I Imagine I Been Science Fiction Always

On the heels of Sho (winner, Griffin Poetry Prize) and Optic Subwoof (Pegasus Award in Poetry Criticism), Douglas Kearney's visual poetry masterpiece, I Imagine I Been Science Fiction Always, pushes further into Kearney's long-time practices of performance typography, collaging pre-existing media sources to create singular, multiplicitous texts that defy neat categorization.

Through AfroFuturistic exploration of these techniques, Kearney presents a sustained consideration of precarious Black subjectivity, cultural production as self-defense, the transhistoric emancipatory logics of the preposition over, Anarcho-Black temporal disruption, and seriocomic meditations on the material and metaphysical nature of shadow. Engaging a rich history of visual poetics, I Imagine I Been Science Fiction Always almost predicts its endurance as a visionary work of genius.

Previous Praise

COMET/POPPEA

Bold in its satire and explicit in its sensuality, even more than 350 years after its creation, the work gives its ruthless lovers, Nero and Poppea, everything they desire.

Seth Colter Walls, The New York Times

SHO

I think the book is anti-spectacle. It is asking the reader to see, to really see (not for show), and to reckon with the atrocities of our time. All the while, Kearney’s language is always new, is always about possibility and expansion, and always dazzling.

Victoria Chang, LARB

Kearney's prosody is miraculous. Explosive double beats launch the lines or hit the break like a hi-hat. Slant rhymes suggest infinite puns, but Kearney sometimes downshifts from complexity and just cruises around the neighborhood. Formalism as syncopation and signification: I can't think of another writer as gifted as Kearney is at sound.

Ken Chen, NPR Books

Sho exemplifies the daring possibilities for poetry today. Despite the devastation held within our lexicon, words hold the dazzling potential that we can rise through language to "come up clutching what is under— / come back striking / what’s above.”

CD Eskilson, The Arkansas International

OPTIC SUBWOOF

One hesitates to call any aspect of contemporary poetic practice under-theorized, but by looking hard at the institution of the poetry reading, Kearney has gone where others should follow. What he says about “banter” —the sometimes brief, sometimes expansive remarks the poet makes before reading the poem—is worth a symposium all by itself. And what he says about race, violence, and poetry reminds us that the Bagley Wright Lecture Series is one to keep an eye on.

Paul Scott Stanfield, Ploughshares blog

In Kearney’s nonfiction, as in his poetry, the violences of language are many and changing. 

Cindy Juyoung Ok, Poetry Foundation

BUCK STUDIES 

"[Douglas Kearney] is at the other end of the century, using a multicultural voice inflected with the concerns of what it means to be a young black man at this time and at this place.

The Los Angeles Times

Douglas Kearney has published eight books ranging from poetry to essays to libretti. His most recent book is a collection of talks he presented for the Bagley Wright Lecture Series titled Optic Subwoof (Wave Books, 2022). His most recent poetry collection, Sho (Wave Books, 2021), is a Griffin Poetry Prize and Minnesota Book Award winner, and a National Book Award, Pen America, Hurston/Wright, Kingsley Tufts, and Big Other Book Award finalist. He is the 2021 recipient of OPERA America's Campbell Opera Librettist Prize, created and generously funded by librettist/lyricist Mark Campbell. Kearney is a 2022 McKnight Writing Fellow. A Whiting Writer's and Foundation for Contemporary Arts Cy Twombly awardee with residencies/fellowships from Cave Canem, The Rauschenberg Foundation, and others, he teaches Creative Writing at the University of MinnesotaTwin Cities.

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