Thief in the Interior

by Phillip B. Williams

Overview

Recipient of a 2017 Whiting Award for Poetry
2017 Kate Tufts Discovery Award Winner
Nominated for the 2017 NAACP Image Awards for Outstanding Literary Work in Poetry
2016 INDIES Book of the Year Award Finalist
2017 Publishing Triangle’s Thom Gunn Award Finalist
2017 Lambda Literary Awards Winner
2017 Eric Hoffer Book Award Finalist
2017 Nominee for 2017 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Poetry
Shortlisted for Chicago Review of Books Award in Poetry
One of BET’s “12 Must-Read Books for 2016”

"This gorgeous debut is a 'debut' in chronology only. . . . Need is everywhere—in the unforgiving images, in lines so delicate they seem to break apart in the hands, and in the reader who will enter these poems and never want to leave."—Adrian Matejka

Phillip B. Williams investigates the dangers of desire, balancing narratives of addiction, murders, and hate crimes with passionate, uncompromising depth. Formal poems entrenched in urban landscapes crack open dialogues of racism and homophobia rampant in our culture. Multitudinous voices explore one's ability to harm and be harmed, which uniquely juxtaposes the capacity to revel in both experiences.

"Epithalamium":

A kiss. Train ride home from a late dinner,
City Hall and document signing. Wasn't cold but we cuddled in an empty car, legal.
Last month a couple of guys left a gay bar
and were beaten with poles on the way
to their car. No one called them faggot
so no hate crime's documented. A beat down
is what some pray for, a pulse left to count.
We knew we weren't protected. We knew
our rings were party favors, gold to steal
the shine from. We couldn't protect us,
knew the law wouldn't know how. Still, his
beard across my brow, the burn of his cologne.
When the train stopped, the people came on.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781938584176
Publisher:	Alice James Books
Publication date:	01/12/2016
Pages:	100
Sales rank:	1,156,570
Product dimensions:	6.80(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Phillip B. Williams is a Chicago, Illinois native and the author of the chapbooks Bruised Gospels (Arts in Bloom Inc. 2011) and Burn (YesYes Books, 2013). He is a Cave Canem graduate and received scholarships from Bread Loaf Writers Conference and a 2013 Ruth Lilly Fellowship. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Anti-, Callaloo, Kenyon Review Online, Poetry, The Southern Review, West Branch and others. Phillip received his MFA in Writing as a Chancellor’s Graduate Fellow at the Washington Universityin St. Louis. He is the poetry editor of the online journal Vinyl Poetry.

Table of Contents

I

Bound 1

Black Witch Moth 2

Ignis Fatuus 4

First Words 5

Then as Proof the Land 7

Inheritance: Spinning Noose Clears Its Throat 8

Vision in Which the Final Blackbird Disappears 10

Inheritance: The Force of Aperture 11

God as a Failed Figuration 13

Inheritance: Anthem 14

Sonnet with a Cut Wrist and Flies 20

A Spray of Feathers, Black 24

Prayer 25

Misericorde 26

II

Witness 29

III

Door to a War I Never Knew 47

Love Story 48

No, Tell Him- 49

Luminous, Whatever Honey 50

Rend 51

Of Contour, of Cadence 52

Greatly Be Gentle 53

IV

Often I am Permitted to Return to the City 57

Of Darker Ceremonies 59

A Survey of Masculinity 60

Apotheosis 61

Do-rag 64

He Loved Him Madly 66

Eleggua and Eshu Ain't the Same 70

Visitation 72

For Joy Be Righteous 73

Selvage 74

Epithalamium 75

Of Shadows and Mirrors 76

Birth of the Doppelgänger 78

Notes 81

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“The seasoned reader of poetry will be impressed that Thief in the Interior is Phillip B. Williams’s first collection. His control of the line is masterful, and his syntax eschews, for the most part, direct or simple delivery of language, creating a formal and solemn tone that scores the emotional pitches of the book.” —Los Angeles Book Review

“[Williams’] lyricism is full of interruptions—into and out of history, in and out of metaphor, in and out of the violence of being a body.” —LitHub‘s “30 Poets You Should Be Reading”

“[Williams] sings for the vanished, for the haunted, for the tortured, for the lost, for the place on the horizon where the little boat of the human body disappears in a wingdom of unending grace.” —The Best American Poetry

“Williams’ poems never cease to give you that “Aha!” moment as you read through the poem again and again to discover yet another layer of meaning. His calls for justice, for things in the dark to be brought out to the light, do not go unheard.” —San Diego Review

“To experience [Phillip B. William’s] poetry is to encounter a lucid, unmitigated humanity, a voice for whom language is inadequate, yet necessarily grasped, shaped, and consumed. His devout and excruciating attention to the line and its indispensable music fuses his implacable understanding of words with their own shadows.” —Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Boston Review

“This gorgeous debut is a ‘debut’ in chronology only, a rare poetic event that transcends our expectations. Williams’s poems embody balance: uncompromising and magnetic, surprising and intuitive. Need is everywhere—in the unforgiving images, in lines so delicate they seem to break apart in the hands, and in the reader who will enter these poems and never want to leave.” —Adrian Matejka, author of The Big Smoke

“Not just more of the artfully skill-less, conceptual talk of a poem, this is what you’ve been waiting for: some poetry. Not just skill as possession, as a commodity, but skill to accomplish the expressive event, a deeply felt poetic argument. For example Williams’ line is no arbitrary unit of type, but an effective musically syntactic accomplishment of line. Poetry!” —Ed Roberson

“Williams demonstrates an astounding technical mastery of poetic forms that goes far beyond form for form’s sake, as he repeats, reconfigures, and recontextualizes words and phrases in order to create continuity and multifaceted meanings.” —Muzzle Magazine

“. . .Thief in the Interior is a remarkable collection that balances engagement with both the horrific and the beautiful.” —Southern Humanities Review

“Thief in the Interior does what a collection of poems should do. It draws its reader in and forces its reader to think, to admire, to observe, to question and to whip out the notebook and go nuts on the adjectives—dynamic, robust, dominant, vigorous, inventive, vigorous, original, musical, original, and adroit.” —The Adroit Journal

“Thief in the Interior damns and redeems, and represents a truly worthwhile literary experience.” —Blackbird

Editorial Reviews

11/16/2015
Williams (Burn), editor of Vinyl Poetry and a 2013 Ruth Lilly Fellowship recipient, adroitly constructs a flowing personal narrative through such broader cultural issues as racism, religion, love, and homophobia. Speaking in a lyrically diverse delivery, and with emotions crackling within its formal constraints, Williams’s collection acts as a labyrinth of self-spun webs and a lament for the bleak pattern of police brutality inflicted on black bodies. The bodies of young black boys are sacrificed; the cocktail of dire circumstance and systemic inheritances are made even crueler in the daylight. In “Agenda,” Williams transforms the hoodie into a symbol of unspoken yet fierce brotherhood, while “The Force of Aperture” exposes the American Dream as “white writhing over black, the American aesthetic.” Reading the collection’s third section leaves bruises as Williams’s poetic I filters the speaker’s visceral reactions through various degrees of vulnerability. The bluntness and heat of such confessions produce a strange allure in the musicality of the lines and in the beating hearts behind the nameless characters profiled. More than a straightforward work of protest poetry, this book becomes a multitude of distinct voices into the collective sound of a larger movement. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly