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The Crown Ain't Worth Much (Button Poetry) Kindle Edition

by Hanif Abdurraqib (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.8 4.8 out of 5 stars 244 ratings
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The Crown Ain't Worth Much, Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib's first full-length collection, is a sharp and vulnerable portrayal of city life in the United States. A regular columnist for MTV.com, Abdurraqib brings his interest in pop culture to these poems, analyzing race, gender, family, and the love that finally holds us together even as it threatens to break us. Terrance Hayes writes that Abdurraqib "bridges the bravado and bling of praise with the blood and tears of elegy." The poems in this collection are challenging and accessible at once, as they seek to render real human voices in moments of tragedy and celebration.
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  1. Part of series
    Button Poetry
  2. Print length
    134 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  5. Publisher
    Button Poetry
  6. Publication date
    May 15, 2020
  7. File size
    4617 KB
  8. Page Flip
    Enabled
  9. Word Wise
    Not Enabled
  10. Enhanced typesetting
    Enabled
  11. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"The poems are raw: some passionate, some distant, some laden with fear. But as a collection, they create a life that's almost as arresting as it is moving."―Kelsey McKinney, Fusion

"Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib's THE CROWN AIN'T WORTH MUCH leaves me contemplating the meanings of soul: communal soul (peep the breadth of cultural shout outs), rhythmic soul (peep the breadth of sound and syntax), and spiritual soul (peep the breadth of compassion). As titles like 'Ode to Drake, Ending with Blood in a Field' and 'At the House Party Where We Found Out Whitney Houston Was Dead' suggest, Willis-Abdurraqib bridges the bravado and bling of praise with the blood and tears of elegy. The soul of this magnificent book is dynamic, distinguished, and when called for, down and dirty. What a fresh, remarkable debut."―Terrance Hayes

"Willis-Abdurraqib possesses a striking gift for merging pop culture with personal narrative."―Publishers Weekly

"Willis-Abdurraqib writes an ode to living, to the making of and the rediscovering of the self, and of home."―Emmanuel Oppong-Yeboah, Winter Tangerine

"THE CROWN AIN'T WORTH MUCH is not so much a book you read, but one you survive―with Willis-Abdurraqib's compassionate, elegiac lyric gently pushing you forward through heartbreak and violence."―Indiana Review

"To pinpoint a highlight of the book is impossible. Every poem is honed, polished, and presented with utter rawness and defiance."―Portland Book Review

About the Author

Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. He is the editor of Again I Wait For This To Pull Apart, an anthology of poems relating to music, released by Freezeray Press in 2015. His poetry has been published in Muzzle, Vinyl, PEN American, and various other journals. His essays and music criticism have been published in The FADER, Pitchfork, and The New York Times, and he is currently a columnist at MTV News. He has been nominated for the pushcart prize, and his poem "Hestia" won the 2014 Capital University poetry prize. He is a Callaloo Creative Writ

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B071KMVCLT
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Button Poetry (May 15, 2020)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ May 15, 2020
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 4617 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 134 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.8 4.8 out of 5 stars 244 ratings

About the author

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Hanif Abdurraqib

Hanif Abdurraqib

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Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His poetry has been published in Muzzle, Vinyl, PEN American, and various other journals. His essays and music criticism have been published in The FADER, Pitchfork, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. His first full length poetry collection, The Crown Ain't Worth Much, was released in June 2016 from Button Poetry. It was named a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Prize, and was nominated for a Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. With Big Lucks, he released a limited edition chapbook, Vintage Sadness, in summer 2017 (you cannot get it anymore and he is very sorry.) His first collection of essays, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, was released in winter 2017 by Two Dollar Radio and was named a book of the year by Buzzfeed, Esquire, NPR, Oprah Magazine, Paste, CBC, The Los Angeles Review, Pitchfork, and The Chicago Tribune, among others. He released Go Ahead In The Rain: Notes To A Tribe Called Quest with University of Texas press in February 2019. The book became a New York Times Bestseller, was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize, and was longlisted for the National Book Award. His second collection of poems, A Fortune For Your Disaster, was released in 2019 by Tin House, and won the 2020 Lenore Marshall Prize. In 2021, he released the book A Little Devil In America with Random House. He is a graduate of Beechcroft High School.

Customer reviews

4.8 out of 5 stars
4.8 out of 5
244 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Shawn Robins
5.0 out of 5 stars Anybody Seen My Soul in Columbus?
Reviewed in the United States on April 30, 2024
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My Momma told me...Never Fall in Love With A Poet. My Abu is A Poem Unfinished and I was Born A poem Yet to Be written. I knew Hanif would break my heart before I even read this work. Still I wasn't expecting that he would steal my heart. Am I the only one who gets stuck on elevators because I am having one sided conversations with Hanif, reciting his words or trying to catch them from floating around in my mind? Asking for a friend.
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BozoDeluxe
5.0 out of 5 stars What Came First is Who You Really Are and What Happened Before is What Really Happened
Reviewed in the United States on July 24, 2017
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If Mary Oliver is the poet who channels the wildness of the natural world into images that are comprehensible to us mortals, then Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib is the poet who telescopes the Pop (Punk) landscape across streets and highways, in cars and at parties, in the barber's chair. He fixes his own joy and pain to songs and celebrities and ideas of family that we all share, shining a light on memories and nostalgia, revealing a depth and power that we knew were there, but couldn't fully see. These poems are gifts, helping us see the poetic in each of our engagements with music and film and television and life.

Simultaneously, these same poems set out for all, the experience of being a young black man in America. I like to think that I think things like, "Oh, it must be crazy to be a black driver or a black kid or do anything, really, as a black person in this country." Like, that thinking that thought makes me a maybe "woke" white guy. Reading these poems made me realize there's so much I don't understand and I don't even know if understanding *that* lack of understanding is helpful. Yet, this work (this book of poetry) is so good and so open, it makes us return to the pain that is here, trying to find an answer.

To paraphrase Rumi: Outside, beyond ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing, there is a club, they're playing Tribe. I will meet you there.
9 people found this helpful
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Jed & Raine Dearing
5.0 out of 5 stars Uprooting
Reviewed in the United States on August 18, 2016
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I settled into bed for the night with my fiance asleep, head on my chest, as I grabbed this collection off my pile of books on my bedside table and cracked it open for the first time. I wouldn't put it down for an hour.

"AT THE HOUSE PARTY WHERE WE FOUND OUT WHITNEY HOUSTON WAS DEAD," has stirred up more emotions than any poem I've encountered save , "The Gate," by Marie Howe. You know a poem is good, when you can cry over it through every reading, and just upon thinking about it. You know a poem is great when it moves you to tears, but you can't name why immediately, and a month later you're still sorting out just what this poem is trying to surface, and that work may take a while, but you know there will be life found in the uprooting.

Hanif weaves pop culture effortlessly with the lived in city of Columbus, and his own family life, as if the three can be separated. Perhaps thats the beauty of this collection. It feels universal, contextual, and personal all at one, offering multiple entry points into any given poem.
9 people found this helpful
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Savannah Hicks
4.0 out of 5 stars A wide variety of styles of contemporary poetry
Reviewed in the United States on September 25, 2018
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"The Crown Ain't Worth Much" is an urban, unusual, and fast-paced, engaging read. While many of the poems follow a traditional poetic style, some of the poems lean lyrical and rhythm-heavy while others read more like prose. I look forward to reading future collections from this poet, as I feel he could become an important voice in contemporary poetry.
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Claudia Morales
5.0 out of 5 stars ... path through life and at the same time receiving brilliant new poems with which to do the same
Reviewed in the United States on July 23, 2016
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I can't put words to the feeling of flipping through a book and seeing references to the music through which you've long understood the world and carved out your path through life and at the same time receiving brilliant new poems with which to do the same. If you want to feel understood, if you want to understand, if you want to see the dots of your experiences and other people's experiences and the soundtrack to all experiences connected so thoughtfully and masterfully that you'll wonder how you didn't see them before, buy this book. Buy this book, full stop.
6 people found this helpful
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Nicole And Phillip Overeem
5.0 out of 5 stars Scary double-threat.
Reviewed in the United States on April 14, 2018
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Abdurraqib is a fearsome poet and essayist both. He can make you see, hear, and feel in powerful new ways; with Danez Smith he is a chronicler of out darkness and the broken and emptied bodies it's produced; he honors the power of love, memory, and music. An unforgettable collection--but it AND his essay collection, They Can't Kill Us Til They Kill Us.
One person found this helpful
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Chris
5.0 out of 5 stars magnificent!
Reviewed in the United States on April 15, 2021
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vulnerable, creative, true expression on a page! these works expand what we do with the written word and how we present it.
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Royal Scales
5.0 out of 5 stars Reading The Crown Ain't Worth Much is like eating a triple chocolate ganache cupcake or a really ...
Reviewed in the United States on October 27, 2016
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Reading The Crown Ain't Worth Much is like eating a triple chocolate ganache cupcake or a really good specialty cheesecake that you thought you'd be able to finish all at once but you had to tap out for a bit because it's just. so. rich. but it calls you out of your sleep at 2am to finish it anyway.
3 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Kindle Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars A solace of words, emotions and memories for anyone who has lost
Reviewed in Canada on February 18, 2019
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Hanif's way of intertwining personal memories with visceral and vivid descriptions and punchy pop culture references makes for an immaculate exercise in remembrance and catharsis.
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Panda
5.0 out of 5 stars Impressive work
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 17, 2020
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Made a great gift My Dad loves it.
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Charlotte
5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful collection
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 8, 2018
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Fantastic collection of poetry. Different to anthologies I have read previously but just as beautiful. Every line is golden.
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