# Best Barbarian: Poems - Hardcover

by **Roger Reeves** (Author)

The poems in _Best Barbarian_ roam across the literary and social landscape, from _Beowulf_'s Grendel to the jazz musician Alice Coltrane, from reckoning with immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border to thinking through the fraught beauty of the moon on a summer night after the police have killed a Black man.

Daring and formally elegant, _Best Barbarian_ asks the reader: "Who has not been an entryway shuddering in the wind / Of another's want, a rose nailed to some dark longing and bled?" Reeves extends his inquiry into the work of writers who have come before, conversing with--and sometimes contradicting--Walt Whitman, James Baldwin, Sappho, Dante, and Aimé Césaire, among others. Expanding the tradition of poetry to reach from Gilgamesh and the _Aeneid_ to Drake and Beyoncé, Reeves adds his voice to a long song that seeks to address itself "only to freedom."

_Best Barbarian_ asks the reader to stay close as it plunges into catastrophe and finds surprising moments of joy and intimacy. This fearless, musical, and oracular collection announces Roger Reeves as an essential voice in American poetry.

**Number of Pages:** 120

**Dimensions:** 0.7 x 8.3 x 6.3 IN

**Publication Date:** March 22, 2022

**Award:** National Book Awards (2022)

## Details

- **Price:** 26.95 USD
- **Vendor:** Books by splitShops
- **Type:** Books
- **Tags:** Books by splitShops, Shopify Collective

## Variants

| Variant | Price | Available |
|---------|-------|-----------|
| Default Title | 26.95 USD | In stock |

## Images

- Best Barbarian: Poems - Hardcover

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