Death, With Occasional Smiling

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"Tony Medina's Death, With Occasional Smiling is a beautiful and important book. It is full of odes and elegies for young black men who've been slain by police, racist vigilantes or succumbed otherwise to violent America. The ode to Stephen Clark is breathtaking and Medina documents forcefully our collective loss. At the center of this book is a war against black bodies, told with a precision, meter, and urgency to compose an elegant poetic and necessary song. Medina's use of Black and Latino vernacular, culture, music and cadence woven with sorrow, humor, blood, bone, and defiance is exciting and masterful. It captures not only our woe but the gleaming brilliance of survival." -Pamela Sneed