe
dried honeysuckle
and hope. I live somewhere
imaginary.
Lush Life
The most beautiful hearse I have ever seen
is parked in front of my stoop
Perched hands folded for six to eight weeks
twinkling like a siren a new idea of love
Trees are planted but don’t exist yet
They are leaning non-existent into us
A trough of hearts meets me in the anxious sun
I could rot here
Something like the holy spirit
pours you over bruised ice
There isn’t anything more to say than holy
Beautiful men never looking upon me
I take music self-stirred and sleep
alone curve into the morning like an almond
My shoulders lush as romantics
You wash up on a barstool
smooth heartache black sand
13 Ways of Looking at a Black Girl
at risk pretty Queen Latifah Nikki Giovanni
Ma Tina Turner sex
Dyke ugly bitch sex Mamma Nene Leakes
Sally Hemings t.h.o.t. Erykah Badu easy
bipolar Beyoncé sex kitchen rape
wifey Nina Simone Nicki Minaj
sex sex Whitney Houston
Toni Morrison I am hungry Grace Jones
for myself diva slut
thong darkie Michelle Obama
high yellow nappy flawless Audre Lorde
Lena Horne lips Sandra Bland sex strong
sex sister Wanda Sykes sassy witch
low-income sex booty
well-spoken Issa Rae less
hotep beautiful Hottentot Venus sex
chickenhead thick Alice Walker queen
dead sex just a friend
Shonda Rhimes trouble sick sex mean
hair bell hooks single
dying tragic
sex help carefree chocolate
special exotic sex ratchet
Felicia loud lost
Please Wait
(Or, There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé)
Please wait to record Love Jones at 8:48 Saturday on BET
Until your life is no longer defined by Beyoncé
Ants crawling over fallen leaves and little pieces of dog shit
Empty chicken boxes glowing with the remembrance of grease
There are more beautiful things than Beyoncé: self-awareness,
Leftover mascara in clumps, recognizing a pattern
This is for all the grown women out there
Whose countries hate them and their brothers
Who carry knives in their purses down the street
Maybe they will not get out alive
Maybe they will turn into air or news or brown flower petals
There are more beautiful things than Beyoncé:
Lavender, education, becoming other people,
The fucking sky
It’s so overused because no one’s sure of it
How it floats with flagrant privilege
And feels it can ask any question
Everyday its ego gets bigger and you let that happen
But one day your shit will be unbelievably together
One day you’ll care a whole lot you’ll always take vitamins
And exercise without bragging and words will fit perfectly
Into your mouth like an olive soaked in gin
The glory of an olive soaked in gin & its smooth smallness
A gloss will snowfall onto your cheeks, the top of your lip
The sidewalks will be the same, evidenced
Combing your records you’ll see the past and think OK
Once I was a different kind of person
