Forgiveness Forgiveness

Poetry. African American Studies. The follow up to 2013's BLOOD (Coldfront's book of the year), FORGIVENESS FORGIVENESS is a visceral poetry collection that troubles the intersections of race, abuse, memory and history. Concerned with how the visibility of blackness can become an individual burden, FORGIVENESS FORGIVENESS traces the lingering fallout of an identity informed by traumatic artifacts and events—how the story of a story can be revised. FORGIVENESS FORGIVENESS complicates the idea of family as nurturer and destroyer. A physical and haunting work of cathartic healing. "Shane McCrae's FORGIVENESS FORGIVENESS is song that writes wrongs until they ring with generosity. When the poet turns to trauma and difficulty for subject matter, he returns to us with an unflinching devotion to hope, to possibility—bearing wisdom, sustenance. McCrae has again transmuted a legacy of violence into one of love because 'the promise / is / New life.'"—Heidi Lynn Staples