RaveThe Adroit Journalhe range of voices invoked in this text is just one of the many markers of Postcolonial Love Poem’s astonishing accessibility, though it is the author’s command over language that reigns triumphant in drawing the reader in ... Lines...seem to do more than merely invoke myth—in their terror and their glory, they become myth ... The world of Diaz’s poetry so quickly turns into the world of the reader it is very difficult, maybe impossible, to distinguish between one’s own reality and the reality Diaz creates ... Postcolonial Love Poem’s obsessions are numerous...One that arrives early is love, which is felt deeply and physically throughout the collection—not only because it seems present at every turn in the book, but also because Diaz’s language for love, and expressions of love, are so intensely physical ... they are endless in their scope, endlessly generous in the possibility they promise. Magnet or minotaur, hematite or cabochon, these are poems that are finding their way to the same place, love-bound in a hundred glorious ways ... Postcolonial Love Poem’s strongest pieces do the hard work of anatomizing foundational American realities in the face of the untruths that created them ... They’re minotaurs and hundred-handed beings, pieces of Noah’s Ark and constellations passing stars between them. Most importantly, they’re the truth; stories that don’t encourage our destruction, but help us persist in the face of it. That can love in our fear, our desire-ways, our grief.
Hanif Abdurraqib
PositiveThe Adroit Journal...meaning shimmers oddly; a thing seen through roiling water. Lines imitate the title of the book, designed to allow for and often demand a multiplicity of interpretations ... A certain counter-intuitive feeling emerges when trying to make any assertion about a book that does so good a job masking, or multiplying, its author’s intent. Everything that might otherwise appear certain is pushed into a place of seeming ... Impermanence comes alive most viscerally in those poems that discuss love, or its promise—there is a connection here between being Black in America and being in a state of unrequited love ... This was a difficult review to write. Fortune is a heady collection, rife with possibility and a focus that is unafraid to shift, then shift again. The names of the poems are long, their forms varied. There are sweeping prose poems and poems that live mostly in blank space. It’s excellent and time-consuming. It is never simple or easy. If the central question of this book is, \'How Can Black People Write About Flowers At A Time Like This,\' then there may be an answer in this approach. Never simply. Never easily.
