Praise for Worldly Things
Finalist for the 2022 Minnesota Book Award in Poetry
A New York Times Book Review “New & Noteworthy Poetry” Selection
A Library Journal “Poetry Title to Watch 2021”
A Chicago Review of Books “Poetry Collection to Read in 2021”
A Reader’s Digest “14 Amazing Black Poets to Know About Now” Selection
A Books Are Magic “Recommended Reading” Selection
An Indie Gift Guide 2021 Indie Next Selection
“The full-throated poems in this debut collection see the world whole, allowing daily intimacies against a backdrop of social injustice.” —New York Times Book Review
“In his debut poetry collection, Worldly Things, Kleber-Diggs takes his lived experience as a Black man in America, and with his pen, unpacks it . . . There are poems in the collection about Kleber-Diggs’ father’s death; his wife’s miscarriage; about race and racism. Because these are the sorts of subjects he feels compelled to discuss . . . in ways that are candid, open-minded and openhearted. Through these hard conversations, he feels our most profound connections are made.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“You should read [Worldly Things]. Because the work is so good and original, modest and quiet and piercing . . . More than anything, you should read this book because if a neighbor spends decades trying to find the right thing to say to you, you should listen.” —Mpls.St.Paul Magazine
“A remarkable book . . . Kleber-Diggs attempts to ‘hew hope from a mountain of despair,’ offering the world this plea: ‘Let me bloom . . . let me be lovely.’ A truly moving, and very midwestern, collection.”—Books Are Magic, “Recommended Reading”
“Though Michael Kleber-Diggs’ Worldly Things . . . is his debut poetry collection, his prowess as an essayist and literary critic isn’t new. His prose is especially honest, engaging and descriptive, and this collection is sure to offer similar meaning and pleasure, with the sound, voice and impact that only poetry can deliver.”—Chicago Review of Books, “Twelve Poetry Collections to Read in 2021”
“A stunning, expertly crafted work exploring themes such as grief, trauma, and fatherhood . . . This work is highly recommended for all collections.”—Library Journal, Starred Review
“Loss laps at the edges of Worldly Things . . . The book as a whole, though, even as it decries the life cut short, relishes our being mortal, our having the chance to ‘bloom and recede.’ Which is, in the end, what I suspect these poems want for all of us . . . that somehow we will all find our way into becoming ‘lovely yet / temporal.’” —Plume
“Michael Kleber-Diggs's Worldly Things shows how he is sustained by family and nature in poems giving shape to the Black middle-class experience amid continuing political tumult.”—Library Journal
“Worldly Things embraces the wondrousness of everyday existence . . . Poems of joy and celebration co-exist with elegies . . . [Kleber-Diggs] underscores that writing is itself an act of survival, a means of getting along in a universe that mixes joy with grief.”—Poetry Foundation’s “Harriet Books” blog
“This debut poetry collection shines with moments of unexpected brilliance in scenes of domesticity, rural life, and African American experiences . . . Kleber-Diggs revels in evocative simplicity . . . A stunning new poetic voice similar to John Murillo and Tommye Blount.” —Booklist
“[An] astonishing debut . . . a collection of perfectly crafted and expertly paced lyrics, each as arresting as the last.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Michael Kleber-Diggs wants us to know that an unrealized desire is not necessarily a thwarted or vanished or destroyed one . . . But as for communal peace and common purpose, we will have to persist in imagining these states of being. In Worldly Things, he gives us ‘just enough rainfall’ to nourish, and give attention to, our twisted roots.”—On the Seawall
“To follow Kleber-Diggs is to witness the modern condition—to notice it, interrogate it, appreciate it. His worldly things might be ephemeral, yet they’re anything but small. As these confident, unflinching poems accumulate, so too does a genuinely nuanced worldview: disappointed but never cynical, hurt yet forever hopeful.”—Joseph Holt, Great River Review
“I am captivated, consoled, and bowled over by these poems, which are knifelike in their concision and oracular at their core. Worldly Things is so full of an age-old knowing I'm shocked it is Kleber-Diggs's debut. It is like the conundrum of the human soul: new and eternal at once.”—Tracy K. Smith
"When Michael Kleber-Diggs writes "my vision is common. / I dream about ordinary things—stuff that could actually happen," he seems to write directly into the heart of this collection. And that is exactly what is so extraordinary about these poems. Plain spoken and insisting on the direct gaze, Worldly Things unveils the world that's right in front of us. The world that has been waiting, all this time, for someone to really see what is actually happening.”—Camille T. Dungy
“Michael Kleber-Diggs’s Worldly Things gives us beautifully clear-eyed yet warmhearted poems, lamentations, and ruminations that reflect the difficult truths of the nation we’ve been living. These poems of fathers, sons, husbands, wives, daughters, mothers, and strangers show us how we could create community if we take the time and make the effort to treat each other with dignity and care. In the poem ‘Worldly Things,’ Kleber-Diggs writes of his intent to ‘craft / images and devices / meant to survive’ him. He’s succeeded in not only that but also in writing poems for our survival. I’m grateful for this book I didn’t know I was waiting for.”—Sean Hill
“Michael Kleber-Diggs’s poems quietly put pressure on us to live up to our nation’s ideals. He gives voice to the experiences and aspirations of middle-class Black America, and though the promised land is far away, he finds grace in the natural world, long marriage, and fathering. These supple, socially responsible poems seem to me a triumphant, paradoxical, luminous response to a violent time in our history.”—Henri Cole
“Winner of the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, Michael Kleber-Diggs’s Worldly Things is my standout poetry collection of 2021. Striking the right balance of small, precious moments (teaching his daughter to drive, learning to bake) and abject sorrow (the murder of his father, the death of Black lives at the hands of police), Kleber-Diggs explores life from all sides with refreshing frankness—see ‘America is Loving Me to Death’—while reminding us of the joys of the world and how there is always the possibility of something good. Keep an eye out for ‘Gloria Mundi,’ maybe the most beautiful piece of writing I’ve read this year.” —Nora, Staff Pick, Three Lives & Company
“These poems are heavy with a deep and powerful ache, both the pain of loss and the longing for other futures, other ways of being. Michael Kleber-Diggs’s skilled hand writes down the feelings of an open heart and the musing of the clear-minded—meditations on fatherhood and family, on America’s cruelty and racism, on death and on life. I earmarked many pages to return to and pass along to others, particularly the poems ‘Coniferous Fathers’ and ‘Gloria Mundi.’” —Anna Siftar, Oblong Books
"From now on, if someone asks me why I'm never moving away from Saint Paul, Minnesota I'm just going to hand them a copy of Worldly Things. Michael captures the nuances of our black and brown community here with unfiltered authenticity." —Riley Jay Davis, Next Chapter Booksellers
“This is a beautiful tribute to the reality of blackness in America. Moving, full of loss and love.” —Todd Miller, Arcadia Books
