The Best Barbarian / Roger Reeves / 2023
Through a postcolonial remix of Grendel and a poems steeped in animality, Roger Reeves carves out a vision of resistance and rootedness that growls and howls and yowls with its pain between its teeth. Absolutely gorgeous lines will make the temperature of your body drop and rise with its gallop with poems ranging from police brutality to the violence in Palestine and more. There's a set of jazz improvisation poems that lose me a bit but they deliver punchlines and Roger is never ever ever offbeat. I wanna read his nonfiction next. 4.5/5