Fred Moten teaches courses and conducts research in black studies, performance studies, poetics and critical theory at New York University. He is the author of Arkansas (Pressed Wafer, 2000), In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition (University of Minnesota Press, 2003), I ran from it but was still in it. (Cusp Books, 2007), Hughson's Tavern(Leon Works, 2008), B Jenkins (Duke University Press, 2009), The Feel Trio (Letter Machine Editions, 2014), which was a National Book Award finalist. He also is the co-author with Stefano Harney of The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study (Minor Compositions, 2013).

• Contentsthe red sheaves coveringcorduroy, no strings attachedthe interfacial layer is violence, not carethe intrafacial lairafro-alienation lining outtables and gemsthe faerie ornithologiesylphtet (a triologue of self and soulare you one of these motherfuckers?color fieldtiling, lining notestilling, limning notes surfacingthe abolition of art, the abolition of freedom, the abolition of you and meapproaching asécowrecked and led to trespassfingerprintingtaj subjductionsubductive laurenwith the band2why you leave ‘em with me?got ‘im!merda nostraknottingepistrophe and epistrophyor discovering graves say, grave says

These poems are celebrations and performances of Black vernacular culture’s transformative power, performances of celebration in the root sense of the Latin celebrare (honor), the honoring of culturally specific meaning-making, speech acts that explore the multiple significances manifest in historical patterns and their breaking.–Michael Thurston, Massachusetts ReviewMoten helps us feel the difference between real beauty of spirit and its impersonations, by uniting style, rigor, and form so seamlessly that the lesser musics will simply be forgotten.–Harmony Holiday, BOMB[Moten’s] newest collection develops a poetics of indeterminacy, using visual art and music as focal points upon which to hone its faculty of critique. And, being an unyieldingly interdisciplinary text, it does so in the context of scientific, philosophical, and critical discourses that turn upon the thought of the intensive: that which resists being counted, weighed, or otherwise quantified. In perennial fashion presence falling, Moten’s fields and rivers don’t stretch, his landscapes don’t unfold, so much as they sublimate, transfiguring representation into abstraction.–Coleman Edward Dues, Cleveland Review of BooksMoten’s poetics say only in “disintegration,” or as this collection might call it “surfacing,” of what is known as “culture,” only in the falling / breaking apart, only in the “reach beyond grasping,” can “we get to / go through / someplace else,” which is the very place art needs to aspire if we are ever going to move from a culture built upon brutality.–Dan Hodgson, Action, Spectacle

Fred Moten teaches courses and conducts research in black studies, performance studies, poetics and critical theory at New York University. He is the author of Arkansas (Pressed Wafer, 2000), In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition (University of Minnesota Press, 2003), I ran from it but was still in it. (Cusp Books, 2007), Hughson's Tavern(Leon Works, 2008), B Jenkins (Duke University Press, 2009), The Feel Trio (Letter Machine Editions, 2014), which was a National Book Award finalist. He also is the co-author with Stefano Harney of The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study (Minor Compositions, 2013).

• Contentsthe red sheaves coveringcorduroy, no strings attachedthe interfacial layer is violence, not carethe intrafacial lairafro-alienation lining outtables and gemsthe faerie ornithologiesylphtet (a triologue of self and soulare you one of these motherfuckers?color fieldtiling, lining notestilling, limning notes surfacingthe abolition of art, the abolition of freedom, the abolition of you and meapproaching asécowrecked and led to trespassfingerprintingtaj subjductionsubductive laurenwith the band2why you leave ‘em with me?got ‘im!merda nostraknottingepistrophe and epistrophyor discovering graves say, grave says

These poems are celebrations and performances of Black vernacular culture’s transformative power, performances of celebration in the root sense of the Latin celebrare (honor), the honoring of culturally specific meaning-making, speech acts that explore the multiple significances manifest in historical patterns and their breaking.–Michael Thurston, Massachusetts ReviewMoten helps us feel the difference between real beauty of spirit and its impersonations, by uniting style, rigor, and form so seamlessly that the lesser musics will simply be forgotten.–Harmony Holiday, BOMB[Moten’s] newest collection develops a poetics of indeterminacy, using visual art and music as focal points upon which to hone its faculty of critique. And, being an unyieldingly interdisciplinary text, it does so in the context of scientific, philosophical, and critical discourses that turn upon the thought of the intensive: that which resists being counted, weighed, or otherwise quantified. In perennial fashion presence falling, Moten’s fields and rivers don’t stretch, his landscapes don’t unfold, so much as they sublimate, transfiguring representation into abstraction.–Coleman Edward Dues, Cleveland Review of BooksMoten’s poetics say only in “disintegration,” or as this collection might call it “surfacing,” of what is known as “culture,” only in the falling / breaking apart, only in the “reach beyond grasping,” can “we get to / go through / someplace else,” which is the very place art needs to aspire if we are ever going to move from a culture built upon brutality.–Dan Hodgson, Action, Spectacle

Fred Moten teaches courses and conducts research in black studies, performance studies, poetics and critical theory at New York University. He is the author of Arkansas (Pressed Wafer, 2000), In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition (University of Minnesota Press, 2003), I ran from it but was still in it. (Cusp Books, 2007), Hughson's Tavern(Leon Works, 2008), B Jenkins (Duke University Press, 2009), The Feel Trio (Letter Machine Editions, 2014), which was a National Book Award finalist. He also is the co-author with Stefano Harney of The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study (Minor Compositions, 2013).

• Contentsthe red sheaves coveringcorduroy, no strings attachedthe interfacial layer is violence, not carethe intrafacial lairafro-alienation lining outtables and gemsthe faerie ornithologiesylphtet (a triologue of self and soulare you one of these motherfuckers?color fieldtiling, lining notestilling, limning notes surfacingthe abolition of art, the abolition of freedom, the abolition of you and meapproaching asécowrecked and led to trespassfingerprintingtaj subjductionsubductive laurenwith the band2why you leave ‘em with me?got ‘im!merda nostraknottingepistrophe and epistrophyor discovering graves say, grave says

These poems are celebrations and performances of Black vernacular culture’s transformative power, performances of celebration in the root sense of the Latin celebrare (honor), the honoring of culturally specific meaning-making, speech acts that explore the multiple significances manifest in historical patterns and their breaking.–Michael Thurston, Massachusetts ReviewMoten helps us feel the difference between real beauty of spirit and its impersonations, by uniting style, rigor, and form so seamlessly that the lesser musics will simply be forgotten.–Harmony Holiday, BOMB[Moten’s] newest collection develops a poetics of indeterminacy, using visual art and music as focal points upon which to hone its faculty of critique. And, being an unyieldingly interdisciplinary text, it does so in the context of scientific, philosophical, and critical discourses that turn upon the thought of the intensive: that which resists being counted, weighed, or otherwise quantified. In perennial fashion presence falling, Moten’s fields and rivers don’t stretch, his landscapes don’t unfold, so much as they sublimate, transfiguring representation into abstraction.–Coleman Edward Dues, Cleveland Review of BooksMoten’s poetics say only in “disintegration,” or as this collection might call it “surfacing,” of what is known as “culture,” only in the falling / breaking apart, only in the “reach beyond grasping,” can “we get to / go through / someplace else,” which is the very place art needs to aspire if we are ever going to move from a culture built upon brutality.–Dan Hodgson, Action, Spectacle