Again I Wait For This To Pull Apart: A Poetry Mixtape

by Hanif Abdurraqib (Editor)

The first anthology from FreezeRay Press, AGAIN I WAIT FOR THIS TO PULL APART, is based on the theme of musicians in popular culture, ranging from Patsy Cline to Justin Bieber, with plenty of ground covered in-between. When it came time to find an editor who could do this concept justice, it made all the sense to ask Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib, who has made a name for himself by sharing his love of music in poems like "Ode To Biggie" and "At The House Party Where We Found Out Whitney Houston Was Dead".

Genres: Poetry, Music

112 pages, Paperback

Published December 1, 2015

About the author

Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His poetry has been published in Muzzle, Vinyl, PEN American, and various other journals. His essays and music criticism have been published in The FADER, Pitchfork, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. His first full length poetry collection, The Crown Ain't Worth Much, was released in June 2016 from Button Poetry. It was named a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Prize, and was nominated for a Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. With Big Lucks, he released a limited edition chapbook, Vintage Sadness, in summer 2017 (you cannot get it anymore and he is very sorry.) His first collection of essays, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, was released in winter 2017 by Two Dollar Radio and was named a book of the year by Buzzfeed, Esquire, NPR, Oprah Magazine, Paste, CBC, The Los Angeles Review, Pitchfork, and The Chicago Tribune, among others. He released Go Ahead In The Rain: Notes To A Tribe Called Quest with University of Texas press in February 2019. The book became a New York Times Bestseller, and was met with critical acclaim. His second collection of poems, A Fortune For Your Disaster, was released in 2019 by Tin House. He is a graduate of Beechcroft High School.

Reviews

[C · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent collection of poetry based around music - right up my alley...

I loved the poems by Melissa Newman-Evans, Lewis Mundt, and Ellyn Touchette in particular. I thought the top five albums in lieu of contributor's notes was a really nice touch as well.

A few editing mishaps (incorrectly spelled words, etc...) bug me (I know, I know...), but all in all it is a really good collection from a new press and I am looking forward to whatever else they have coming up.