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The Collection Plate: Poems

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The Collection Plate: Poems

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Overview

A deeply wrought and joyful debut poetry collection from an exciting new voice

Looping exultantly through the overlapping experiences of girlhood, Blackness, sex, and personhood in America, award-winning essayist and poet Kendra Allen braids together personal narrative and cultural commentary, wrestling with the beauty and brutality to be found between mothers and daughters, young women and the world, Black bodies and white space, virginity and intrusion, prison and freedom, birth and death. Most of all, The Collection Plate explores both how we collect and erase the voices, lives, and innocence of underrepresented bodies—and behold their pleasure, pain, and possibility

Both formally exciting and a delight to read, The Collection Plate is a testament to Allen’s place as the voice of a generation—and a witness to how we come into being in the twenty-first century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780063048508
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	06/11/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	98
Sales rank:	936,027
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

Kendra Allen was born and raised in Dallas, Texas. She is the author of The Collection Plate and When You Learn the Alphabet, and writes the music column “Make Love in My Car” for Southwest Review. In her spare time, she loves laughing and leaving. You can keep up with her work at KendraCanYou.com.

Evening service 1

Look at the material 3

I'm the note held toward the end 6

Company is coming over 8

Solace by earl 10

If I'm not my mother 13

The invention of the Super Sadness! was an accident 14

I hate when niggas die 15

Our Father's house (i) 16

#FreeMyNiggas but free my niggas 17

A trilogy everyone watches 19

My sex wet 21

I come to you as humbly as I know how 22

The many times I failed to defend my mother to Our Father 24

We had died real quick 26

Learning to tread water 27

Collection plates 30

Our Father's house (ii) 32

All the things that stretch out my lower back 33

Naked & afraid 36

Afraid & naked 38

The water cycle 40

Practical life skills 41

Melatonin 42

Our Fathers house (iii) 43

Been back before 44

The Super Sadness! feels like anger which feels like 45

Let's leave 47

I ain't never baked a thing from scratch a day in my life 48

Our Father's house (iv) 49

Chihuahuas 50

I'm tired of yo ass always crying 52

If you throw me in this water what you're telling me is you want me dead 54

Most calvaries have dead people 56

The maybe memory 58

Happy 100th birthday 59

Who say good folk ain't supposed to die 64

When I eulogize Our Father 66

"No one had told her about the end of love" 68

Leave me alone 69

If I am the Father 70

Birth of black bishop 71

Our Father's house (v) 73

Sermon notes 74

Gifting back bread & barren land 75

Acknowledgments 76

From the B&N Reads Blog

Page 1 of

Editorial Reviews

"Allen not only vividly captures the experiences of growing up in a Black religious family in the South, transporting readers through specific childhood memories and beautiful tributes, but also provides powerful cultural commentaries. Recommended for all collections." — Library Journal
“Gospel traditions, erotic need, African American vernacular English and plenty of blank space on well-organized pages. . . . Allen excels—like Clifton, like Robert Burns—as she shifts into and out of standard English.” — New York Times Book Review
“The Collection Plate introduces Kendra Allen as a poet to watch. . . . Allen shines a light on the spaces that connect and divide us, coalescing into an electric portrait of joy and pain.” — Time
"Kendra Allen's poems examine how religion and hierarchy inform the spaces Black women and girls inhabit—and how we blow past those boundaries, swimming toward the horizon even as the undertow threatens to pull us in another direction." — Essence
"A spectacular debut poetry collection . . . marks the arrival of a singular new talent, a poet whose lyricism is artfully matched by the depths of the emotions she conveys. Allen's poems explore themes of Blackness, womanhood, sex, desire, pain, and belonging, offering glimpses of the casual cruelty and sublime beauty that swim just under the surface of all our experiences.” — Refinery 29
“The Collection Plate is as close as we can get to those looming Black spaces beyond and before language. A book shouldn't be able to do this but Kendra Allen is a conjurer as much as she is one of the most complete writers we have ever read.” — Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy and Long Division
“Kendra Allen's Collection Plate is formally and linguistically invigorating, intertwining and juxtaposing personal and cultural histories to take the reader on a vivid emotional exploration. Allen considers Black exploitation, water crises, white feminism, and the notion of equality, among other failures in and of America. . . . Allen is in command of Our Father's, and other deadly forces', presence in her narratives, which she often wields with searing humor. This is a valuable offering; Collection Plate brings to light the dismantling capacity of laughing in the face of power, while directly examining it with eyes fired open.” — Emily Jungmin Yoon, author of A Cruelty Special to Our Species
“These poems blend personal narrative with social commentary to explore the joy, pain, and underrepresented voices of Black womanhood in America. It’s a passionate, fresh, and deeply southern collection that introduces a new voice you won’t want to miss.” — Book Riot

From the Publisher

Kendra Allen's Collection Plate is formally and linguistically invigorating, intertwining and juxtaposing personal and cultural histories to take the reader on a vivid emotional exploration. Allen considers Black exploitation, water crises, white feminism, and the notion of equality, among other failures in and of America. . . . Allen is in command of Our Father's, and other deadly forces', presence in her narratives, which she often wields with searing humor. This is a valuable offering; Collection Plate brings to light the dismantling capacity of laughing in the face of power, while directly examining it with eyes fired open.”

Emily Jungmin Yoon

Gospel traditions, erotic need, African American vernacular English and plenty of blank space on well-organized pages. . . . Allen excels—like Clifton, like Robert Burns—as she shifts into and out of standard English.”

New York Times Book Review

"A spectacular debut poetry collection . . . marks the arrival of a singular new talent, a poet whose lyricism is artfully matched by the depths of the emotions she conveys. Allen's poems explore themes of Blackness, womanhood, sex, desire, pain, and belonging, offering glimpses of the casual cruelty and sublime beauty that swim just under the surface of all our experiences.

Refinery 29

These poems blend personal narrative with social commentary to explore the joy, pain, and underrepresented voices of Black womanhood in America. It’s a passionate, fresh, and deeply southern collection that introduces a new voice you won’t want to miss.

Book Riot

The Collection Plate is as close as we can get to those looming Black spaces beyond and before language. A book shouldn't be able to do this but Kendra Allen is a conjurer as much as she is one of the most complete writers we have ever read.”

Kiese Laymon

The Collection Plate introduces Kendra Allen as a poet to watch. . . . Allen shines a light on the spaces that connect and divide us, coalescing into an electric portrait of joy and pain.

Time

"Kendra Allen's poems examine how religion and hierarchy inform the spaces Black women and girls inhabit—and how we blow past those boundaries, swimming toward the horizon even as the undertow threatens to pull us in another direction."

Essence

The Collection Plate introduces Kendra Allen as a poet to watch. . . . Allen shines a light on the spaces that connect and divide us, coalescing into an electric portrait of joy and pain.

Time

09/01/2021
Allen's debut collection focuses on themes of girlhood and womanhood, Blackness, faith, and family, with water imagery woven throughout in scenes from baptisms to swimming pools, as a source of nourishment and survival and as a representation of grief. One series of poems reflects on clean water: what it means to watch someone search for it on reality TV compared with what it means for those in Flint, MI, to live without it. Allen is gifted in structuring the poems on the page. In "If I'm not my mother" and "If I'm not my father," the poet leaves considerable blank spaces before beginning, giving the reader time to absorb the silences and their meanings. Other pieces like "We had died real quick" are structured to mimic the lanes of a swimming pool. In the end, Allen not only vividly captures the experiences of growing up in a Black religious family in the South, transporting readers through specific childhood memories and beautiful tributes, but also provides powerful cultural commentaries. VERDICT Recommended for all collections.—Sarah Michaelis, Sun Prairie P.L., WI

Library Journal

The Collection Plate: Poems

The Collection Plate: Poems

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Overview

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About the Author

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