Available from Knopf/Penguin UK/PRH Audio
Winner of the PEN America/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry
Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry
Recipient of the Windham Campbell Prize for Poetry
A radical, urgent collection of poems about Blackness, the self, and the dismantling of corrupt powers in the fight for freedom.
Jonah Mixon-Webster works at the intersections of space and the body, race and region, sexuality and class. Stereo(TYPE), his debut collection of poetry, is a reckoning and a force, a revision of our most sacred mythologies, and a work of documentary reporting from Mixon-Webster’s hometown of Flint, Michigan, where clean tap water remains an uncertainty and the aftermath of racist policies persist.
Challenging stereotypes through scenes that scatter with satire, violence, and the extreme vagaries of everyday life, Mixon-Webster invents visual/sonic forms, conceptualizes poems as transcripts and frequently asked questions, and dives into dreamscapes and modern tragedies, deconstructing the very foundations America is built on. Interrogating language and the ways we wield it as both sword and shield, Stereo(TYPE) is a one-of-a-kind, rapturous collection of vital and beautiful poems.
POEM PREVIEW
Black-on-Black Stone /
Under a White Stone
After César Vallejo
I will die in Flint, in the early gloaming of a raid
as blood honeys the fetid water.
I will die in Flint, in a handoff without witness
on any night. Perhaps, this night
I am found with broadcloth over my teeth,
a bagged object in clutch, empty
water bottles at my side, a dingy hoard of glooms,
and whatever’s left of my body
now enters the day rearward. In some nature,
Jonah Mixon-Webster is dead
and weaponless. A fortuitous echo sucking air out,
a shrunk-mouthed portal shrilling
its sole evidence of event—
a darkening, then all at once, snow.
July 25th, 2018
Paranoiac No 3: Prospicience
is the ordinariness of color
is dirty money
is the last trap on the left
is the viscous part gone amok; an echo-shuffle of feet shucking
is the plug telling you he wouldn’t bullshit
is the blackish rat he spit up—its body hobbled in bile, already a sung secret
is the phantom object
is getting juked out your last for what he said was that loud, but wasn’t
is the dead wail of a red siren
is the way the houses bent the sound of it, breaking every light
is a wish sent to shield the body from vision
is one on each side and each side brightly beaming
is an obligatory curbside prayer
is a fever-dash of masquerade blooding up in thought
is soon glutted with the idea of rimfire, two shells, and a striking hammer
is a setup and I don’t mind saying it
is a cop—or even a would be hood nigga
is the shadow stare starting from the half-lit block
is when I knew they had it all planned out
is a Gestalt shift:
a key, a flash of metal turned four-nickel already half-cocked
Black Existentialism No 12:
Da’ Bad Nigga Blues
always I wuz a nigga. bad at it. I wuz always bein’ a nigga even when I wuzn’t. I wuz a nigga, somebody’s I wuz always bad at bein’ even when I wuz a nigga I wuzn’t. I wuz. bad at bein’ a nigga tho’ I wuzn’t. I wuz bad at bein’ a nigga even tho’ I wuz a real nigga, or a bad nigga, or a bitch nigga, or a fag nigga (which I always wuz). always been bad, always a nigga. tho’ I wuz bad at it I wuz bad. nigga, I wuz always a bad nigga. I wuz a bad-bad nigga. kept me a hot nigga, always nigga, always a nigga, it’s always a nigga, always a nigga bad at it and always I wuz a nigga and always I wuz bad and bad and bad at it. really, I’m a real nigga. cuz all my niggas say I’m a real nigga and if you ask my niggas, I bet they all point at me and say “DAT’S A REAL NIGGA!!!” really tho’— I’m bad at it. I am, really
Audiobook Preview
CINEPOEMS & PERFORMANCES
REVIEWS
“With tenderness and ferocity, Jonah Mixon-Webster invents dynamic multi-modal forms to indict structural racism, and to connect the personal to the violence and beauty of history.”
—Windham-Campbell Prize Citation
Jonah Mixon-Webster’s Stereo(TYPE) is vibrant. It’s full of life. It’s a book that shows us how to approach a violent nation, how to approach a racist nation, how to write a poetry that is intricately engaged with the trauma of the public sphere. Stereo(TYPE) is performative, formally innovative, visually innovative as it captures our national epidemics of racial violence and ecoviolence. Written as prose poems, as invocations, in unconventional typographies, in dialogic plays, as Frequently Asked Questions, as government brochures and concrete poems, Stereo(TYPE)’s depth and bravery reverberates from each breath, each word, each page.
—Judges of the 2019 PEN America/Joyce Osterweil Award
“Stereo(TYPE) is an urgent cri de fe, a fiery pre-emptive strike against, and homage to, the next generation of masters and mistresses, terms that apply equally to those taking up the mantles of white supremacy and those (e.g., Kara Walker, Dawn Lundy Martin, Richard Pryor, Tisa Bryant, Douglas Kearney) making up their own suprematist/constructivist responses to the pecking orders, sidestepping self-immolation in the process. Terse, flippant, and more often right than wrong, Stereo(TYPE) is an ambidextrous skill set, multiplex declensions of that unwritten book called The Descent of Negro.”
— Tyrone Williams
“Breath-taking, bold, heart-crushing, thugged-out, elegant and extraordinary, Jonah Mixon-Webster’s unblinking work in Stereo(TYPE) is full of profound love and searing rejections. The sophistication of imagery and style, anger and truth, deeply intimate desire and macrocosmic outrage become a clarion call against passive acceptance of oppression. What a bold, necessary and stunning collection. I find myself unmoored yet more clear-eyed in our struggles reading the heartfelt daring in Jonah’s inventive poetry.”
— Tracie Morris
“Jonah Mixon-Webster’s potent debut Stereo(TYPE) is kerosene for the torch, for an empire in dire need of being burned clean. His is a language wild with imaginative annihilation: of ‘the contagion that carries itself into the host,’ and the violence of ‘the body’s ruin.’ This collection, for some, is a revelation. For others, a war-cry into the light.”
— Aricka Foreman
“Mixon-Webster has wrested center stage from the great white cannons and comforts—the ancient Greeks, the white conceptual poets, the indifferent government pamphleteers, the cable news networks, even the most conscientious white progressives—and swerved the lights to focus on what has always been central, the black lives and speech at the heart of a popping, careening, stumbling, scatting, falling, diving, and deliberating text.”
— Lauren Russell
“Jonah Mixon-Webster’s performance poetry is piercingly complex, composing the pains of African American communities living under unrelenting distress.”
— L. Ali Khan, New York Journal of Books
“‘Jonah Mixon-Webster is dead/ and weaponless’ writes the poet. What a magnificent lie tucked into this collection. Alive, sharp, blade-heavy hands are thrown at empire and self alike. Flint’s troubled water troubled here again, the poet’s gaze and rage unflinching. I love this book that hurts me so. Mixon-Webster writes with niggas on his heart, fire in his hands. His scorching intelligence reaches for lyric and typography as weapons for real missions, real people grieved and loved and held in the belly of these poems. Don’t miss this collection. It marks the arrival of a new genius, a genius that makes me see my Black world deeper and anew.”
— Danez Smith
“Mixon-Webster is a master of experimentation, for his work reads across multiple genres, creating new hybrids: poem-plays, poem-myths, poem-dreams, poem-dialogues, and more. This work is alive, demanding to be reckoned with, respected, and recognized.”
— Fatimah Asghar
“Writing through an appropriation of state documents, medical records, field recordings, and dream sequences, Stereo(TYPE) positions itself forcefully as an inversion and critique of “the great intellectual legacy of the white man.” This is a poetry of consequence, which seeks to invert white supremacist and colonial structures—the very same conditions that produced the disaster in Flint and the ongoing emergency of being black in America.”
— Adam Malinowski, Poetry Project
Notes
“Invocation of the Sacrosanct” contains a sample of “My Nigga” by Y.G. featuring Rich Homie Quan and Young Jeezy (2014).
“Song for the Unconscious Self; or First Liberation in Fo’ Parts” contains a sample of Richard Pryor’s “That Nigger’s Crazy” (1974).
Title and twelve-line conceptual arrangement of “Black Existentialism No 12: Da Bad Nigga Blues” is inspired in part by Lee Roy “Lasses” White’s “Nigger Blues” (1912), which is the first recording to use the standard twelve-bar blues format.
“Black Existentialism No 8: Ad Infinitum; or Ad Nauseam” is composed using the font Perpetua Titling (MT), created by sculptor Eric Gill. The sound iteration samples Nicki Minaj’s “Looking Ass Nigga.”
“Prologue” is chiefly informed by my mother Carolyn Mixon and paraphrases the following documents and works:
"Frequently Asked Questions - Trihalomethanes (THMs) Facts Sheet. "Trihalomethanes (THMs) Facts Sheet. Newfoundland Labrador Canada, n.d. Web. 14 June 2016. <http://www.env.gov.nl.ca/env/faq/thm_facts.html>.
"Lead Poisoning and Health." World Health Organization. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 July 2016.
<http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs379/en/>.
Anderson, Elisha. "Legionnaires'-associated Deaths Grow to 12 in Flint Area." Detroit Free Press. N.p., 11 Apr. 2016. Web. 15 June 2016. <http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/flint-water crisis/2016/04/11/legionnaires-deaths-flint-water/82897722/>.
Fleming, Leonard N. "Darnell Earley: The Man in Power During Flint Switch."
Detroit News. 15 Mar. 2016. Web. 8 May 2016. <http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/michigan/flint-water-crisis/2016/03/14/darnell-earley-flint-water-crisis/81788654/>.
Fonger, Ron. "City of Flint Sorry for Not Warning Residents of Army Drill Explosions."
Milve.com. Mlive, 3 June 2015. Web. 10 June 2016.
Fonger, Ron. "Flint Issues Boil Water Advisory for Section of the City after Positive Test for Total Coliform Bacteria." MLive.com. N.p., 05 Sept. 2014. Web. 15 July 2016. <http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2014/09/flint_issues_boil_water_adviso.html>.
Gupta, Sanjay, Ben Tinker, and Tim Hume. ""Our Mouths Were Ajar": Flint Doctor's Fight to Expose Lead Poisoning." CNN. Cable News Network, 15 Jan. 2015. Web. 8 June 2016. <http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/21/health/flint-water-mona-hanna-attish/>.
Hanna-Attisha, Mona, Jenny Lachance, Richard Casey Sadler, and Allison Champney Schnepp. "Elevated Blood Lead Levels in Children Associated With the Flint Drinking Water Crisis: A Spatial Analysis of Risk and Public Health Response." Am J Public Health American Journal of Public Health 106.2 (2016): 283-90. Print.
Krasner, Stuart, and J. Michael Wright. "The Effect of Boiling Water on Disinfection By-product Exposure." Water Research 39 (2005): 855-64. Print.
Lin, Jerryemy C.F., Jean Rutter, and Haeyoun Park. "Events That Led to Flint’s Water Crisis." The New York Times. The New York Times, 20 Jan. 2016. Web. 15 June 2016. <http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/01/21/us/flint-lead-water-timeline.html?_r=0>.
Maddow, Rachel. "Marc Edwards and Mona Hanna-Attisha: The World's 100 Most Influential People." Time. N.p., 21 Apr. 2016. Web. 15 June 2016. <http://time.com/4301337/marc-edwards-and-mona-hanna-attisha-2016-time-100/>.
Moore, Kristin. "Annual Water Quality Report for City of Flint – City of Flint." Annual Water Quality Report for City of Flint – City of Flint. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 July 2016. <https://www.cityofflint.com/2016/07/07/annual-water-quality-report-for-city-of-flint/>.
“Breach” contains data spliced from the following document:
Wieber, Kevin. "Water Main Break City of Flint Info." (n.d.): n. pag. 26 Jan. 2016. Web.12 June 2016.<https://www.michigan.gov/documents/flintwater/
Water_Main_Break_City_f_Flint_Info_512542_7.pdf>.
“Recovered_Conversation_0105.wav” contains the language and voice of:
TaCee Boaz and Jerry
“Frequently Asked Questions” is a complete appropriation of the following document:
Bolger, Matt. "Boil Water Advisory Frequently Asked Questions."
(n.d.): n. pag. State of Michigan. Web. 20 June 2016. <http://www.michigan.gov/documents/flintwater/Boil_Water_FAQs_514275_7.pdf>.