Ep. 422 Room Swept Home by Remica Bingham-Risher — The Stacks Book Club (Mahogany L. Browne)

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Stacks Ep. 422

Room Swept Home by Remica Bingham-Risher

Host: Traci Thomas
Guest: Mahogany L. Browne
Theme: April Book Club, National Poetry Month – Deep-dive into Remica Bingham-Risher’s poetry collection, Room Swept Home

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Episode Overview

This Book Club edition of The Stacks celebrates National Poetry Month by diving deep into Room Swept Home, the Los Angeles Book Prize-winning poetry collection by Remica Bingham-Risher. Host Traci Thomas and guest poet Mahogany L. Browne discuss the book’s themes of race, maternal lineage, archival history, faith, and Black womanhood. They explore the craft of the collection, its archival and imaginative moves, the interplay between history and personal narrative, and how Bingham-Risher contributes to the tradition and innovation of poetry. The episode unpacks the book’s structure, formal experimentation, and profound emotional terrain.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Initial Impressions: Non-Romanticized Family Histories

• [01:39] Mahogany L. Browne: “Even though this is a book of memoir and a book of imagination, she doesn't romanticize the past. She examines it with care… she reveals the returning to one's origin as an act of returning to self.”
• Mahogany praises Bingham-Risher for turning “the commonplace and the sacred” into deeply textured poetry, seeing the poems as sites of memory, migration, and womanhood. She notes the “sanctuary for Black women to sit still” that the book creates.
  • [06:58] Mahogany: “I love this book. I love it so much.”

Traci’s Take

• Traci was struck by how the collection functions as a matrilineal family memoir, both archival and inventive, noting the power of seeing family documents and imagining lives:
  • [07:53] Traci: “There’s a moment where you see the ledger where Mary is signed into the insane asylum…and on the next page you get this poem that imagines her intake. And it's so powerful.”

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2. Archive, Erasure, and Reclamation

• [09:39] Traci & Mahogany: The book foregrounds artifacts like the admissions ledger and the “Lost Friends” notices—historical records used to search for lost family post-enslavement. The poems reclaim this history:
  • [10:34] Mahogany: “She took those histories, the inadequacy of it, and rounded it back into a human form, into these loving pieces of poetic snapshots for her people to thrive in and then therefore, for us to thrive in.”
• They discuss the difficulty of Black genealogical research and the longing for ancestral certainty:
  • [12:11] Mahogany: “My partner does a lot of genealogy work...It's possible. You just have to have that tool… I’m literally still walking around in my memory the story that Pawpaw told me.”

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3. Ancestral Technology & Lineage

• Mahogany introduces the concept of “ancestral technology”:
  • [14:18] Mahogany: “Something that is passed through the DNA...the remembering. It doesn't mean that you went through something to have your body remember the thing...That is ancestral technology.”
• Discuss the epigraph as validation for Bingham-Risher’s poetic calling:
  • [13:27] Traci: “Imagine being Remica and finding that [epigraph]...That’s gotta validate your whole...Because I'm sure there were times in her life where she was like, I really want to write…”

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4. Form, Persona, and Archives as Poetry

• Structure & Form: Mahogany discusses how structuring a poetry collection starts with “the hammer”—a poem that captures and holds the reader’s attention (Terence Hayes reference) – [18:24] Mahogany.
• Persona & Voice: Bingham-Risher uses persona poems to give life to ancestors:
  • [20:06] Traci: “The poet’s job...is to make the dead become the living.”
  • [21:28] Mahogany: “We are living those great great great grandparents’ dreams now...their voice carries with us.”

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5. Craft: Shape, Sound, and Syntax

• Poetic Shape: Form and indentation on the page are likened to musical scores and symbolic meanings (e.g., tilling the land):
  • [27:31] Mahogany: “It felt like a tilling, like tilling of land… instantly saw rows of harvest.”
• Sound & Movement: Both marvel at Bingham-Risher’s manipulation of sound, especially consonance and the musicality of lines:
  • [41:34] Traci: “I was really struck by...the consonants and vowels and the way she...it's just awesome music.”

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6. Historical Anchoring & Broader Events

• Poignant integration of archival documents, e.g., the WPA interview questions:
  • [45:53] Traci: “So much of the history that we understand about what happened during the centuries of enslavement...came from these interviews...They are flawed...However, there is so much amazing stuff.”
  • [49:47] Mahogany: “It feels like half inquiry, half threat.”
• Poems marking moments of racial violence—lynchings, riots—are threaded throughout to show how personal and historical trauma intertwine:
  • [53:39] Mahogany: “She never overpowered us with the poems...embedding it into the integrity of this quilt...look how joy still lives.”

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7. Formal Innovation: Crown of Sonnets, Suite, Cento, Contrapuntal

• The “Lose Your Mother” suite uses advanced poetic forms:
  • Contrapuntal: Two-poem construction, read left, right, and across for a third meaning – [57:39] Mahogany: “You read the left column first, top to bottom. You read the right column...and then in the third read, you read from the first line, first column left, all the way through the right...”
  • Cento: Final poem in the suite composed of titles/lines from the suite, a nod to canon and tradition.
  • Formal Play: Signals Bingham-Risher’s place in and expansion of the poetic canon:
    • [69:03] Traci: “This section feels very much...it has a chestiness to it of, like, this is Remica’s section. ...I can do all the shit that you guys think that we should do to be real poets.”
    • [70:08] Mahogany: “I studied your form, and I raise you.”

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8. Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On loss and inheritance:
  • [23:04] Mahogany: “What do we inherit when trauma is at the core of our fractured living?”
• On poetry’s power:
  • [25:23] Traci: “She doesn't land where you think she's going to…she's journeyed somewhere for many of them.”
• On archiving Black experience:
  • [50:45] Mahogany: “Poetry as archive is possible. There are ways to demonstrate mastery and restraint and musicality.”
• On family, legacy, and survival:
  • [73:24] Mahogany (on the final poem): “Clean being the engine that runs this motor of Black life, joy, lineage. ...You keep being reminded of all the ways in which her people remained and how sharp they remained, how beautiful, how pristine.”

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [01:39] Mahogany on not romanticizing the past
• [05:04] Mahogany’s written reflection on the collection
• [10:34] Discussion on reclaiming history and the impact of archives
• [13:27] Power of the epigraph & ancestral validation
• [18:24] Mahogany on the importance of the collection’s first poem
• [27:31] Analysis of poem structure and symbolism
• [41:34] Traci on sound and rhythm in “Strip Tobacco Like Greens”
• [45:53] Explanation of WPA’s significance in Black history
• [53:39] Integrating historical trauma into the poetry
• [57:39] Explanation and reading strategy for contrapuntal poems
• [63:25] Formal connections in the “Lose Your Mother” suite
• [69:03] Traci and Mahogany on Bingham-Risher’s place in the poetic canon
• [71:26] Reading and analysis of the final poem, “Room Swept Home”

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Notable Quotes

• Mahogany L. Browne [14:18]: “Ancestral technology. Something that is passed through the DNA… that is ancestral technology.”
• Traci Thomas [20:06]: “The poet’s job...is to make the dead become the living.”
• Mahogany L. Browne [41:34]: “I felt like she became my favorite battle rapper in those [lines]. Just to remind you she contains multitudes.”
• Traci Thomas [53:12]: “Our parents and our grandparents and our great, great grandparents were living, doing normal things, having babies in the midst of this in the same ways that we are.”
• Mahogany L. Browne [69:03]: “I'm a part of the canon. So I think she definitely said, I does this.”

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Closing Reflections

• Both hosts celebrate the book’s rich layering of personal and collective Black histories, its innovative formal strategies, and its commitment to truth-telling.
• The final poem, “Room Swept Home,” is praised for encapsulating themes of care, preservation, and the everyday acts that bind lineage and legacy:
  • [73:24] Mahogany: “That displacement and belonging—they can coexist...It feels like just coming to terms with it, but also like holding it up to the light, with reverence.”

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Further Resources

• For immersive experiences, listen to the audiobook as you read along.
  • [78:10] Traci: “If you can get the audiobook. Remica reads it. It’s very beautiful...she's giving you more information in her reading in a way that's so wonderful.”
• For poetry fans or those just starting, the hosts recommend reading poems aloud to experience their sound and feeling.

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Next Book Club Pick: Lonely Crowds by Stephanie Wambugu (Book Club episode airing May 27, 2026)

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This episode was a vibrant celebration of Black lineage, poetic tradition, and the power of poetry to restore, remember, and reimagine.

Transcript

[Tracy Thomas]

As you all know, the Stacks just celebrated its birthday last month and I cannot thank you all enough for supporting this independent podcast for the last eight years. We truly could not do it without you. My plan is to continue to bring you many more years of great reads, author interviews, behind the scenes looks in the book world and pop culture gossip. But I can only do that with your support. So giving us a listen every week goes a long way. And if you want to go that extra mile, consider. Consider supporting the Stacks on Patreon and Substack. I will say May is also the month that kicks off summer around here. I believe in the longest possible summer. That's Memorial Day to September 22nd for those who are wondering. And summer ushers in the era of the summer reading guide. My non fiction reading guide is coming in May for all of you who are paid subscribers on Patreon or Substack. So that's just a perk to keep in mind in addition to everything else we've got going on, like book club meetups, our Discord conversation, bonus episodes, my weekly show and tell over on Substack. Making this podcast takes a village, as they say. And you're part of our village when you support through Patreon and Substack so that me and my amazing team can continue doing what we do best, which is bringing this podcast to you every single week. So if you or your friends are looking to meet other book lovers, support an independent podcast. Come hang out with me at patreon.com the stacks on Patreon and subscribe to my newsletter at Tracy thomas.substack.com I would love to have you.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Even though this is a book of memoir and a book of imagination, she doesn't romanticize the past. She examines it with care. Yeah. In that examination, she reveals the returning to one's origin as an act of returning to self. So it also feels like while she's unearthing all of these small little trivial things that we just write off as you was born on Christmas. Like all those moments, she's like, let's think about this in this way. And she just turns it a little bit so that romanticism, it's dying on the vine. It really is.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

She's trying to give us a different bounty of fruit.

[Tracy Thomas]

Welcome to the Stacks, a podcast about books and the people who read them. I'm your host, Tracy Thomas, and today is the Stack Stacks Book Club Day. We are joined by Mahogany L. Brown to discuss our April book club pick. In honor of National Poetry Month, the book is Room Swept Home by Ramika Bingham Risher. This is the 2025 Los Angeles book Prize winning poetry collection that explores the themes of race, maternal lineage, faith and mental health through the lens of Ramika's own family history. Today, Mo and I talk all about these poems. We talk about what they mean. We talk about how and why Ramika would want to tell this story in this way. We talk about the archive, the lineage of poetry. We get into it all. And be sure you stay tuned till the end of today's episode to find out what our May book club pick will be. Everything we talk about on each episode of the Stacks is linked in our show Notes. If you want more bookish community, more hot takes and content from me, consider joining the Stacks Pack on Patreon and subscribing to my newsletter Unstacked on Substack. These are two different spaces to lean a little further into the Stacks universe, if you will. You get different perks at both places. If you're looking for community and conversation and virtual book clubs, head to Patreon. And if you want more of my writings on culture, on nonfiction book recommendations, head to Substack. And know that in both places you get bonus episodes each month. And you get to make it possible for me to make this podcast every single week. To join, head to patreon.com the stacks for the Stacks Pack and you can subscribe to my newsletter at Tracy Thomas substack.com All right, now it is time for my conversation with Mahogany L. Brown about Room Swept Home by Ramika Bingham Rischer. Hi everybody. It is the Saks Book Club day and it's Poetry Month, which means we're discussing a poetry collection. We're discussing Room Swept Home by Rameka Bingham Risher, and we are joined again by the absolutely wonderful, stunning, amazing, almost birthday girl, but will have been birthday girl by the time you guys listen to this. Mahogany L. Brown welcome back, my dear.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Thank you for having me, Boo.

[Tracy Thomas]

I'm so excited. Okay. Oh, we're. We're diving right in. We're diving right in. Here we go. Room Swept Home. We always start here. What generally, broadly, did you think of this collection? And if you've read it more than once, did anything change on later readings?

[Mahogany L. Brown]

First thoughts because, you know, I had to write it down. No one plays with Remica Bingham Risher without studying the letters. Ramika takes both commonplace and the sacred, infuses them within the care of a particular action, which is to tend to tend to. Ramika illustrates with her poetry the Actions that tend to all we know through hands moving over a familiar surface, a table or another piece of furniture, by clearing the surface, arranging it, and remembering what was previously neglected as those things come forward and they're worthy of being passed from one generation to the next. So. So for the poet, home can be represented through fixed structures, living altars and living history. And through the layers of history formed by genetic connection, movement around the earth, and the private negotiation of being a black woman in this world. Ramika put together a deeply reflective body of work, braiding memory, migration and womanhood into textured poetic archive. That's what I wrote when I first read it. Right. Cause you have to, like, put it in some nation. And then I went back and I had one extra word that I had to add, and that was church. Ooh, praise church. Ramika gave us a sanctuary for black women to sit still. And. And what I realized is I need to write better poems.

[Tracy Thomas]

Okay, that's hilarious.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Good. When the poet writes so good that you, like, what have I been doing?

[Tracy Thomas]

What am I doing? Yeah.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Let me wake up. Let me. Let me dig into the archives. Let me remember who was here before they told me nothing was here. Let me. Let me go home to church. Yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

I love that.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

I love this book. I love it so much.

[Tracy Thomas]

Okay. I'm going to tell you my sort of initial thoughts. I did not write them down like that. I took notes because I'm not a poet or a writer, and I hope to never be. So here's what I said. What I really appreciated about this poetry collection is that it did things that I didn't know that poets could do. Like, I didn't. It had never occurred to me that you could write a family memoir as a collection of poems, which is essentially what this book is. Right. Like, it's a matrilineal family memoir. We get the story. And I should have said this at the beginning for people who didn't read it. This collection is inspired by the author, Ramika's. Her paternal great great grandmother, Minnie, and then her maternal great grandmother Mary. No, excuse me. Her maternal grandmother Mary.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Her paternal great great great grandmother Minnie.

[Tracy Thomas]

Minnie. And her maternal grandmother Mary.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Mary, correct.

[Tracy Thomas]

And they both intersected in Uptown, in. In Virginia. And that sort of inspired it for, like, a few years. And that inspired at the end of Minnie's life and sort of right after Mary had had a child, she was what we would now say had, like, postpartum depression. They called it Water on the Brain, which is also like a poem. Is that not a Poem.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Water on the Brain Anthology.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah, that's it. Water on the Brain, the story of Black Woman Madness. About the story of crazy black women.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Yes, yes.

[Tracy Thomas]

And so that inspired her to go into the archive and look around and she sort of says in her introduction, she imagined that from across town they might have passed or had, like. And so I just didn't. I didn't know you could do that with poetry. Of course I know that you can, but it had never occurred to me that you could. And then just like from a personal level, the second half of the poems. The second half of the book really spoke to me. Like, those were the poems. That's where the majority of my, like, favorite poems in the collection came from. But I was the most excited about, like, the archival non fictiony piece of the first half. Like, there's a moment where you see the ledger where Mary is signed into.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Yes.

[Tracy Thomas]

The. Like the insane asylum, basically.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Yes.

[Tracy Thomas]

And you see that picture and then on the next page you get this poem that imagines her intake.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Yes.

[Tracy Thomas]

And it's so powerful.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Yes.

[Tracy Thomas]

That poem isn't necessarily like my favorite poem, but that moment will stick with me, you know, Whereas.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Right. It's the captain of this really intense moment of like, first they say that we didn't belong here. Then they say they have no record of what was happening when we were here. Not only did we belong here, we know that, but she gives us place. And then she shows how erasure happens.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

And then she un. Erases, Right. Her people with the poem that comes like that kickstand moment of juxtapositioning what you know to be true versus what you've been taught is truth. It comes barreling forward and it is some of the most sad parts of the. Of the book. For me, that was the. That was the saddest part where I was like, oh, y' all just going to say anything, or you just say anything?

[Tracy Thomas]

They'll just say anything.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

And that's. And that becomes the artifact of our life, that becomes the memory that we keep of our people. And the fact that she took those histories, the inadequacy of it, and she rounded it back into a human form, into these loving pieces of. Of poetic snapshots for. For her people to thrive in and then therefore, for us to thrive in.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah. I get. Every time I see a family tree in the book about black people, I get so jealous.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Right.

[Tracy Thomas]

I'm just like, I gotta. I gotta figure out how to make time to go to the archive and like, I gotta have a. I Just. I want to know so bad. I tried to do, like, all the ancestry.com, blah, blah, blah. I couldn't get very far. But every time I see it, I'm just like, I want this so bad.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Just to know where you. To know who you're from. Yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

And, like, to know that I. To know that we were here.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

That's right.

[Tracy Thomas]

For sure. Like, for sure my people were here.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Absolutely.

[Tracy Thomas]

I know they were here, but I want to know for sure. Like, I want to be able to say, I. I know this piece of information.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

Like in Imani Perry's book South to America, she's able to go really far back in her family tree. I can't remember how far. Cause I read the book years ago. But I remember when I first met her, after reading that book, I was like, how did you. How did you do it? Like, it's. It was something. Maybe it's not actually, but in my memory, it was like she got back to the 1700s.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

I think you're right. If it was 1700s, it's something that I didn't think was possible. My partner does, like, a lot of genealogy work, just as an artist. So all of the stories that I had coming to New York from Oakland, California, were stories that were passed on to us from Grandma.

[Tracy Thomas]

Paul. Paul.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

And then to come to New York and meet someone who does this, like, rigorously. I gave him a couple of the timestamps, the stories, and he came back with, like, actually, that's not what happened. I found some documents, so it's possible. You just have to have that. That. That tool, that niche. He has it. I don't have it. I'm not. I'm. I'm literally still walking around in my memory the story that Pawpaw told me. Right. How we got our last name.

[Tracy Thomas]

I could do it. I just need someone to point me to the right place.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Yeah. Okay.

[Tracy Thomas]

Okay. But anyways, so I like that picture. In the beginning of the book, I was just like, I'm so jealous already. I hate her. I hate her so much. But the book starts with this epigraph from Lee, folks, who is. Who is the family member from 1937. And she says, I just know I could. If I knowed how to write and had a little learning, I could put off a book on this here situation.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

She already knew she was an author. Baby Ramika came from.

[Tracy Thomas]

She came from it. Yeah. But, like, when. I mean, I. I mean, I just want to do, like, a little fantasy moment. Imagine being Remika and finding that, like, don't you feel like that's gotta validate your whole. Because I'm sure there were times in her life where she was like, I really want to write. I want to be a poet. And people were like, okay, but like, how are. How you know you have no business, right? And then you find this from your great great great grandmother, powerful.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Not only are you designed to do this work, but who's to say she wasn't guiding that pen? Come on now.

[Tracy Thomas]

That's right. It's like you're, You're. You were. This was always there. Like the universe has been conspiring for your success as a writer in every possible way. It's just. It's chilling.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Yes, it's chilling. It's also. Can be known as ancestral technology.

[Tracy Thomas]

Ooh.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Ancestral technology. Something that is passed through the DNA. Right. Also, I think it. That notes. That's like a nod at Toni Morrison. Ancestral technology, obviously, is ancient, but Toni Morrison said, the remembering. Right, the remembering. It doesn't mean that you went through something to have your body remember the thing. And most of that, more times than not, is spiritual. That's coming from who made it possible for you to be here. So that ancestral technology of needing to write, of knowing that this is your place to write, and seeing that her great great great grandmother said, I got a story to tell. And now here Ramika is putting out great great great grandmother's story. That ain't nothing but divinity. That's. That is ancestral technology. She said, yes, the stars have aligned.

[Tracy Thomas]

It's amazing. It's amazing.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

And then for her to have that tree. That tree.

[Tracy Thomas]

The tree. And in between the epigraph and the tree, we get the lost friends notice. Ooh. I mean, this book starts off with a fudgeing bang.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

Like the way she situates her reader in the world. I mean, the COVID is doing a lot of work.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Yes.

[Tracy Thomas]

The COVID is like this blue with the yellow and the green, and it's got these plants. And then it's got what I assume is Minnie, Mary, and Ramika as sort of collaged on this painting with the home that looks like one of the homes from the pictures. And you're just like, okay, I. I see where we are. Right. And then you go in, you get these epic. This epigraph from Minnie, you get this lost friend notice, which is basically. It's in these publications. Black people would write to the publication saying, I'm looking for this friend or this family member because we've been separated and this is their name or this is where I last saw them, or this is where they were. And in the hopes. I mean, it's sort of like a, you know, misconnection or whatever.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Yes. I was about to say this is the original misconnection.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah, exactly. And people wrote for years and years. And so she writes her own poem, paragraph. It's prose, but it's very poetic. And she names her family members. And, you know, I just want to read this a little bit. My parents names are here holding Uncle's names are sprightly, long gone, Whisper and roadbed Aunts hunger. Child free child many want and wanting. Come on. Yes, I love Child free and child

[Mahogany L. Brown]

many child Child free child many want and wanting Whisper, road, bed long gone, Sprightly. Like. Her ability to talk about displacement memory into generational care, all the while with an attention to lyric is masterful and also archetype.

[Tracy Thomas]

Everyone knows the child free and the child many Auntie. Everyone knows the want and the wanting Auntie. Everybody knows uncle long gone. Right. Like, it's like these are archetypal black family members. You might not have all of them in your family, but you know, all of them, they are within your communities. It's just. It's an incredible, incredible place to launch a collection from. And then we sort of get her introduction where she explains the project, and then we start with Minnie.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Yes.

[Tracy Thomas]

And this. I want to ask you this as a poet, okay? As a person who has put together poetry collections. How do you know where to start? What is the first poem? And do you. I know sometimes people, like, write a collection and they reorganize it. And then I know maybe some people write a collection and they know they don't have the first poem, but I guess not so much. How do you know which one it is? But what are you hoping to do with the first poem in your collection?

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Right. That's a great question. I think I always return to Terence Hayes's notes. He was, you know, OG poet, Guggenheim, genius, all of the MacArthur genius, whatever. He's that dude. And he writes like nobody's business. He's also, like a painter. But I remember something he said when he was teaching at Cave, and he said, you got to remember that that first poem may be the only time you get that reader's attention. So the first poem is the hook, right? You can. You can dwaddle on. You can do a whole bunch of languishing and lush language later, but if that does not. If that's not the first nail that is hammering into the foundation, a place for the structure to remain, then you might not get page two reader. You might not get chapter three, reader. So I always think of that. That's in the forefront of my mind when creating the book. I'll just put it all together. The editor will look at it, they'll say, well, I think these three poems could do it right. And I have to trust myself. How have I seen this poem work in the. In the room? And because I have the luxury of having most of my performance in poetry life be in very large spaces, large stages. I know exactly, like sonically what this poem is going to do. So that's how I choose. I choose what is the hammer, the nail and the hammer. What's going to make them stay and want to turn the page.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah. I wanted to say one little thing about the introduction.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

At the very end of the introduction, this is what she says. The poet's job is. The poet's job, I. E. The poet as historian, as opposed to other undertakings such as poet as soothsayer, poet as family arbiter, poet as line dancer and the like, is to make the dead become the living. Woo. And she does that in this. I mean, she uses Persona poems for the first. I mean, throughout the whole thing, but especially in those first two sections because she is embodying Minnie and Mary. So I mean, I don't. I guess I don't know if that is considered a Persona poem, if it's like the whole thing, but that's how I read it.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

I mean, if you're writing from the voice of someone, that is the Persona. Yeah, absolutely.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah. So she does it like that. And then like I said before, she. She makes the dead become living also in the ways that she makes this feel like memoir.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

Like these little moments in memory that she sort of pieces together and imagines. I think it's. I mean, I think it's quite remarkable because obviously she never met Minnie. I never met Minnie, but I feel like I know Minnie. Like I have thoughts and feelings about Minnie. Maybe they are not totally accurate to who the woman was, but there is a woman in my imagination to whom I feel like I have learned something. So I do feel like she has made her become living.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

I think she does a really complex job, a complicated job by putting voice to someone she may never have met. But I think also what we tend to forget is that we are living those great, great, great grandparents dreams now. And so some more times than not, their voice is with us. They. The voice carries with us how many times over A dinner table with your family has someone say, you remind me of your auntie.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah, right.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

And you may have never met her. And you're just like, huh? I think that she leans on that in a really, like, inspiring way where breath is meeting memory, but memory is not sitting silently. Memory is not waiting to be found. Memory is willing to dance with her. And she does a really good job of starting that with Minnie's voice first. That epigraph, that's Minnie. We know. She got. She got something to say. And then she comes in with the lost friends, which is like, that's a hammer. Because, wait, poems can be an ad. Yeah, Poems can be a footnote. Poems can be in three different columns and then become another. Like, what? So she does the thing where you're like, oh, I need to know more. Yeah, I need to know more.

[Tracy Thomas]

And her first poem, birth Story, is about the birth of Minnie, which I think, obviously, in addition to what you said about grabbing the reader, feels obvious in this case because we are going through time. So to start at the beginning of someone's life feels like, you know, I get it.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

And that was a question that I put in there to that specific poem. What do we inherit when trauma is at the core, core of our fractured living? She wrote that, and I just kept told. I kept spinning that around in my head, like, what do we inherit? Like, it's fascinating because I want to believe that I know what I know, but we don't know a lot.

[Tracy Thomas]

We don't know very much.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

I'm still learning. I'm still learning. And so that birth story became. I need to ask my mom about her birth story. Right. I know my own. I know my brother's, my. But I don't know hers.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah, I don't know my mom's either. This poem has a refrain that comes up later, but is also sort of the. I think maybe one of the spirits of the collection, which is, God brought you here, God made you free. And that comes up later as something that's sort of like, repeated and repeated in Minnie's life. In the poem, it says. And I remember what my mother said. The woman told her, told me, God brought you here, God made you free. Jesus was born outdoors on a night when the shepherds slept in the field. Free from frost, no snow. Christmas wasn't his day either. But someone saw somewhere, saw fit to give him what they thought he deserved, what suited them, saved the truth for later. And that's a tie into the beginning of the poem that says, I wasn't Born on Christmas. So that is what some folks will tell you. I thought that was. I think this is a very good first poem. I think the tie in to Christmas and, like, that sort of history of black people, everyone being born on Christmas. I think it's really. It's catchy. And I also think it's something that any reader can sort of relate to. And I think that ending of, like, okay, when you think about it, Jesus was not born in the winter. Perhaps.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Perhaps.

[Tracy Thomas]

Perhaps, yeah. Though I don't know. Because if Jesus is born in the Middle east, it might be warm there in the winter. Like, you might be. Okay. You might catch a nice day. But I just love the idea of, like, she sets it up like that and then she ends it. She has a lot of sort of voltas in her poems where she twists the ending and you're sort of like, okay. And that's a personal favorite for me.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Yes. She doesn't land where you think she's going to.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yes. She's. She's journeyed somewhere for many of them.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

I do appreciate the birth story also. Not romanticizing the past.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

I love that. Even though this is a book of memoir and a book of imagination, reimagining. She doesn't romanticize the past. She examines it with care and compassion. In that examination, she reveals the returning to one's origin as an act of returning to self.

[Tracy Thomas]

So.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

So it also feels like while she's unearthing all of these small, little trivial things that we just write off as you was born on Christmas. Like, all those moments, she's like, let's think about this in this way. And she just turns it a little bit so that. That romanticism, it's dying on the vine. It really is.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

She's trying to give us a different bounty of fruit.

[Tracy Thomas]

You're so right. I would never have thought to articulate, like, articulate it like that. But this doesn't feel like it's romanticizing the past. What a good observation. Gold star for you.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Thank you. Okay.

[Tracy Thomas]

Can I ask you another question about a poem?

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

On page five on the plantation, it's the next one we get. Or as some say down home. Do you see the shape of this poem?

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Yes.

[Tracy Thomas]

Like how it looks on the page?

[Mahogany L. Brown]

What do you.

[Tracy Thomas]

What do you make of the shape of a poem? The shape of a thing. Like, what is that signal to you?

[Mahogany L. Brown]

So usually I think of it as movement, like the fluidity of the page. It becomes a score. And what she does differently here than most is that she. She breaks that first terset, the first three lines is broken, and it's only the two lines, and then the one. Then the one by itself. Children were everywhere, which deserves to be on its own line. Right. Because now you need to see the vastness of all the families. The blood, the straw, the leaves, the iron. Because children are a part of that as.

[Tracy Thomas]

Right, right.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

But when I look at it, it felt like a tilling, like tilling of land. And because it starts off with. On the plantation or some would say down home, I instantly saw crops. I instantly saw rows of harvest.

[Tracy Thomas]

Does it change the way in which you read the poem? Is there something that you do differently with those. What do you call it? A tercet.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

The terset lines. Huh. Do I. I think. All right, so who was it? Couplets. Natalie Diaz had this great workshop, also with Kaveh, where. Where she talked about the couplet. You can't hide any language in couplets.

[Tracy Thomas]

Okay.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

They're so sparse. They're very, you know, two lines. Every word matters. And I think with tercets, they also work with that same idea in mind. However, there's a little more musicality because there's longer lines to work. Okay. And so in that sense, I definitely feel like we belong to all the families, period. But you jump right back fast. Because we belonged to all the families is in the middle of we, the blood and straw, the leaves and iron. So it's telling me that the pace is picking up. And then that big break from the couplet to the one line. Children were Everywhere. Definitive, standalone. Say, say it Mighty. So it serves as a score for me for, like, if I'm running over a line, if I'm going to catch up faster, how do I think the author wants me to read it?

[Tracy Thomas]

Okay, and then one more question on the shape of this, because a lot of these poems have interesting shapes, so I sort of wanted to spend time on one of them. On this. Do you see? When the first line is the most indented, then it goes towards the left. In the second poem, we get the first line, we go to the left, and then we come back to the right, and then the rest of them until the last one are diagonally moving towards the right. Does that mean something to you? Does that signal anything in how you read it? Or. Or. I guess the reason I'm asking this is because I. I talk about this every year. We do. Poetry is like, I'm. I'm a. I'm a slave to the line ending.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

I believe in the line ending more than I Believe in any other punctuation or anything. Obviously, a period at the end of a line is a true stop. I believe in that. Right. Like, I feel that strongly. But what I don't have a lot of. And that's because I studied Shakespeare. And so in Shakespeare, you have to honor the line ending because it's an iambic pentameter and you up the whole thing. If you're just reading, you ruin. You ruin it. Okay. You can't do. Now is winter of our discontent. Mid glorious summer by the sunny York. You gotta stop.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Stop.

[Tracy Thomas]

Now is the winter of our discontent.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Period.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yes. Then now it's been made. It's made.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Anyways, I love your alchemy. I see you going.

[Tracy Thomas]

All right, listen, don't get me started on Shakespeare. I'll do. I could. I taught a class on it. I love it so much. It's the joy of my life. Oh, wow. I love Shakespeare. I love iamic pentameter. Anyways, that being said, there's not a lot of shape differential in there.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Right.

[Tracy Thomas]

Especially indenting the other way. Right. And so I'm just curious. The reason I ask is because also with Shakespeare, like, if you have a short line, you have to fill those. The rest of those iambic pentameter, the meter, the feet, with something as an actor. So if a line is just O, you have nine other syllables that you're waiting for. So when I see something like this, they look almost all to be the same length, but the indentation is. I feel like it's telling me something as a reader, but I'm not sure what it's telling me. So I'm curious what you might feel like it's telling you.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

I wonder. I. I didn't think of it in that way when I looked at it. I did look at we belong to all the families. Because it's so far indented. Right. That it was about not belonging to self. Okay. In the moment, like, this is an old thing. We belong to all the families, which means we all caring for one another. And I. I felt like they had to center. She centered that line to show the centering of we. And then for it to go all the way down to the last. Last of page five children. It matches up with Children were everywhere again.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Oh, It's. It's the first. The first on the left or the L7. Yeah. Otherwise, I didn't. It didn't stick with me in that same way.

[Tracy Thomas]

Okay.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

I just looked at it like, oh, these are Rose, Rose and Rose. Okay. I know. I know where we are in the south. We belonged all the way over there. That means domain. Domain. And yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

Can I tell you what I, what it made me think of? This is the only thing I can kind of come up with is that the we belonged is almost halfway through the thought. Like, it's like you're jumping in, in the middle of a story. They've been talking about this thing and it's like, oh yeah, and we belong to all the family. Like you know, and then, and then it's sort of like these memories are sort of like little almost fragments or like fractal pieces of the story, which is why they either get shorter or they sort of move to the right. But I, you know, that's just like, that's some, that's something I like that.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

What I love about poetry is it's. Yes. And yeah, totally. I mean, I love that.

[Tracy Thomas]

Okay, wait, let's take a quick break and then we're going to come back and do more. Here on the stacks, I have talked to countless debut authors who spent years dreaming of the day they'd finally see their books out in the world. All that was left was finding a publisher to bring their stories to life. If you're finding yourself in the same boat, I'd like to introduce you to Ingram Spark. IngramSpark is an award winning publishing platform that provides everything you need to successfully self publish your book. It costs nothing to sign up and upload your book and with free publishing tools and resources, you can focus on what you do best writing your story. While IngramSpark makes it possible to share with the world, when you self publish with IngramSpark, you are automatically plugged into one of the publishing industries largest global book distribution networks, giving you access to over 45,000 retailers including independent bookstores and libraries ready to bring your story to life. Get 15% off your first order of 15 or more books using code STACKS15. This offer expires at the end of the year, so get started today. Starting your own business can be a little intimidating. Trust me, when I first started this podcast, I had to figure it all out on my own. From designing brand assets to scheduling episodes, to managing social media, it was way more overwhelming than I originally had expected. That's why it helps to have a tool that can simplify all the tasks you do so you can focus on, you know, the fun stuff. For millions of businesses around the world, that tool is Shopify. Shopify makes starting your own business effortless, offering hundreds of ready to use templates to build your brand identity AI tools help you to write, copy and enhance images, built in marketing tools to create bespoke email and social media campaigns, and so much more. The best part is you can manage all your tasks in one place, making your life easier and your business operations way smoother. No need for multiple websites and platforms. Shopify does it all. Start your business today with the industry's best business partner, Shopify, and start hearing. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com the stacks go to shopify.com the stacks that's shopify.com the stacks spring is officially here. Mother's Day is on the horizon and I am treating myself this season by ramping up my coziness whether I'm at home or on the go. Lately, Cozy Earth has been my go to for making this happen. Always reminding me that I deserve a little softness and a little comfort wherever my chaotic life takes me. From my morning cup of tea and school drop offs to afternoon errands pickups with the minis, you will find me rocking my brand new Cozy Earth jogger set. It's soft enough to lounge in in the house and it's structured and elevated just enough that I don't feel like a total schlub walking around Los Angeles while I'm wearing. I get to be comfy and cute. It's lightweight, it's breathable, it's high quality and it definitely is getting softer with every wash. Go ahead, try it for yourself. Cozy earthbox everything with 100 night trial because they're confident you're going to love it and if you don't, you can return it. Simple. Plus your purchase is backed with a 10 year warranty that protects against damage for an entire decade. 10 years. That's the kind of commitment that tells you everything you need to know about the quality. Head to cozyearth.com and use my code the STACKS for an exclusive 20% off your purchase. And if you see a post purchase survey, please be sure to mention you heard about Cozy Earth right here on the stacks. True comfort lives here. Okay, we are back. Can we Is there anything in this next little section that you really wanted to discuss? Otherwise I'm going to have us jump ahead a bit.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

I was thinking of page 16 strip tobacco like greens.

[Tracy Thomas]

I have notes on this poem. Amazing. Go ahead.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Okay. Again, we are softened by our tercet collection.

[Tracy Thomas]

Those three lines and these are very short ones.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

These are very short ones. I love that we start with Ain't much difference. Right? So we're already in the kitchen that's right.

[Tracy Thomas]

And we're also in the middle of a thought. For sure.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

In the middle.

[Tracy Thomas]

All start with lowercase letters, which to me signals like we're in it.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Because the poem. The. The first line of the poem is also the first line.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yes.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

It's also the title. So strip tobacco like greens ain't much difference. Soak them in water to ease the leaves and pull the largest ones to wrap the bundle. These called the hands we the stemmers all women on the line rose filled with traveling songs. I sang as a child at the feet of my mother. She bound the leaves packed in hog's head. Some found bodies in the large drums put there for punishment or fun. What one? I didn't even know about tobacco. Let's start there. I know about greens, but I know about tobacco. So.

[Tracy Thomas]

And this is Virginia. And so Virginia was a big tobacco.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Huge tobacco plant economy. Yes. But for her to start there and just in the playing field, what you know, what you don't know and how all of it is connected, all of it is relative, I thought was really stunning. And then to have the children be playing around tobacco.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Like.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Joy will find us wherever children are.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Yeah. She always does this thing where she does the. The POV of out, in, out. And it feels like a pulse.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Right. Right. When it gets to be a little overwhelming. Because if you really think about somebody stripping tobacco like greens, and then you think of a child sitting right there watching that, you then have to go back into your head like, whoa, how long the baby been watching? Was the baby outside with them while they were picking? And then you. Historically. Right. There's no more innocence.

[Tracy Thomas]

Right.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

So by the fourth line, during the war, the factory was a hospital already. I'm like, that baby didn't even get to be a baby. Singing at the feet of mother already had to consider. Really bitter sweet poem.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah. What. What I actually have is in the last. The last three stanzas. Because, you know, I read every poem out loud. It's the only way.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

I'm so proud of you. I gotta come to this poetry show you be doing.

[Tracy Thomas]

It's very private, but it's loud. Like I. I always say, I don't read it soto voce. Like, I'm not whispering. I'm fully saying the poems out loud. So I gotta wait till everyone's out of the house, you know? But what I was really struck by is the last three stanzas. The rhythm of these three. They start with our mothers upended, invented inventors, our fathers a secret or Kept under the tally. Thread. Woven throat, groin and spine. Bitter stem, bitter greens, yellow leaves. Little soothes the busy hand, the flying mind. It's like the consonants and vowels and the way she. Like that first one, the upended invented inventor. And then the next one has, like, these, like, really, like, what do you call it? Dip. Diphthong. Vowels. But also the. When the continents. Consonants are together, two of them, there's a word for it. My kids always say it. I can't anyways, it's like, die something or whatever. But it's like the thread. Throat, Groin. You have these, like, spine. They're all two consonants to start the word through. And that's like. That's. That's work for the tongue. Right. To do. Throat, you have all this, like. It's like, really, you're working. And then the last one with the bitter stem, bitter greens. It's like, very like. And she puts them all back to back so quick. Yes. Like, as I was reading it, I was legitimately, like. I was like, this is awesome music. Music. I wasn't really paying attention to the words at all, but I was like, vibing it. I was vibing it because I feel like when you're speaking out loud, you have to contend with what your mouth is actually doing.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Right.

[Tracy Thomas]

Whereas when you're read. So, like, something that you would just read and not pay attention to.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Yes.

[Tracy Thomas]

But like, when you put two consonants together or three consonants together, that's usually a lot of work. It's why, like, a word. I'm trying to think of, like, a good word, but there are certain words that are just, like, difficult to say because there's so many consonants backed up and it makes it staccato and it, like, does things. So I don't know, I just. I. I really. I really enjoyed that.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

I love. I love your articulation of sound. Really special. But also, you're absolutely right. I felt like she became my favorite battle rapper in those.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yes. Yes.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

It's such a shift, and it's still spot on. It's still on point. Just in case you forgot who she was.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yes.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

First of her name, Ramik.

[Tracy Thomas]

Do you know what it is? It's not even a. Not even a battle rapper to me. It's when Beyonce is singing and then raps in the middle of the song, and she's like that outside, and you're like, hello.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

Like, what the fuck? Like, this was already a bop. Like, I was already vibing. And then she just is like. And I'm like, yes, Beyonce, get It. I'm doing flawless, in case you can't tell.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

I did.

[Tracy Thomas]

Thank you. But I'm just like, yes, of course. Of course. It's so good because it's such, like, it's just like a little flex. Like, it's just like a little, like,

[Mahogany L. Brown]

it's just to remind you she contains multitudes.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was really good. I. I still think it's great. I always love whenever we do these episodes and the guest calls out a poem that I'm like, oh, I have notes on this one. Like, this one also hit me because I feel like with the poem, any one poem can mean anything to any one person. But I feel like when multiple people think about a poem, you're like, oh, okay, there's something here either between you and I or between the poem in the world or whatever.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

You know, I love that so much.

[Tracy Thomas]

On page 20, we get the questions that still need answering yo, which are questions from the wpa. And I'm going to do, like, a little history lesson really quickly. So for people who are not familiar, from 1936 to 1938, the federal government did something called the Works Progress Administration, and a lot of white people went into, I think it was like, 15 Southern states and interviewed black people who were alive during slavery, who had lived through slavery. Sometimes they also spoke to people who were the direct descendants, but these were often people who were children, because we're talking about 1936 to 1938. So it's many years after the end of slavery. And they interviewed them and they got the stories. And so, so, so, so much of the history that we understand about what happened during the centuries of enslavement in this country came from these interviews. And they are flawed. And they are. Because a lot. A lot of it is because they sent white people in. And these are into communities that were not comfortable with white people, that did not have. Did not necessarily have, like, great relationships with white people for, you know, obvious reasons, I think it's fair to say, and also because people were saying what they thought they were supposed to say. There was all sorts of reasons why these interviews are maybe not totally reliable. However, there is so much amazing stuff. There are photographs in these archives, and, you know, there are historians who have since done other work. There are other records, whatever. But this project was a huge deal, and I think, like, shapes the rest of American history in a way that without it, I. It's like. It makes me terrified to think of how little we would have if this had not happened. I wish it had happened sooner, you know, all of these things. But that is what the Works Progress Administration is.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Yes.

[Tracy Thomas]

And so this poem on page 20 is questions that still need answering. And you know, in the notes in this collection, she says these are questions from the Works Progress Administration inter. Interview. I can't remember which. I think it was in obviously in Virginia. Right there.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

For the ex. Ex slaves.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah. Questioner for the ex slaves.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

What took me out was the amount of questions.

[Tracy Thomas]

What about question 94? Was it pretty?

[Mahogany L. Brown]

What is it?

[Tracy Thomas]

What is what? What's the. Just like, I mean, I love it. I love it as a question because, like, obviously you're going to ask, name, age, where are you from? What are your parents, names, whatever. But if you really want to get a sense of what this time was like, you do sort of have to ask, was it pretty?

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Right.

[Tracy Thomas]

Like, it's a crazy question.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

What was the easiest and the hardest work for slaves?

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

What.

[Tracy Thomas]

What about 242, did you see the stars fall?

[Mahogany L. Brown]

How about we're at 242.

[Tracy Thomas]

Right, right. But also, like, who wrote that question? Yeah, it's like, okay, what was the house like? What crops did you tend? What. What do you remember from this time? Oh, by the way, did you see the stars fall? Also, did slaves ever own watches, rings or false teeth? Like, it's just like from 242 to 258. I'm like, how? It's incredible.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Yes. And it's so far gone from. It's so out of touch. It's so far gone.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

It's so out of touch.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Dig. Slaves ever practice contraception? Describe the way slaves danced? Did slaves assemble at times just to sing? Did you see the stars fall? Knock it off. These questions are.

[Tracy Thomas]

One of my favorite questions is, did you ever hear of Nat Turner or Gabriel Vessi? And then it says, writers seem to have confused Gabriel Prosser and Denmark Vessi.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Isn't that funny?

[Tracy Thomas]

It's hilarious. But I also love that question because I do. I. I feel like, you know, the story of. Of these slave rebellions was that if this happens, everyone will revolt. And so thinking about how preoccupied, like this idea, like, did. Did people actually even know about this? Like, did it actually catch fire in the way that everyone was feared that it would? Because. Because the men who led these rebellions were brutally, publicly desecrated, decimated, murdered, lynched in a way to sort of prevent it ever people from doing it again, to dissuade people from doing it. And I do sort of love this idea that the Question was like, in the end, like, did you. Do you even know about that?

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Right.

[Tracy Thomas]

Like, it wasn't like Twitter, where we all are like threads, or we all would know immediately. It's like, did this actually make it to Virginia? Did this news make it here? Did it matter?

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Or how much do you know? So we know whether to keep our eye on you. That's what it really feels like. It feels like it's the middle of how much information do you have? Because it's asking all of that after. Were patrollers slave owners or poor whites? That's well after. Do you know about the Klan?

[Tracy Thomas]

Right. Was your former master in the.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Was your former master clan? And of course, it's not answered. Like, the things that remained unanswered or still need answering also were poetic. Right. So to have these questions was one thing, but the poetry that is happening just in the. The absolute ridiculousness of the question, it's. It's half inquiry. It feels like half inquiry, half threat.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

It doesn't feel like. And that's why it's left unanswered. That's.

[Tracy Thomas]

And that's also why these questionnaires, as valuable as they are, were also skewed.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Yes, absolutely.

[Tracy Thomas]

Because you have this outsider from the federal government coming to your town, asking, what do you know? Where were you when the war started? Yeah, exactly. But.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

And then where's your people's. Where did your people buy a home after freedom? Why? So you can come and have dinner?

[Tracy Thomas]

Clan.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Okay.

[Tracy Thomas]

But yes, as a non fiction lover and a person who, you know, cares deeply about how we collect history, that was a really special.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

So good. But that almost.

[Tracy Thomas]

That one is like sort of the bridge between, like the archival images and things and then the poems.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

Like, that feels like almost a hybrid moment in the book.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

I like that. I think you're right. But she does a great job. Right. Of reminding us that poetry as archive is possible. There are ways to demonstrate mastery and restraint and musicality. She showed us musicality with the Beyonce, da da da, da da. That, right, yeah, that. But also now she's showing us the mastery of restraint. She didn't answer the questions.

[Tracy Thomas]

Right. She didn't share anyone's answers. She easily could have.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Easily. Instead, she let the lines be precise and spare, and the pulse in the undercurrent of that rhythm was. Was as much of inheritance as it was pure craftsmanship.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah. I want to jump ahead a little bit to. In each section, towards the end, we get to Ramika's section.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Yes.

[Tracy Thomas]

But in each section There's a lynch. There are lynching poems, poems about historical events that involve the murder of black people. In Minnie's section, it's about. It's. It's on page 42. In Mary's section, there's a few, actually.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

But Minnie ends at 36. So 42 is Marietta.

[Tracy Thomas]

But it's. Sorry, but it's during Minnie's lifetime. Excuse me. It's during Minnie's lifetime.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

And 29 is the riot. So I think that's.

[Tracy Thomas]

Oh, yes, yes, yes. Oh, that's what I'm thinking of. Yes, yes, yes. Okay, so Minnie has the riots in 1919.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Right.

[Tracy Thomas]

And then in Mary, we get. Mary has a few. Mary has that 1922. And it's this long poem title that comes from an excerpt from a newspaper. But it's. Victims killed in 1922 were burned at the stake in the form of a torture that most people today associate with the so called dark ages. It goes on and on. And then we get the remains of the stained glass window poem on page 67 that's about the little girls in the church in Alabama. And then in. When we get to Ramika, it's on page 84. Her poem is 25 days after I am born, a man is killed in Mobile, Alabama. And this is. This is like there. I read a whole book on this. It's actually called the Last Lynching by Lawrence Lemur. And it's all about this man who was killed and that his mother sued the KKK and she won.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

And won.

[Tracy Thomas]

She won. They call it the Last Lynching.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

We know better.

[Tracy Thomas]

We know better.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

But I was struck by the. By this. I mean, obviously, I know this thread of lynching black people sort of cuts through our history like, duh. But I was struck by how she kind of dropped these poems in to situate some of the. More like internal familial with the broader historical context. Loved. I loved that.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Yeah. She never overpowered us with. She never overpowered us with the poems. Like why it's here now more so than embedding. Embedding it into the integrity of this quilt. Right. Which is to say it's always been happening. I love that she didn't shy away from it. She was very deliberate with her gesture. But she wasn't in a sense that she's like delicate and acting like this happens. It's so infrequently. But let me say she's very like, this is an everyday occurrence and look how Joy still lives. This is.

[Tracy Thomas]

And because like, we all. We all deal with it.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Yes.

[Tracy Thomas]

And like all of this other stuff, the personal is just like how it is for us is in relationship to the broader experience. Like that her people were connected to the events in the same way that, like, if your children were to write or your grandchildren, your great grandchildren were to write about you, they could write about you.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Yes.

[Tracy Thomas]

But you are so informed now by the events of the world and to sort of not include that. I don't think I would have noticed if it wasn't included, but I think including it added a layer because, like, in the poem about 25 days after I am born, she writes about how her. Her own mother, Those weeks after spiriting me into the world, my mother watches the news, looks over at my father too frequently, calls his name each time he heads to another room, delirious in her exhaustion and fear. Where was he? Would he disappear? It's like our parents and our grandparents and our great, great grandparents were living, doing normal things, having babies in the midst of this in the same ways that we are. And I just love that she brought that into the collection.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

She does a beautiful job of studying the tenant of witnessing. Yes.

[Tracy Thomas]

Just you say it's so much better than me studying the tenet of witnessing. Yes.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

I mean, you said it. I just summarize you.

[Tracy Thomas]

You poeted it. I prosed it. You versed it.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

You know, we can go on tour with this. I mean.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah, I just talk and then you're like, four words.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

I'm in. Absolutely.

[Tracy Thomas]

But you can't be an editor.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

A good job of that. Where we're not. We're not scattered in a way that feels like, oh, you took my head away from this memoir episodic journey. We're like, no, this is a part of the framework.

[Tracy Thomas]

Right. And she didn't do everything. She didn't do Martin Luther King or Malcolm. Like, she didn't do every. You know, she just was like. She didn't do all red summer. She just said, like, 19. 19, by the way. Just.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

That's right. Because it.

[Tracy Thomas]

Remember.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

That's right.

[Tracy Thomas]

Remember. Yeah. Okay. We have to. We have to spend some time on the lose your mother suite.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Okay, let's go.

[Tracy Thomas]

Because that's. That's the. The third. That. This is sort of the Ramika section begins here, right?

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Yep. Okay. Yeah, I'm here.

[Tracy Thomas]

And it's this.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

And this is when I contrapuntles.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yes. This is the first contrabuntal. Okay, let me just ask you. Okay. For people who don't know the contrapuntals, those are the Poems that have the really thick spine right through the middle. And it's. There's like two. Looks like two poems on either side. If you've been reading with the stacks for poetry every year. We saw a lot of these in Safya Ahilo's collection the January Children, but we've got two of them in this book. The first one is right here that it's number one. Unlike my grandparents, I thought the past was a country to which I could return. How do you mo read a contrapuntal panto?

[Mahogany L. Brown]

So reading a contrapunto, it is positioned as two columns on a page. You read the left column first, top to bottom. You read the right column second, top to bottom. And then in the third read, you read from line, the first line, first column left, all the way through the right, left to right. So that becomes your third poem. First line, first column is a poem, second column is a poem. And when you read them together, starting on your left, all the way through the line, that is the third poem.

[Tracy Thomas]

Got it?

[Mahogany L. Brown]

And it's usually to signify two voices happening at one is saying something or one is responding. And then what happens when those two voices are combined, I. E. They knew better. Going back was like salting broken skin, resetting bones. Second column, a wound opening, chasing some impossible American dream. And then left to right, they knew better. Going back was like a wound opening, salt and broken skin, resetting bones, chasing some impossible American dream.

[Tracy Thomas]

Very good. I decided to add my own twist.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Tell me.

[Tracy Thomas]

I read the title each time almost like. Like a song. Like you hit the chorus. So I would read the title. Left, the title, Right. The title, everything. But with this first one, because there's two lines. I did it a fourth way. I did. I did it kind of how you just did it. Which was the title. Left, left stanza one, Right stanza one, then down to left, stanza two. Right stanza two. Because I feel like you could also read the it like that in a way where there's only one line. You can't really do it like that.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Right. I think if I was to add the title, I believe she wrote it in a way where, unlike my grandparents, to which I could return. Is the first column's title poem.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

The title of the first column.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

And then I thought the Past was a country is a title of the second column. Do you see what I'm saying? Oh, if you go straight down the middle with that space.

[Tracy Thomas]

Oh, I see. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I didn't occur to me, but I love this as well.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Country A Wound opening. Chasing some impossible American dream, playing in the dirt, drumming up the body unanchored. The bite a sharp misfit. Or, unlike my grandparents, to which I could return, they knew better. Going back was like salting skin, setting bones as shot. I insisted on time, like a hanging tooth.

[Tracy Thomas]

Okay, gold star again. I want to talk about one other thing.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Okay.

[Tracy Thomas]

There is a word in this poem.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Yes. Wound.

[Tracy Thomas]

Wound. It shows up in a ton of these poems, especially in the back half.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

I had fun reading it.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

A wound. Opening. I don't know. There's something there. It sounds different. I know in some of them it's obvious that it's wound, but in some of them, it's wound or wound. I felt.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Right, right, right.

[Tracy Thomas]

I felt like it was a choice because that's one of those words. Read red, wound, wound, wind.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Yes.

[Tracy Thomas]

I feel like you poets love that.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

We do.

[Tracy Thomas]

Because that gives you guys. It gives you double meaning without any extra work.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Yeah. I had to do nothing but find that word. Right?

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah. Yes. All I had to do was find a word that worked. And wound and wound are the sound again. It's the sound. Wound. You get those double consonants.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

There it is.

[Tracy Thomas]

I love it.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

A little bit deeper.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah. And you can't say wound or wound fast. You know, you can't rush it.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

Not possible.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

You gotta sit in the pocket with it.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah. So anyways, they felt like wound.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Only because the salting.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yes. This one felt like wound. But there's other ones.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

I wish other ones. I'm with you for sure, because it definitely. I kept being like, there's a poem

[Tracy Thomas]

that ends, like, with wound. I should have taken a note on it. Maybe I did. Oh, it's 71. Oh, I loved this poem. Oh, my gosh. Okay. Sorry to jump back, everyone, but the poem on page 71, the two white women I cleaned for send checks until the day I die or until they do, whichever comes first. And then this poem, she works through one way, and then she, like, in order, abcdefg. And then she works backwards. Gdv. That's not the order, but. But it says, a reminder, we live, comma, wound. Or a reminder we live, comma, wound. I live wound.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

I live wound.

[Tracy Thomas]

I live. Well, I don't live wound. Some people live wound, though.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Yeah. Yeah. I think because of the title, it made me think wound.

[Tracy Thomas]

I mean, I think I. I think wound is the correct answer, but I think the choice of that word. Because if she. If she wanted it to be sure for us to be sure, she would have Said wound up. Wound tight. Right. Like, if she wanted it to be wound, she would have said wounded.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Wounded. She wants us to play with both.

[Tracy Thomas]

And I think that's correct.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

I don't think you're wrong about that.

[Tracy Thomas]

I love it. Okay, sorry. Back to the. Back to the. You lose your mother suite. Okay. The last line in all of these poems lead to a version of the first line of the next poem, so.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Say more.

[Tracy Thomas]

Well, in the end of poem number two, it says the last lines are little things we possess. We possess left here in ruins. The first line on poem three is left here in ruins. I believe any yarn someone's woven is fact. Then that last line is the girl holding the girl holding me. The next line of the first line of the next poem is the girl scolding me. The last line of that poem is, or was I the world changing daughter come apart? The next line of the poem. Next first line is, was I the world strange daughter? Some part. So she's. Every poem is connected to the poem before by some sort of twist on the line ending of the poem before.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Yeah. It's also. It's given like a crown of sonnets. The crown of sonnets is a sequence of seven lines, seven interco, interlocking sonnet lines, where the last line of each sonnet serves as the first line of the next sonnet. One, two, three. And I think. And it's not written as sonnets because we have these, you know.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Some are ter sits, some are couplets. But she uses that rule. She uses that rule too. To take the last line and put it at the top.

[Tracy Thomas]

Right. And I feel like. I mean, I think that I know this, but maybe I made this up. But a suite is its own musical thing. So, like, these poems are meant to go together. And then we get to the end. The last two poems in this section, the first one is. There's no title. It's just XV. So 15 mm. And it's all. Let me make sure I get this right. And this one is the second is all the. Is. The poem is made of lines. All of the lines that were the last lines that were the repeated lines. So going. That's poem on 106.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Okay.

[Tracy Thomas]

Going back was like a wound opening. What can we make clean? Left here in ruins, holding the girl holding me. So it's all of those lines.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

And then the next poem, Sadia Sento.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

Is all the titles are made into a poem.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Correct.

[Tracy Thomas]

And that's what a cento is. Right. You use lines that are other Poems. To make a poem.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Correct.

[Tracy Thomas]

And so the way that I was excited about this formal. Formal. I like. I like the structure and the rhythm and all of that of poetry. I know that, like, the meaning of poetry is not something that I like as much, but this was thrilling. This was. I felt like Christopher Columbus. I said, I invented this book. Like, I really felt like, ownership over her work of, like, I figured it out. I did it like. Like a real colonizer to this work. I was like, I did this. My brain connected this. Congratulations to me. It's true. It's true.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

I just that I discovered this and you may not know.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yes. I'm like, oh, sure, she wrote the poems, but I figured it out.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

I knew to Google the word sento. I knew that meant something.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Yes, you did.

[Tracy Thomas]

I'm so dumb. But I love it.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

No, I love that she does something that I think specifically writers of color might be afraid of doing, which is you learn the form and then you break it. She's really good at that. She's like, no, I know form. I know a whole bunch of forms. Here's a contrapuntal. Here's a sweet. Here is me using the. The methodology of sonnet. A crown of sonnets. And then here's me creating a Shinto. All in this one section. You're welcome. I did that. Like, this is a whole new form. Yeah, right.

[Tracy Thomas]

And I. And I feel like. Okay, I love that you're saying this because one of the things I really appreciate about this is we just did an episode called Poetry Therapy where different poets pick different poems. And Kimon picked Claude McKay's if We Must Die, which is a Shakespearean sonnet. It is truly an iambic. It is truly the thing. He did not break the thing. He did the thing. And I love that because as Kimon said in that episode, we are in this too. Like, this is a plate. Like, this is not just for them.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

That's right.

[Tracy Thomas]

We can do this too. And I felt like this section was sort of her flexing. Like, I'm an academic. I am a scholar. I am an award winning poet. Like, I am. I can do all the shit that you guys think that we should do to be real poets. You guys being white people. Real poets and air quotes. And I love that about this section because I could tell without knowing anything else that these poems were in a lineage of quote, unquote, legitimate poetry and that she had entered the conversation. Like, I feel like this section feels very much. It has, like, a chestiness to it of, like, this is Ramika section. I'm gonna take all this stuff. I've learned all this stuff. I know. And probably. I bet she likes a lot of the forms that she's playing with. And I bet she likes being able to write into the. The history of. And the tradition of poetry broadly. And so I just felt like there was a joy in this and, like, a whimsy in this, but also very clearly, like, I know my.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Right.

[Tracy Thomas]

Like, I'm not just writing poems at home because I like words. It's like, I'm a scholar. I'm here.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

I'm a part of the canon. So I think she definitely said, I does this.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yes, I totally.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

It does this. While you playing. I do this for real. For real. And when I talked to Ramika, I asked her, like, what do you. What do you think this book. When you wrote this book, like, where did you want it to sit? Beside, what are the. The titles I always think about, who are you in conversation with when you were writing it? And she sent me an email. She said, this book specifically is in conversation with the Age of Phyllis by Honore Fanon Jeffers, Load in Nine Times by Frank X. Walker. I think he was the poet laureate of Kentucky.

[Tracy Thomas]

Okay.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

And lose your mother A journey along the Atlantic Route by Saidiya Hartman. So she's doing what you're feeling is what she did on purpose. Not only am I creating shintos from the canon that exists that you're studying outside of this book, but also, I does this. Don't play with me.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

I studied your form and I raise you.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

It's great.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Sweet.

[Tracy Thomas]

It's great. And you can feel like I could feel that without. This section feels so different from the rest of the collection. And I will say that almost all of my favorite poems do come up in this section because there was a joy of reading this section out loud. I don't know that if each of these poems lived in separately, they would have all been that. But, like, reading these poems together was a joy. I mean, there are other poems in the collection I really loved, but this section for me was just like, yeah, give it to me. Like, I just.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

It was a workout. Yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yes. For sure. Before we go. Because we're. We are at time, obviously.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

It was fun.

[Tracy Thomas]

It's fun. This is a good one. I'm glad we did this.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

I love hearing poems, and I love hearing you wax poetic about sound. You should absolutely do a workshop.

[Tracy Thomas]

I love sound. Sound is my. Sound is my kid.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

You're going to tell me the Word that the babies were saying when all the consonants are so close together. Right.

[Tracy Thomas]

I gotta find it.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Diagraph.

[Tracy Thomas]

Diagraph. Diagraph. Yes, a diagraph. The one thing I want to talk about before we get out of here is the final poem. Is our title poem.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Yes.

[Tracy Thomas]

Room swept home.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Will you do us this home. It's the last.

[Tracy Thomas]

It's the last one. Will you do us the honor of reading it?

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Oh, yes, my honor. Room swept home. Mama say jah holy house, holy boast Clean keep things in their places. It is disorder ever clean. Preserve the skin alive by soaking, bathe and lather. High end low clean this water in the Chesapeake, the bay body full and green. All tide swept by heavy row. Clean the needle's eye and day's work both seamless hem and stitching Knife edge sharp sewn clean gristle. Bones sucked and crushed teeth mincing meat to red marrow. Clean sweep. Porch steps. No steps. Dirt path pristine. Any small patch of earth were given God struck bare. But so clean. Come on, Huzzle.

[Tracy Thomas]

What do you make of this poem? Why do you think this is our title poem? What do you think this poem tells us about everything we've just read?

[Mahogany L. Brown]

I think this poem tells us about the ancestral memory, the gestures of silencing and static, the navigation of beauty, trauma and lineage. And to create such poetry that is preserved in something that is considered beneath us.

[Tracy Thomas]

Right.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Not enough to end with God struck bare. But clean. But so clean. Like clean being the engine that runs this motor of black life, joy, lineage. I love it. One hustles are hard. Or gosle hustle. It's hard. It's hard to do. And it not sound like a workshop poem.

[Tracy Thomas]

Right.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

She does it in a way that you keep being reminded of all the ways in which her people remained and how sharp they remained, how beautiful, how pristine. And. Yeah, I love it. I think it was the perfect poem to close rather than open.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah. Yeah. For people who don't know the. The guzzle or. Because I don't know every poet I've ever had on the show, We've talked about these poems and everyone says it differently. So you guys need to have a little conference all the poets in the world and decide. You guys don't know. But those are poems where the last word is the same in every line and they're. I think this feels like maybe like a. Like a riff on one. Because I feel like if I remember, it's usually more than just the word. Right? I don't. I can't. I can't remember. I know. Hala Alian has a bunch in her book. And I know Reginald Dwayne Betts had a bunch in his book and I feel like maybe they were longer. I feel like there was more to it in those.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

No, it's just the last word consisting of rhyming couplets between five to 15 usually.

[Tracy Thomas]

But it's not. These aren't rhyming couplets. These are just the repeated. The last word.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Right, Repeated.

[Tracy Thomas]

So I feel like. Did she. Okay. I don't know.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

I felt like this though, because we have.

[Tracy Thomas]

They are couplets.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

Yeah, they are couplets. And there is rhyming that happens internally.

[Tracy Thomas]

Internal rhyme. Okay, got it. Yeah. So I, I was, I definitely was like, oh, I, I know what this is. But for some reason it felt like a slightly shifted one.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

It didn't feel, it's.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah, it didn't feel as obviously that to me. But it's also because she doesn't call it one. And I feel like a lot of times poets are like a guzzle and I'm like, okay, thank you. Yeah. I mean, I think it's a lovely place to end. I also think it's just like she's done so much work and this one sort of feels in the way that you might sweep, just sort of breezy, just like she just kind of. It has again, like a sort of calm, relaxed, almost like maybe an offering.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

It's like the sweeping is symbolic now. Right? It's an attempt to impose order.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

It's also revealed in the remembering and the reclamation of this refugee space.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

That displacement and belonging. They can coexist

[Tracy Thomas]

and.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

And that's how it feel. It feels like just coming to terms with it, but also like holding it up to the light.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

With reverence.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah. Well, okay, we're done. This was great. This was great. I. I just know that if we kept going, we could keep going for a long time. This was great.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

But it's very hard to have a bite sized moment with such a bountiful book.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah. I mean, there I'm looking, as I said, like, oh, all my favorite poems came from that section. And then I looked at the list I wrote and literally the poems are all over. We didn't even talk about perhaps Mini sees Mary and prays for her safekeeping. The one about the unruly tufts of hair, I love that one. There's so many. There's so many good poems in here. And for those of you who read this book. Book with us. Thank you. For those of you who are listening, who maybe haven't read or haven't finished. May I just offer to you if you can get the audiobook. Ramika reads it. It's very beautiful. Oh, she's giving a performance. I listened to only some of the poems because I didn't want her reading to affect me too much in my thinking about them because I knew we had to talk about it. And I feel like it's sort of like a T cheat. No, like she gives you answers. So sometimes I would read them and then take my notes and then listen and then add to my notes. But if you are a person who's maybe not sure about palms, you're feeling nervous. I highly recommend getting the book and then listening to the Audi book as you read them because she offers, she, she's giving you more information in her reading in a way that's so wonderful because, you know, I believe poems should be read out loud.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

I love an immersive reading experience.

[Tracy Thomas]

I do too. And this is a really good one. So if you are sort of like, I didn't finish it or I'm part way through, I this is, that is the way that I would read this book. When I read it again, that's how I will Mo, you are the absolute best. Thank you so much. Next year I'm gonna make you come do poetry therapy with us. You can pick a poem.

[Mahogany L. Brown]

I would love it.

[Tracy Thomas]

Poetry therapy is the best. And everyone else, stay tuned to the end of this episode to find out what our May book club pick will be. And we'll see you in the stacks. All right, y', all, that does it for us today. Thank you so much for listening and thank you again to Mahogany L. Brown for being a spectacular guest on this show. Our book club pick for May is Lonely Crowds by Stephanie Wambugu. This book you may remember because it was on our best books of 2025 list as picked by New York Times editor M.J. franklin. The book has been compared to Luster. It is a debut novel about a volatile friendship between two outsiders. They escape their childhoods and enter into the 90s art world in New York City. It's a friendship novel. It's a messy 20 somethings novel and it is a good novel. So we will be reading that book on Wednesday, May 27 and you can tune in next week to find out who our guest will be. If you love the Stacks and you want inside access to it, head to patreon.com the Stacks to join the the Stacks pack and check out my newsletter at Tracy thomas.substack.com. make sure you're subscribed to the Stacks wherever you listen to your podcasts, and if you're listening through Apple Podcasts or Spotify, please leave us a rating and a review. For more from the Stacks, follow us on social media at the Stacks Pod, on Instagram threads, and now YouTube, and you can check out our website@the stacks podcast.com this episode of the Stacks was edited by Christian Duenas with production assistance from Sahara Clementine, additional support provided by Sheree Marquez, and our theme music is from Tagirajis. The Stax is created and produced by me, Tracy Thomas.