When Rap Spoke Straight to God

by Erica Dawson

Overview

A book-length poem navigating belief, black lives, the tragedies of Trump, and the boundaries of being a woman.

"When Rap Spoke Straight to God is utterly transporting. In language both elevated and slangy, saucy and tender, Dawson lovingly weaves the reader around her finger.” —Jennifer Egan

When Rap Spoke Straight to God isn’t sacred or profane, but a chorus joined in a single soliloquy, demanding to be heard. There’s Wu-Tang and Mary Magdelene with a foot fetish, Lil’ Kim and a self-loving Lilith. Slurs, catcalls, verses, erasures—Dawson asks readers, “Just how far is it to nigger?” Both grounded and transcendent, the book is reality and possibility. Dawson’s work has always been raw; but, When Rap Spoke Straight to God is as blunt as the answer to that earlier question: “Here.” Sometimes abrasive and often abraded, Dawson doesn’t flinch.  

A mix of traditional forms where sonnets mash up with sestinas morphing to heroic couplets, When Rap Spoke Straight to God insists that while you may recognize parts of the poem’s world, you can’t anticipate how it will evolve.   

With a literal exodus of light in the book’s final moments, When Rap Spoke Straight to God is a lament for and a celebration of blackness.  It’s never depression; it’s defiance—a persistent resistance. In this book, like Wu-Tang says, the marginalized “ain’t nothing to f—- with.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781947793033
Publisher:	Tin House Books
Publication date:	09/18/2018
Pages:	70
Product dimensions:	6.70(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Erica Dawson is the author of two collections of poetry:The Small Blades Hurt (Measure Press, 2014), winner of the 2016 Poets’ Prize; and, Big-Eyed Afraid (Waywiser Pess, 2007), winner of the 2006 Anthony Hecht Prize. Her work has appeared in three editions of Best American Poetry; the Pushcart Prize XLI: Best of the Small Presses, Resistance, Rebellion, Life: 50 Poems Now, Barrow Street, Bennington Review, Crazyhorse, Harvard Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and numerous other journals and anthologies.
She lives in Tampa, FL and is an Associate Professor at University of Tampa, where she also directs the low-residency MFA program.

Editorial Reviews

10/01/2018
Dawson (The Small Blades Hurt) grapples with the weight of identity in her brief third collection, expounding upon what it means to be a black woman in a country ruled by institutions of whiteness. This single lyrical poem, nominally divided into four parts, reveals a blackness born from resilience rather than suffering. Dawson writes of the everyday violence inflicted on black bodies: “Today, the paper boasted this—/ Five Local Policemen Tied to KKK—/ italicized as if to shout, It’s new.” Later, she paints a scene of police brutality involving her own father, when he “tried/ to race a smoke on the side of the house he thought/ we couldn’t see, maybe hoping the wind/ would wash off the smell of a cop’s nightshift, maybe/ refill the sockets of his knocked-out teeth.” The physical and emotional violence that characterizes white supremacy simultaneously attempts to reduce black womanhood to a singular narrative: pain. Dawson writes, “It’s then/ I’m most colored./ Bleeding.” Despite the pressures of a dominating culture determined to see her fail, Dawson can “walk through civilizations/ of fire ants. No lamentations.” For the poet, the scars of history are powerful reminders of how blackness rises above the cruelty of oppression, always reaching for the light. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"Erica Dawson delivers a short collection of long poems that take our current time and dissect it into beautiful and evocative pieces. Harsh but never hard, unflinching but never violent, she speaks to the experiences of black women, celebrating the best of black culture and lamenting its struggles. Wrapped in and elevated by exquisite religious allusions, Dawson’s poetry shines."

World Literature Today

"[Dawson] is devoted to filling in the cultural blanks . . .  Her subject, in a way, is blanks: needs unmet, crimes unacknowledged, thoughts unexplored. By writing, she begins to fill them."

New York Times Magazine

"When Rap Spoke Straight to God is utterly transporting. In language both elevated and slangy, saucy and tender, Dawson lovingly weaves the reader around her finger."

Jennifer Egan

"Erica Dawson is a poet of verve and nuance, of high learning and pop culture, of a classical music she seems to have invented herself.  "

Mary Jo Salter

"Again, Erica Dawson has expanded the possibilities of what we think poetry can do. The lusciously long poems in When Rap Spoke Straight to God are sensual and openly political and so well-crafted in epic blank verse that we begin to see how the contemporary moment has yet to fully correct far too many historical moments.  And it does this with a lyric intensity that I dare say can only be achieved by a poet fully aware of her place in time and its potential."

Jericho Brown

"When Rap Spoke Straight to God extends the tradition of call and response, of spirituals, hymns, and hip-hop. . . . Dawson’s collection is prophetic and vibrant. Every poem feels like a testimony. Each stanza is holy."

Signature Reads

"A defiant celebration of Blackness."

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