Synopses & Reviews
Field Theories wends its way through quantum mechanics, chicken wings, Newports, and love, melding blackbody theory (idealized perfect absorption vs. the whitebody's idealized reflection) with live Black bodies. Woven through experimental lyrics is a heroic crown of sonnets that wonders about love, intent, identity, hybridity, and how we embody these interstices. Albert Murray said, "The second law of thermodynamics ain't nothin' but the blues." So what is the blue of how we treat each other, ourselves, and the world, and of how the world treats us?
Review
"A lyric scientist at the top of her game, Samiya Bashir explores the emotional and cultural physics of desire, love, loss, family, history, and everyday existence in her new collection Field Theories....Bashir asks and shows with consummate artistry, what are the deep and hidden laws that divide and connect us?" John Keene
Review
“This book splits the sky right open, swinging like a melody, swinging like a boxer, swinging on each elemental and freighted word to beat the devil.” D.A. Powell
Review
"In this electrifying collection, Bashir co-opts the vernacular of thermodynamics to generate clever, ambitious poems.... The result is a dynamic, shape-shifting machine of perpetual motion that reveals poignant observance (Even Jesus let / his baker's dozen fend / for themselves once) and verges toward hallucination (We blow smoke rings and shape them into big beaned cloud gates)." Booklist
Review
"In her third collection, Bashir (Gospel) displays an intriguingly multivalent approach to the objectivities and subjectivities of black experience reflected in her multimedia collaborations.... Bashir positions the slings and arrows of black American life as both empirically observable and available for radical, and movingly layered, interpretations." Publisher Weekly
About the Author
Samiya Bashir's previous books include Gospel, Where the Apple Falls, and Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social & Political Black Literature & Art. She lives in Portland, Oregon.
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From Newbery and Caldecott medalist Renée Watson to Whiting and Ernst J. Gains Award winner Mitchell S. Jackson, the writers below often examine Black life in the Pacific Northwest, and their words are central to our evolving, collective sense of place and identity...
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