What Had Happened Was

Reviews / Votes

"In this engaging new collection of poetry, TherI Alyce Pickens demonstrates that she is a poet of depth, range, and often incisive humor. Her poems are a revelation." - John Keene, author of (Punks: New and Selected Poems) "What Had Happened Was is a daring poet's debut. First and foremost, I want to praise TherI Alyce Pickens's collection for its unflinching attention to the nuances of-and everyday sorts of elaborate formal play embedded in-African American vernacular. It's truly refreshing, and energizing, to see the dynamism of Black linguistic expression live a full life in contemporary American poetry this way. It's all here. Love and loss, theory and autobiography, the ordinary and the transcendent." - Joshua Bennett, author of (Spoken Word: A Cultural History) "Few debut poetry books are long awaited. Without a doubt, What Had Happened Was is. When you work tirelessly and patiently to master your art-with skill, wisdom, and an abundance of imagination-it reads like this." - Hayan Charara, author of (These Trees, Those Leaves, This Flower, That Fruit: Poems) "TherI Alyce Pickens writes a poetics of the body that considers history, politics, race, gender, and the everyday mundane ways that they are experienced in bones, in the brain, and on the skin. While reading through What Had Happened Was, you may find that this Black poetics is crip poetics, is what people call the confessional voice. What Pickens confesses of the body is how the world makes the body a question. If you understand in depth the expression, the answer is in how one would begin: "What had happened was . . ." - Bettina Judd, author of (Feelin: Creative Practice, Pleasure, and Black Feminist Thought) "In her constantly surprising and deftly built poems, TherI Alyce Pickens enacts a poetics that refuses binaries, attends to and extends the power of Black art, and centers a body navigating illness. Pickens seamlessly moves through and braids memory, history, pop culture. The language is precise and remarkable; it will engage and entangle you in marvelous ways---as will the formally inventive poems and the structure itself. Pickens has written an electric first book. The poems are still sparking in my mind." - Eduardo C. Corral, author of (Guillotine: Poems) "This collection demands attention and introspection by offering a raw yet eloquent portrayal of the intersections of history, identity, and systemic oppression. It's an essential read for people seeking to honor the complexity of the experiences of Black Americans." - Jessica Calaway (Library Journal)