Felonious States of Adjectival Excess Featuring Comparative and Superlative Forms
my mo' favoriter and mo' better is my most favoritestis mo'simpler this way is mo' fluider mo' wetter most hottest'cause the most beautifullest is mo' beautifuller mo' meanermo' flyer and most flyest mo' shyer and the most shyestis more than more intelligenter than the panel's most ugliestand most selectivest is the most goodest is the most burntestis mo' burnter and mo' unrulier is the most meekestand even mo' meeker is the most ownablest is mo' purchasablerand the most purchased thus becomes the most purchasablest at the site of the most shiniest coinsmy most funkiest is also my most stolenest but the most stolenestcan't ever be mo'funkier than the most oldest the most thievin'estbe the most brokest cause the most thieved from be the most oldestso becomes the most richest who also be the most fundedestand that makes me the most confusedest when I'm in the mostkeptest buildings that be mo' kepter than all the mosttime keepin'est kats they keep in the back up keepin' 'em.
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- November 12, 2023
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“Felonious States of Adjectival Excess Featuring Comparative and Superlative Forms” from MUSCADINE: by A. H. Jerriod Avant.
Published by Four Way Books in September 2023.
Copyright © 2023 by A. H. Jerriod Avant.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
A. H. Jerriod Avant was born and raised in Longtown, Mississippi. His first book, Muscadine, is out (September 15, 2023) from Four Way Books. His work has appeared in the Boston Review, Pinwheel, Callaloo, Virginia Quarterly Review, Obsidian, The Yale Review, and other journals. Jerriod is the 2024-2025 John and Renee Grisham Writer-In-Residence at the University of Mississippi.
"Thank goodness for Jerriod Avant’s debut collection, Muscadine. Here is a beautiful book of poems that do the muscular, rustic and sassy work of elegy, pastoral and blues song. At heart this collection is about homesteading. The speakers in this book are re-organizing the landscape in the face of personal and communal loss. Avant’s ear is unmatched. His poems long to be read and shared aloud. In that, and many other ways, Muscadine will elicit intimacy and build community. A necessary book in fraught times."
—francine j. harris
"The advance in your hand is militantly unguarded. These poems, and what’s held and released in them, are so strong and inexhaustible that there is more than enough to sustain the fury of affectability. We are in love at war and our thick-skinned wine is heavy with the memory of specific pills and gut ideas and innovators under pressure. It’s just about unbelievable how deeply Jerriod Avant knows all that. Muscadine is absolutely beautiful."
—Fred Moten
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