I Remember Death By Its Proximity to What I Love

By Mahogany L. Browne

The long form poem is a practice of poetics in joy, gratitude, sadness, resilience and pain. This literary work serves as a practice of self-reflection and accountability in the wake of the prison system. This poem is dirge work acknowledging unjust atrocities, but reveling in our human resilience.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Haymarket Books
• Release date: Sep 14, 2021
• ISBN: 9781642596465

Mahogany L. Browne

Mahogany L. Browne: The Cave Canem, Poets House and Serenbe Focus Fellow alum is the author of several books including Swag & Dear Twitter: Love Letters Hashed Out On-line, recommended by Small Press Distribution & listed as About.com Best Poetry Books of 2010. She has released five LPs and is co-founder of Brooklyn Slam (currently ranked 2nd in the world) and has toured Germany, Amsterdam, England, Canada and recently Australia as 1/3 of the cultural arts exchange project Global Poetics. Her journalism work has been published in magazines Uptown, KING, XXL, The Source, Canada's The Word and UK's MOBO. Her poetry has been published in literary journals Pluck, Manhattanville Review, Muzzle, Union Station Mag, Literary Bohemian, Bestiary Brown Girl Love and Up The Staircase. She is the Artistic Director of Urban Word NYC (as seen on HBO’s Brave New Voices) and facilitates performance poetry and writing workshops throughout the country. She is the publisher of Penmanship Books, curator & FridayNight Slam host at Nuyorican Poets Café, and Program Director of BLM@Pratt Institute. She also is a recipient of an Agnes Gund Art for Justice award.

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Praise for I Remember Death by Its Proximity to What I Love

"I have never read a book quite like I Remember Death by Its Proximity to What I Love, which explores a daughter’s longing for her father—a persistent and haunting spirit. There are endless pathways to read this searingly intelligent collection, full of magical footnotes, journalistic asides, and love notes to readers as it measures abiding love against societal threat, as it weighs personal loss against national gain. I praise Mahogany L. Browne, who is a fire starter, a conjurer of essential prayer, and a torchbearer who lights the way to justice. Her words are flames, igniting love and its essential truth. This book is an act of supreme invention that wills itself to survive through powerful insistence."

—TINA CHANG, Brooklyn Poet Laureate, author of Hybrida

"Because we work so hard to deny our vulnerability—to those we love, to those who love us, and to those whom we know mean us harm—we often find ourselves on edge, hoping no one will see that we’re afraid, that we’re breakable. In this intimate, book-length poetic journey, Mahogany L. Browne carefully examines vulnerability in herself, in her family, and, by extension, the fragility of all Black Americans who find ourselves living in a nation that often does not love us. It is the raw honesty with which Ms. Browne dissects this painful position that breaks the spell and