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richardleis's review against another edition
5.0
Reginald Dwayne Betts reminds readers of Bastards of the Reagan Era that the era it describes has not ended yet, and won't until we read and reread these poems on our way to doing something, anything that breaks this cycle of oppression, suffering, and loss. His experience is not my experience but these poems bring me back to the 1980s and those experiences that were all around me no matter how far I retreated into my shell that I have taken too many decades to start dismantling so that I can reckon with what's wrong with this nation.
Many of these poems end with observations that take my breath away, sometimes not pleasantly. The image of boys "controlled by the spinning sneaker / strings of the dead boys above them" in Elegy With a RIP Shirt Turning Into the Wind" on page 37 is concrete and haunting. "Where pretty has failed everyone, even / cherubim, out to leave us to this world" in "For the City That Nearly Broke Me" on page 39 resonates as criticism of an abstraction that continues to hold too much power over us. By "The Invention of Crack" on page 50, Betts' poems had prepared me to trust the language and the jargon, history, and critique that lists and repeats and makes personal the politics of oppression and the purgatories and hells that arise and are maintained by it.
Betts uses vivid sensory detail in his poems about prison experience that left me overwhelmed; I'm not going to say I know what it's like, but this brush with prison life/purgatory/hell through these poems leaves me dejected but angry and wanting to learn more.
As public displays of hate destroy naive and purposely ignorant blinders many of us have had on forever, I've begun to recognize that a reckoning with white supremacy and the history of the United States is long, long overdue. The persona narrator in these poems is not necessarily or only angry. Betts' poems open readers' eyes to places and experiences they might otherwise shrink away from, and they do this with sadness and elegy that should motivate us to make this world so much better than we have made it so far, before we condemn more generations to this cycle of betrayal, suffering, and revelation that has not ended yet.
Many of these poems end with observations that take my breath away, sometimes not pleasantly. The image of boys "controlled by the spinning sneaker / strings of the dead boys above them" in Elegy With a RIP Shirt Turning Into the Wind" on page 37 is concrete and haunting. "Where pretty has failed everyone, even / cherubim, out to leave us to this world" in "For the City That Nearly Broke Me" on page 39 resonates as criticism of an abstraction that continues to hold too much power over us. By "The Invention of Crack" on page 50, Betts' poems had prepared me to trust the language and the jargon, history, and critique that lists and repeats and makes personal the politics of oppression and the purgatories and hells that arise and are maintained by it.
Betts uses vivid sensory detail in his poems about prison experience that left me overwhelmed; I'm not going to say I know what it's like, but this brush with prison life/purgatory/hell through these poems leaves me dejected but angry and wanting to learn more.
As public displays of hate destroy naive and purposely ignorant blinders many of us have had on forever, I've begun to recognize that a reckoning with white supremacy and the history of the United States is long, long overdue. The persona narrator in these poems is not necessarily or only angry. Betts' poems open readers' eyes to places and experiences they might otherwise shrink away from, and they do this with sadness and elegy that should motivate us to make this world so much better than we have made it so far, before we condemn more generations to this cycle of betrayal, suffering, and revelation that has not ended yet.
cooliochristy's review against another edition
5.0
It's been 8 years since Dwayne volunteered in my classroom in DC. My second year of teaching and, like so many of us, I wish I knew then what I know now. He inspired my students (and me!) to write in ways they hadn't before. His poetry in this collection is moving and multidimensional and I'm not smart enough for most of it. The titled piece left me moved and searching for more and remembering things I studied long ago (but have never come close to living). So well done.
pato_myers's review against another edition
This book was recommended to me as a good book, but poetry is not really my thing and I'm looking for something upbeat so I didn't finish. It's not bad I'm just looking for something else.
kiramke's review against another edition
5.0
Masterful. Every time I read "For The City That Nearly Broke Me" it cut a little deeper.
freechasetoday's review against another edition
5.0
“‘History is written / on the back of the horse’ broken / by the world.” Poems that operate in traditions both epic & lyric, wrestling with and investigating masculinity, justice, love, & the history we live out daily (and the impacts, large and small, of that history, especially on the lives of every day people).
kelseymay's review against another edition
5.0
This poetry collection is amazing. Reginald's poems are heartwrenching and intelligent as fuck; he knows so much about politics, the prison industrial complex, and drug policy, and it shapes his commentary into pillars of knowledge and emotion. I ache for everything that has been lost in the aftermath of Reagan's crack conspiracy, and I ache for those being punished by systems (both legal and prison) that never cared about them beyond turning a profit. This book is a must-read for anyone who enjoys political poetry.
cmcwhite_357's review against another edition
5.0
Betts has penned a personal and an at times pained volume that describes his experiences in America after the Reagan administration made policies that had a direct affect on his future. Years ago, Ronald Reagan proposed laws and congress responded with the legislation that has doomed a generation of men to a level of prison recidivism that haunts black men to this day. The over criminalization of simple crimes of drug possession have created a permanent underclass of people. A class system that is decidedly black and brown. By demonizing black men as unrepentant criminals who are leeches on society, he created a generation of boys who would have fathers, but not know them. Hence bastards. These boys would have fathers incarcerated and gone from their lives in some cases forever.
So the book takes me on a very deep look at the prison culture, the old and the young gone forever. "Old heads here say these chains and cells and walls, State numbers, years and years and years upon Years and years ain't nothing but Jim Crow..." Some poems speak of musical influences like Miles Davis and others describe horses and chariots and which his brother admires. Horse being the name of a drug and also the feeling that fills ones chest when exhilarated. Such powerful poems fills the book.
I hope one day to meet Reginald.
So the book takes me on a very deep look at the prison culture, the old and the young gone forever. "Old heads here say these chains and cells and walls, State numbers, years and years and years upon Years and years ain't nothing but Jim Crow..." Some poems speak of musical influences like Miles Davis and others describe horses and chariots and which his brother admires. Horse being the name of a drug and also the feeling that fills ones chest when exhilarated. Such powerful poems fills the book.
I hope one day to meet Reginald.
freechasetoday's review
5.0
“‘History is written / on the back of the horse’ broken / by the world.” Poems that operate in traditions both epic & lyric, wrestling with and investigating masculinity, justice, love, & the history we live out daily (and the impacts, large and small, of that history, especially on the lives of every day people).