![]() ![]() Yes, the copyright page says: “The poems document the Afro-futuristic journey of an unnamed, female protagonist passing through various districts in space.” It isn’t only that. Yet, while it includes radio transmissions and some mention of space, it does not center on science or technology. ![]() If Afrofuturism means that which encompasses the intersection of the African American/African diasporic experience with technology and science, then yes, this book is partly that. The images and settings in the collection are briny with a Black history and a Black future. You Don’t Have to Go is intertextual, erudite, well-informed, art-aware. Even in poems where the speaker seems ill-at-ease, the writer who brings together poems of the destruction of a Black church, a son’s concussion, a marriage’s internal dares and hopes and failed but tender attempts, is herself at ease with reality even as she argues things ought to change, could be different-better. There is only one dominant speaker here, and she has eyes on many scenes: from Charleston, South Carolina to imagined districts in outer space. Its scale is massive in terms of time and space, yet remains grounded in song, history, and crystalline images. The book begins with desire in an attic and ends with two women haunting all God’s rivers after Earth’s glaciers melt. You Don’t Have to Go to Mars for Love is writer and poet Yona Harvey’s second full-length collection of poems, following Hemming the Water (Four Way Books, 2013). ![]()
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