The Poetry Police

Exploring the curious intermingling of verse lines and color lines, this essay considers whether the demands placed on contemporary African American poets by their fans and critics are a response to the challenges that these authors’ texts present to traditional ideas about lyric self-expression and the lawfulness of language. Juxtaposing several pieces from a thirteen-poem sequence by Hanif Abdurraqib called “How can black people write about flowers at a time like this” with Ross Gay’s “weeping,” the author argues that the lyric impulse both articulates and dissolves the logics by which it is judged. In the final analysis, we can never be sure whether we are policing poetry or poetry is policing us.