Ten bridges I've burnt A memoir in verse

Though tagged as a memoir in verse, rather than recounting memorable life events, this collection of scathing, riotous, brutally frank poems offers lyrical reflections on race, sex, and adjacent struggles under capitalism. Purnell, gay and Black, deploys a witty, conversational style in his often-humorous indictments of traditional masculinity. In one poem, the speaker visits a barbershop--a stereotypical site of heterosexual male bonding--and musters the only "'straight man' voice I can muster: silence." Fraught racial dynamics also fall under close scrutiny. In another poem, the speaker grapples with a heritage that feels central to his identity yet also removed from it; "I often close my eyes / and try to picture Nigeria or Ghana / but remember / that I am only an African boy / conceptually." Readers familiar with the poet's bright, rousing delivery can almost hear Purnell's voice animating these lines, even as he reserves a sharp rage for those who "see me only as the man / who represents / the ten bridges I've burnt / but not the hundred that I've built."

The author of 100 Boyfriends returns with a memoir in verse. Purnell has never been afraid to be unabashedly graphic, and that is certainly the case with his latest book, an assortment of poems that serve as a personal history of sexuality, at turns funny, confrontational, and achingly sad. As a gay, Black man, the author makes his sense of being an outsider immediate, a perspective he has felt since growing up in Athens, Alabama, where he'd accompany his mother to her job at an Army base and listen to the soldiers' racism. Now, every time he sees "a bleached white marble column," he writes, "I see the Klansmen's hood / I can like, / smell the cross burning." In "Alumni Sweater," he describes his experience graduating from Berkeley with "a demonically expensive liberal arts education," an achievement that doesn't change white people's mistaken impressions about him. That feeling of dislocation is manifest throughout these defiant pieces. "In a Participatory Capitalism" strikes a difficult-to-achieve balance of hilarity and frustration, as Purnell writes about going out to buy running shoes to do something about "my high-ass blood pressure," the one act of conformity under his control, yet "how are we tracking the belief / that skinny people are actually happy?" The book presents abundant wry commentary on accepted norms and the extent to which one may suffer in pursuit of them. The author's prose is vivid and earthy--e.g., "it is a surprise / that I have enough brain function left to / spread my butt cheeks / and wipe my ass in sequential order / considering how much I have failed in life." In the best poems, the earthiness works in their favor. They may not be for all tastes, but they're never boring. A unique, indelible memoir on being Black and gay in America. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.