The Opposite of Cruelty

Steven Leyvas second collection of poetry renders beauty through a Black mans lens in a post-pandemic world populated with superheroes and characters from ancient mythology. In The Opposite of Cruelty, Steven Leyvas poems ask readers to see and remember beauty when the world seems to be in ruins, to notice and praise the industrious cherry // trees budding despite a summer / full of bullets to come. For Leyva, beauty can be found in lineage and memory, in the heroes of the comics and TV shows he watched as a boy, in taking his children to the movies to see an afro-latino Spider-man on the big screen, and in doing so passing down that beauty, those means of survival. In these sonnets and urban pastorals youll find Selena, UGK and Outkast, Storm, Static, and Batman, as well as Sisyphus, Medusa, Perseus, and Grendel. This weaving of modern culture and the ancient world calls attention to our need for stories, how heroes and villains take up residence inside us, how important it is to see ones self represented in art and film. This book does not look away from life's hard and cruel moments, it simply dares to ask What is the opposite of cruelty? The answers: The beauty of a Black boy in his school picture, the beauty of one mans hand touching another mans face at the barber, the beauty of a family home or a memory of what it once was, "not a season of phantasmal peace, but whats left / when the worlds terrors retreat.