Concentrate Poems

In her astonishing debut, Taylor delivers a layered elegy for Latasha Harlins, a 15-year-old Black girl killed by a Korean shopkeeper in 1992 during an uprising in response to the police beating of Rodney King. Harlins's death is symbolic for all murders of Black people, but Taylor carefully examines the event's particulars. Some of the collection's multimedia elements include photographs taken at the site of Empire liquor store, now a Numero Uno Market, and outside of Harlins's school. Taylor vividly recalls being told about Harlins with language as incendiary as it is haunting: "And when I found her name, fear had me/ rip a switch from its yard. Fear had me/ creased over a knee to be depleted." She relays the knowledge of racial injustice: "This horror was first told to me when I entered my body, so as I settle in unsettling skin, I book a room inside her absence." Taylor brilliantly illustrates the shadows that hang over Black life in America, but also the joys, such as the elders who educate and protect the younger generations, and also nurture and fiercely love them. This is a monumental work in the vein of Claudia Rankine's Citizen from a remarkable new talent. (Nov.)

Winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, Taylor's arresting and powerful debut excavates and commemorates the life of Latasha Harlins, a Black teenager killed by a Korean shop owner following a false accusation of theft--a killing that served as a catalyst for the 1992 uprising in Los Angeles. Taylor's collection explores, in part, the tension between Asian American and Black communities in the United States, as well as the country's complex interplay among race, sexual violence, and erasure. The collection also memorializes a young life, foregrounds tremendous care between elders and children (as in the brilliantly moving opening poem, "Arizona?"), and employs an inventive fractured style. "Consider that our ansisters have incredible side eye--the talent of of seeing things they are not directly looking at," says one poem, and it's a talent amply on display throughout the book, which utilizes visual and textual collage, time line, historical artifact, and personal story to reassemble an unflinching narrative of honesty, attention, and intimacy. VERDICT Simply put, one of the best books this reviewer has read in the last 12 months.--Amy Dickinson