"There is no one writing with such a once-in-a-lifetime Black mad genius . . . Let us be grateful that we are alive to read a poet reporting live from the middle of a star."
—Danez Smith, author of Bluff
Dedicated "to the stars that go unseen", Star Power is an expression of black and queer joy. It highlights the tenacity of the marginalized experience and puts the inner lives of these people on a pedestal. Goodly explores language that venerates the saints of my life, those people in culture and communities who are often not seen as the powerful, brave, and heroic figures that they are.
Drawing from experience and love of fashion, beauty, drag, music, theater, and fine arts, Goodly's celebration of culture invites readers to boldly explore their passions and the many ways we come to understand ourselves. Viewing language as a tool for self-acceptance, Nicholas offers this book as an unapologetic vision of Black queer existence.
PRAISE FOR STAR POWER
"And suddenly. Everywhere you look. Black Joy. It's in the muscled presence of foremothers and divas who sparkle in backdrop. It's boys and body. It's all souls on center stage, some broken, some sinful, some iconic, some forgotten--but everybody with at least a lil dot of limelight. Look hard enough, you recognize Black Joy. It's conjured here, in this poet's funk-drenched phraseology, the threading of light through every line. Black Joy beats out struggle here. Joy wins."
—Patricia Smith, National Book Award winning author of The Intentions of Thunder
"In their superb sophomore collection, Star Power, Nicholas Goodly writes with a self-possession and clear-sighted intelligence that I admire with my whole being. These poems are alive with defiance and play, fire and chill, demand and dismissal; they meditate and conjure, they trouble and revere, claiming the center—where they belong—as they sing of Black queer life, the icons and legends who paved way for their children. If 'what moves us is all ways / meant for us,' as an early poem in the book claims, then Star Power is, for me, meant in every way—and when the poet writes, near the end of the book, 'It is your life that has transformed the world,' I believe the same must be true of their own."
—Charif Shanahan, author of Trace Evidence
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"Celebrity and Surrealism mingle and explode in Star Power. I fell in love with Nicholas Goodly’s voice when I read Black Swim, entranced by the seductive, dangerous allure of the poet’s risky, unpredictable, and whole original mind. That sharp lyric imagination has only grown fiercer in this new work, while also finding a softer blade as portraits of family, love, and self join the consolation of stars assembled here. To me, Goodly is the closest thing our generation will get to Bob Kaufman, but Goodly’s power is not derivative by any means. I mean that like Kaufman, there is no one writing with such a once-in-a-lifetime Black mad genius. And the poet knows it. “I could write a poem that dances near/ the fire or a poem that stands in it.” Let us be grateful that we are alive to read a poet reporting live from the middle of a star."
—Danez Smith, author of Bluff
"Nicholas Goodly's Star Power delivers boldly bodily poems that encompass an astounding range of voicings: lists, letters, devotions, odes, imaginings and reimaginings, where the sacred is met with humility and the sharp edges of rhinestones sparkle their way into diamonds. There is a lavish love of the raw material of life and art that resonates throughout this book, a curatorial eye that assembles an angelic order unlike any other heavenly host. 'It is my duty,' they write, 'to put the abyss in drag'."
—D.A. Powell, author of Repast
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"Nicholas Goodly’s Star Power is a virtuosic second collection, full of tenderness, play, and the 'gentle heresies' of queer life. These poems sharpened my wits and refreshed my sense of poetry’s possibilities; I felt wiser and dreamer after reading this book, and the only thing I could think to do next was to read it again."
—Andrew Durbin, author of The Wonderful World That Almost Was