There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé: Morgan Parker, Margo Jefferson & Kimberly Drew

Poet Morgan Parker appears in conversation with Margo Jefferson, critic and author of Negroland, moderated by Kimberly Drew (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Black Contemporary Art), to celebrate the release of Parker’s poetry collection There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyonce (Tin House 2017).

There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé uses political and pop-cultural references as a framework to explore 21st century black American womanhood and its complexities: performance, depression, isolation, exoticism, racism, femininity, and politics. The poems weave between personal narrative and pop-cultural criticism, examining and confronting modern media, consumption, feminism, and Blackness. This collection explores femininity and race in the contemporary American political climate, folding in references from jazz standards, visual art, personal family history, and Hip Hop. The voice of this book is a multifarious one: writing and rewriting bodies, stories, and histories of the past, as well as uttering and bearing witness to the truth of the present, and actively probing toward a new self, an actualized self. This is a book at the intersections of mythology and sorrow, of vulnerability and posturing, of desire and disgust, of tragedy and excellence.

“This is a marvelous book. See for yourself. Morgan Parker is a fearlessly forward and forward-thinking literary star.”  ―Terrance Hayes

Publishers Weekly’s Ten Best Poetry Collections of Spring











When: Wed., Mar. 29, 2017 at 7:00 pm
Where: Housing Works Bookstore Cafe
126 Crosby St.
212-966-0466
Price: Free
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Poet Morgan Parker appears in conversation with Margo Jefferson, critic and author of Negroland, moderated by Kimberly Drew (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Black Contemporary Art), to celebrate the release of Parker’s poetry collection There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyonce (Tin House 2017).

There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé uses political and pop-cultural references as a framework to explore 21st century black American womanhood and its complexities: performance, depression, isolation, exoticism, racism, femininity, and politics. The poems weave between personal narrative and pop-cultural criticism, examining and confronting modern media, consumption, feminism, and Blackness. This collection explores femininity and race in the contemporary American political climate, folding in references from jazz standards, visual art, personal family history, and Hip Hop. The voice of this book is a multifarious one: writing and rewriting bodies, stories, and histories of the past, as well as uttering and bearing witness to the truth of the present, and actively probing toward a new self, an actualized self. This is a book at the intersections of mythology and sorrow, of vulnerability and posturing, of desire and disgust, of tragedy and excellence.

“This is a marvelous book. See for yourself. Morgan Parker is a fearlessly forward and forward-thinking literary star.”  ―Terrance Hayes

Publishers Weekly’s Ten Best Poetry Collections of Spring

Buy tickets/get more info now