{"product_id":"9781936919390","title":"i be, but i ain't","description":"\u003cbr\u003ePoetry. African \u0026amp; African American Studies. \"Incandescent in her brutality \u0026amp; neon truth, Aziza Barnes writes her way into an urgent Black, wide \u0026amp; beautiful in its scream. You will find lightning here. You will discover a bruised constellation exploding in a vast black body. Her syllables devour the sweet hurt \u0026amp; harm of their own naked limbs \u0026amp; offer us a generous feast. Aziza Barnes is her own revolution, her own galactic orbit \u0026amp; oracle. She writes, 'In my own home I attempt nightly\/to eat my body alive.' These poems suck their teeth \u0026amp; know their own desperate bones. She grieves, 'i done walked with a name i couldn't shake \u0026amp; now i gone.' Shaped and forged in powerful consciousness, Aziza Barnes possesses a gifted voice that will always be needed and necessary. The poems of this extraordinary debut sweat themselves Black with imagination and desire. In I BE, BUT I AIN'T, Barnes achieves both freedom \u0026amp; forgiveness in an ache that persists infinitely in its intelligence \u0026amp; intuition. Listen to her: 'I am ungloved in a sabbath of spit.'\"—Rachel Eliza Griffiths\u003cp\u003e\"Aziza Barnes's I BE, BUT I AIN'T is a powerful debut that refuses to stroke you soft or angle to be your best friend. Instead, these poems revel in the menagerie of their own discomfort, and ours. Barnes's is a wild imagination and her poems an ill grammar akin to Jayne Cortez's percussive surrealism of the body. Want a lolly pop? You won't get that here. Her poetic is challenging and sophisticated, in a language that refuses to assuage.\"—Dawn Lundy Martin\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"YesYes Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47039765512432,"sku":"9781936919390","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781936919390_p0.jpg?v=1763660347","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781936919390","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}