Exploring systems of power with sharp wit and creativity, the narrative combines humor and absurdity with a sense of exhaustion and frustration. The author presents a deeply political perspective, making poignant observations about the world. Additionally, the included interviews enhance the reading experience, offering further insight into the themes and tone.
This second collection by Nikki Wallschlaeger contains sonnets and sonnet sequences, incorporating allusions to foremothers Wanda Coleman, Lucille Clifton & Bernadette Mayer, among others. Whereas her first volume of poetry, Houses, explored lived-in space, Crawlspace goes deeper, under, beyond.
In her fourth collection, Nikki Wallschlaeger further proves herself as a singular poet of astonishing emotional depth and formal range. Hold Your Own is a steadfast search for peace, self acceptance, and pleasure in a world that makes those basic rights an everyday challenge for Black women. Through her signature blend of sharp social critiques and tender lyric supplications, Nikki Wallschlaeger plumbs the depths of emotional experience with fearless agency and exciting poetic experimentation. She brings the public into the personal and vice versa, intimately revealing-like a livewire into the soul-a singular entity, a person, profoundly impacted by family, community, nation, and world. And she does it all through staggeringly diverse approaches to writing. Whether excavating childhood injustices in probing prose sequences or crafting formally energized declarations that could be just as easily shouted as sung, Wallschalaeger proves, yet again, the multitudes of the self, how it can flourish in the face of all that tries to stymy it. The result is exhilarating resilience, love beating at the center of incredible strength. "