The Poet & the Life Boat
The Poet & the Life Boat
Poet and cultural critic Hanif Abdurraqib on what audiences expect of the artists they love.
“i guess it is good to know you are needed by something that won’t outgrow you. Or that won’t learn / a name to call you outside of. I am back to wearing sweaters in the summer. It’s a question of intimacy. / that which will do the work of love for those who have grown weary of loving me.”
Hanif Abdurraqib,
“What a Miracle That Our Parents Had Us When They Could Have Gotten a Puppy Instead” from “A Fortune for Your Disaster”
Hanif Abdurraqib claims his home of Ohio like a proud father the night of their child’s big game or dance recital. Sometimes this means wearing sweatshirts that say “Ohio Vs. Everybody” at his readings, other times it means regarding public figures as “known Ohioans” when talking about them on Twitter. But no matter what, if you’re even marginally familiar with Abdurraqib, or his work in any of the number of mediums in which he writes, you probably know where he is from. Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, music journalist and sneaker head from Columbus, Ohio. His most recent book, a collection of poems titled “A Fortune For Your Disaster” was released in September of 2019. His past collections have included his 2016 debut “The Crown Ain’t Worth Much” as well as a much more limited printing called “Vintage Sadness” in 2017. In 2017 Abdurraqib also released “They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us”, a collection of essays including work during his time as a writer for MTV and other publications as well as essays written just for inclusion in the book. Earlier this year he also released “Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to a Tribe Called Quest”, an in-depth collection of prose written about and to the rap group A Tribe Called Quest. His writing has earned a number of awards and recognitions, “Go Ahead in the Rain” even made it on the New York Times Best Seller list.
All of this is to say, since the release of “The Crown Ain’t Worth Much”, a lot has happened for Abdurraqib. But, he says, he’s been fortunate enough to go through a series of changes as a person that helped him figure out the kind of writer he wanted to be. When asked about his process putting together this most recent book, and how it compared to some of his past works, he said he wanted to focus on honesty and accountability with himself. This book wasn’t something he decided to embark on one day and started from scratch. Some of the earliest versions of the poems in the book were written as far back as 2015, and the most recent ones were written just earlier this year. The process of putting a book of poems together can be complicated and intricate, especially when treating on the themes that appear in “A Fortune for your Disaster”. Which include, according to the book’s dust jacket, “how one rebuilds oneself after a heartbreak, the kind that renders them a different version of themselves than the one they knew”. Abdurraqib took care in approaching all of this. When asked about how he makes room for self-care in his process he said, “I take large breaks to go on runs and step away from the work. I’ve grown in writing this last book in my own ability to know when the work is temporally done with me, when I’m done with it. When I am trying to do more than the work is affording me to do. I’ve gotten better at removing myself from the work.”
This level of care is important for poets, especially today. “I think there’s an easy stereotype that artists are pained and tortured and so forth and so on.” says Rebecca Burns, editorial advisor and publisher for the Red and Black in Athens, Georgia with 20 years of experience in journalism including time at Poets, Artists and Madmen, “I am not 100% sure if I think that serves everyone well to fall into that stereotype”. As a journalist himself, Abdurraqib has fallen into this habit before. He says the first time he saw Scottish indie rock band Frightened Rabbit he wrote about their front man Scott Hutchinson and “How effective he was at bringing sadness to life.” But what he should have written about was, “How gifted he was at writing songs that reach so far and do so many things at once.”. Hutchinson passed away in May of 2018, somewhat mysteriously, and for many devastatingly. Hutchinson was one of those artists for many who offered them some solace in their sadness, including Abdurraqib. Upon Hutchinson’s passing away Abdurraqib took to social media, having this same conversation about the mistake of loving an artist for their sadness.
It can be easy for the poet themselves to fall into this trap of suffering, of believing that you have to do it to make good art. This is something Abdurraqib talks about often in interviews and Q&A’s, especially when discussing “They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill”. Amid a hard break up, and with a book to finish, Abdurraqib retreated and isolated himself to do his work. He says himself that the book was written sort of hatefully, in an isolated space. But he came out of the experience no longer wanting to suffer for his art. The public can ask a lot of the artists they love. But, Abdurraqib says, there’s a difference between loving an artist for the light they offer you out of the dark and loving them for their own darkness. “It’s important to not make artists life boats”, he says, especially without their interest or consent. “Hearing folks articulate your exact anguish as you’re also feeling it, that’s something that makes me want to attach myself onto someone.”. But, he says, that isn’t always useful.
“Seeing Hanif like things, the way that he likes things makes you feel like you have permission or validation for liking things to the degree that you do” says Alys Barrow, 4th year student at the University of Georgia and former team captain of the UGA poetry slam team, about what she takes away from Abdurraqib’s work, “I think that him leaning into that aspect of himself, where he’s like I just really want to know all about this stuff, about the things that I care about and I’m going to speak about it at such a high level and I’m gonna do that and the people around me who care about me will be there.”. This treats perfectly on what Abdurraqib himself says about how he combats the risks of isolation as a writer, and what got him writing poems in the first place.
“I got into poems to find community”, he says about his early days writing poems in Columbus, Ohio. Community is something Abdurraqib talks about a lot, his social media is often filled with pictures of him and his fellow writer friends eating ice cream when they come to visit him in Columbus or sitting at a fried chicken spot when they’ve all found themselves in the same city for a conference. “Most of my friends who are poets, we don’t talk about poems. We talk about basketball, we talk about the Fast and Furious cinematic universe” says Abdurraqib. When asked about the things he wishes he got to talk about more in interviews or Q&A’s he says, “Getting asked the things that make me a whole person”. He says he’s always down to talk about music, or sneakers, it doesn’t always have to be about the poems or about the feelings behind them.
“& so here, let’s make a deal. Bring to me your palms / overflowing with the production of your most intemperate / anguish & I promise there is not target I will not stand in front of / for you. There is not wood that could fashion a cross to hold me.”