WATCHNIGHT

"In this book Cyrée Jarelle Johnson demonstrates deep foresight and long memory often in the same phrase.  What a ceremony for our times, our wounds, our longings." —Alexis Pauline Gumbs

"The impressive sophomore collection from Johnson (after the Lambda Award–winning Slingshot) wrestles with history, identity, and belonging in poems that showcase the poet’s formal dexterity and invention. . . Urgent and wise, these poems look back to envision a precarious future." —Publishers Weekly

"Cyrée Jarelle Johnson’s second collection WATCHNIGHT is a major accomplishment of form and imagination. The poems in this book traverse the space between the confessional, the historical, the mythopoetic, and the speculative, guiding readers through all the rich particulars that make up the material of a life. Here is a poet firmly rooted in, but never tied down by, tradition. A poet in dialogue with those who have come before, but who brings to the conversation what is all too rare these days: something poignant and new to say.” —James Laughlin Award Judges Leila Chatti, John Murillo, and Sam Sax

"WATCHNIGHT restores some of the circulation to the occasionally bloodless wing of American poetry inspired by traditional meter and rhyme." —David Woo, Literary Hub

"Some a few pages long, and some untitled, the poems present themselves as homemade weapons (like slingshots) against malign parents, authority figures, structural racism and fears of the other. It’s challenging work, in its language, its stories, its subcultural references ('prince died for fem bois'), yet it offers pellucid queer intimacies." ―Stephanie Burt, The New York Times 

"Nothing short of magnificent, Johnson jailbreaks language to speak ambitious, rigorous lyrics of Black/trans/disabled/ sex working story. At times I screamed out loud at the wondrousness of the work. SLINGSHOT is the next generation of Black disabled genius poetics, and I’m in awe and grateful." ―Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha