Other People's Comfort Keeps Me Up at Night
Touching
Witty
Insightful

Other People's Comfort Keeps Me Up at Night

Morgan Parker2015
Poetry. African American Studies. "I love these poems by Morgan Parker. They tell everything exactly like it is, and they don't let us off the hook—about how we run this country, about race, about how we spend our time. They treat our private, public, and online lives with all the love and scorn they deserve. They hit you with the authority and moral clarity of Langston Hughes, and have the omnivorous eye of Frank O'Hara. They have a New York School sensibility, but it's a new New York—a more polarized, unequal, and privileged New York. These poems are also just beautiful. You will want to say them to yourselves."—Matthew Rohrer "Honesty, says one of Morgan Parker's speakers, 'is uncomfortable and funny.' And how apt, how acrobatic and unflinching Parker is in bearing this thesis out. Her work roves the surfaces of our American lives—gathering up material from reality TV, from the many products we consume and are shaped by, from the sound of America in our mouths, and the racket of it in our ears. These poems are delightful in their playful ability to rake through our contemporary moment in search of all manner of riches, just as they are devastating in their ability to remind us of what we look like when nobody's watching, and of what the many things we don't—or can't—say add up to. OTHER PEOPLE'S COMFORT KEEPS ME UP AT NIGHT is hilarious and hard-hitting, and it ripples with energy, insight, and searing music."—Tracy K. Smith "I can and have read Morgan Parker's poems over and over. They make me high and think like this: Her mind and her thoughts can go anywhere in a poem. She pulls us up short, and when she says 'the sky the sky' I feel that expanse... I start taking notes: She is making a map of what human can be... she's raucous and engaged... indeterminate, visceral... collisions... these are full adventures in scale... Morgan Parker is both intellectual and concerned. Where sentences come from (in me) breaks down when I read these poems. There are piles of masterpieces here. 'I'm not like the king of black people,' to point you to one. She writes history and pleasure and kitsch and abstraction, then vanishes like a god in about 13 inches and I mean that is really cool."—Eileen Myles
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Reviews

Photo of Lindsay
Lindsay@schnurln
4.5 stars
Jun 24, 2023

Favorites:
-"There Are Other Things I Want to Explain but They Are Mysteries"
-"How to Piss in Public and Maintain Femininity"
-"Real Housewife Considers Feminist Theory While Sketching Designs for Her Handbag Line"
-"Greetings from Struggle City"
-"White Walls White People"
-"Young, Sassy, and Black"
-"I’d Rather Sink . . . Than Call Brad for Help!"

+4
Photo of Jeff Brown
Jeff Brown @jeffb23
4 stars
Feb 25, 2022

This was a very interesting book, written in verse. It was raw, rowdy and visceral, but also very funny in unexpected spots. There were several interesting poems -- my favorites were the ones titled "Miss America" and the one where she imagines herself as part of "The Cosby Show". There were poems that I didn't quite get, but there were also ones that seemed like I wasn't going to get them, then, POW, you get hit with a line or two that really hits you -- I re-read several that had that impact on me. I would rate it as a light 4, but definitely recommended.

Photo of aditi
aditi @wluvaditi
2 stars
Jan 13, 2023
Photo of katrina montgomery
katrina montgomery@katlillie
4 stars
Apr 11, 2024
Photo of Lizelle G
Lizelle G@lizelle
4 stars
Dec 28, 2023
Photo of Joycelyn Ghansah
Joycelyn Ghansah@jghansah
5 stars
Jan 20, 2023
Photo of Christina Pappas
Christina Pappas@christinaneedsbooks
4 stars
May 6, 2022
Photo of Alianor Chapman
Alianor Chapman@peachesjuleps
4 stars
Mar 31, 2022
Photo of Roger Amundsen
Roger Amundsen@gododger
5 stars
Mar 8, 2022

Highlights

Photo of Lindsay
Lindsay@schnurln

I double as a canvas

for lit- up seeds

boys like fat brushstrokes

up close

they are grotesque

-"Everything Is Bothering Me"

Photo of Lindsay
Lindsay@schnurln

I am more comfortable

being mourned than loved.


I feel my death: It is tucked

inside my ear like an itch

or a bad idea.


It’s too late for coffee, or reason, or capability.

-"Epistolary Poem for Reader, Brother, Grandmother, Men (or, When I Say I Want to Spit You Up)"

Photo of Lindsay
Lindsay@schnurln

I have been leaving space

on one side of the bed

which gives me sad dreams.

(Reader, please know

when I say bed I mean sex.)

-"Epistolary Poem for Reader, Brother, Grandmother, Men (or, When I Say I Want to Spit You Up)"

Photo of Lindsay
Lindsay@schnurln

I use these words

to distract you.

-"Young, Sassy, and Black"

Photo of Lindsay
Lindsay@schnurln

Applicants without extensive

dicks and cash flows need

to sit the fuck down.

Everyone else, you alright, except

I’ll expect you to change for me.

I know you won’t, I whisper

to every boy every morning

while he snores, stiff

and hairy in my bed.

-"Boys, Boys, Boys"

Photo of Lindsay
Lindsay@schnurln

feel the exhaustion of wearing the mask, the weight of being Black in non- Black public, the talent that living takes. This feels a long question across Morgan’s work, a Real World rewrite: what if we stopped persisting, stopped having to survive, stopped performing, and just got to be? Maybe not a question, but a plea, a prayer for self and her people alike. Can I live?

-Danez Smith

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