Like many comic books, characters appear and disappear as they are needed. While these issues are undoubtedly addressed, the poet’s dexterity, sensitivity, and humor puts these subjects in a realm that surprises instead of bores. Superheroes could be tossed carelessly into black and white stories of good versus evil, of incredible gifts, of misunderstood strength. This could easily be a clumsy exercise in too obvious symbolism and metaphor. The caped protagonists and villains are the main players in the impressive debut, and take on a new sort of humanity when mingled with and filtered through stories of growing up, the deaths of family members and friends, sexual encounters, and racial issues. Selected by Yusef Komunyakaa as the winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, the book addresses life through the world of cartooned adventures and the stories of superheroes. 81), writes Gary Jackson in “Reading Comic Books in the Rain,” the last poem of his first collection, Missing You, Metropolis.
“We indulge in the power / to inhabit a world a page removed from our own” (p.
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