A Fortune for Your Disaster

Poems

De: Hanif Abdurraqib

Narrado por: Hanif Abdurraqib

In his much-anticipated follow-up to The Crown Ain't Worth Much, poet, essayist, biographer, and music critic Hanif Abdurraqib has written a book of poems about how one rebuilds oneself after a heartbreak, the kind that renders them a different version of themselves than the one they knew.

It's a book about a mother's death, and admitting that Michael Jordan pushed off, about forgiveness, and how none of the author's black friends wanted to listen to "Don't Stop Believin'". It's about wrestling with histories, personal and shared. Abdurraqib uses touchstones from the world outside - from Marvin Gaye to Nikola Tesla to his neighbor's dogs - to create a mirror, inside of which every angle presents a new possibility.

©2019 Hanif Abdurraqib (P)2019 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Beautifully written

I love the explanations and the transitions; beautifully written and spoken. Clip worthy moments in several poems!

Like a real live reading

I felt like I was at a reading, with the inclusion of the notes with the poems themselves. stunning

Exceptional ★ Masterpiece

Savoring each piece of raw nugget dropped--the narration brought right home ✍️🏾🏡 ❤️‍🩹
This my introduction to this brother after last night's MSNBC int. & I must reiterate--very pleased. Now, I am ready for his "There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension" 📖

Very Enjoyable

Truly a wonderful piece of work.
I'll definitely have to experience this remarkable book again.

A very talented poet

I liked the frank realism in the poetry, the modern references to Marvin Gaye, President Obama, among many others. The author reads his poetry and I really like that because the raw emotion comes through as well as personal insight into the poems as he comments and explains about them. His imagination adds so much to the book, for example, several poems are in the imaginary voice of Marvin Gaye including when Marvin's ghost visits the grave of his father who shot him. Another interesting thing is when he says "how can black people write about flowers at a time like this", but he doesn't explain (unless I missed it) why he says this so often in the book. A mystery. I loved the book and I think you will as well

Well Performed Passionate Verse

I stressed the performance because Hanif’s vocal quality and the feeling he communicated was very effective. For me, his mix of story and poems was hard to follow and, while there were some very good turns of phrase, I had a hard time really understanding what the poems were about. He spoke a lot about heartbreak, his Mother’s Death and his boys but I don’t think I really followed him.