My Darling from the Lions: Poems

by Rachel Long

Overview

A TIME Best Book of the Year and a New York Times Book Review, NYLON and ESSENCE Best Book of Fall

“Rachel Long has miraculous command of the line, in all its trickery and grace and gasps, showcasing a truly refreshing voice with observant, deeply felt insight.” —Morgan Parker, author of Magical Negro

Finalist for the Rathbones Folio Prize, the Costa Poetry Award, and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection

Each poem in Rachel Long’s award-winning My Darling from the Lions has a vivid story to tell—of family quirks, the perils of dating, the grip of religion, or sexual awakening—stories that are, by turn, emotionally insightful, politically conscious, wise, funny, and outrageous. Told in three sections, it’s a book about growing up, falling in love with not-great men, and girlhood; a collection that speaks to femininity, divinity, familial shame, Black identity, and modern culture.

Long reveals herself as a razor-sharp and original voice on the issues of sexual politics and cultural inheritance that polarize our current moment. With a fresh commitment to the power of the individual poem, her collection offers immediate, wide-awake poetry that entertains royally, without sacrificing a note of its urgency or remarkable skill.

My Darling from the Lions marks the arrival of a thrilling new voice and presence in poetry.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781951142711
Publisher:	Tin House Books
Publication date:	09/21/2021
Pages:	88
Sales rank:	640,617
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Rachel Long is a poet and the founder of Octavia Poetry Collective for Women of Colour, which is housed at Southbank Centre in London. My Darling from the Lions, first published by Picador in 2020, is her debut collection. She was born in London, and resides there today.

Table of Contents

Open

Open 3

Hotel Art, Barcelona 4

Night Vigil 6

Sandwiches 7

The Clean 8

Open 10

Bike 11

8 14

Open 16

Apples 17

Helena 19

The Garden 21

Open 23

Portent 24

The Yearner 25

Red Hoover 26

Open 29

A Lineage of Wigs

Orb 33

Referring to the House as the Whole Street 34

The Musical Box 35

So Low 37

Mum's Snake 38

The Cow and the Moon 42

Car Sweetness 43

Bloodlines 44

And then there was the time I got into a fight 45

Jail Letter 46

Wire 47

Red Roof 48

Danielle's Dad 50

Inside 52

Divine Healing 53

Night 55

Communion 57

Funeral Brochure 60

Holiday Album 61

The Omen 62

Dolls

Interview with B. Tape II 65

Steve 68

Black Princess! Black Princess! 69

Self-Portrait with Baby 71

Thanksgiving 73

Other Women's Babies 74

Acknowledgements 77

Editorial Reviews

10/18/2021

Divided into three titled sections, “Open,” “A Lineage of Wigs” and “Dolls,” the striking debut from Long interrogates girlhood, adulthood, and gender politics. These pages are rich with memorable phrasings (“wedding rings glinting/ like mouths not used to smiling”) and skillful uses of musicality that lend these poems, full of appealing anecdotes themselves, a rhythm: “I was a choir-girl. Real angel—/ lightning-faced and giant for my age.// Mum let us stay up late/ if we went with her to night vigil.// It started at midnight, a time too exciting to fathom./ How the minute and the hour stood to attention!” A series of short, repeated poems called “Open” provide an unusual and delightful refrain to the collection, the minimal alterations between each making them continually new. Long’s self-reflective, playful language is often philosophically deep, balancing two modes and tones: “Last night, I missed my train by seconds./ So close that one part of me did catch it/ and waved from the window to the other half/ still panting on the platform” (“Apples”). These gripping, vivid poems announce Long as a notable new voice.

Publishers Weekly

"Explores the messy, glorious nuances of growing into womanhood. . . . by turning a loving yet unflinching eye on the things she holds dearest, she encourages readers to consider why they see the world they live in as they do and to reimagine a new one."

TIME

"Long takes us swiftly through the trials and tribulations of themes we’d all recognize like love, sex, politics, and more. She is a voice that is hard to forget."

Glitter Guide

"The intimacy of her poetic voice enhances its power to disarm."

Times Literary Supplement

"An enchanting and heartwarming new voice in poetry."

Bernardine Evaristo

"Achingly vulnerable and sharp, it lifts up experiences that unite Black women across the diaspora. . . . By the time you get to the end, you'll know in your bones that you're not alone."

ESSENCE

"A masterpiece. . . . Clarifyingly alive to the entire universe of a woman’s life."

Elaine Castillo

"[A] warm, expansive debut, which plumbs aspects of female identity with verve. Love, motherhood, Black culture: She shows it all."

The New York Times Book Review

"Superb. . . . profoundly moving."

Booklist

"Remarkable."

Big Black Books

"Poetry for the modern world."

NYLON

"A rich yet sometimes deeply sinister look at all stages of the restriction and resistance of feminine desire."

Washington Independent Review of Books

"Alive with a breathless energy."

The Guardian

"Achingly vulnerable and sharp, it lifts up experiences that unite Black women across the diaspora. . . . By the time you get to the end, you'll know in your bones that you're not alone."

Essence Magazine

11/01/2021

Founder of the London-based Octavia Poetry Collective for Women of Colour, Long debuts with a Costa short-listed and Guardian best-booked portrait of a Black woman's coming of age. There's bittersweet remembrance ("her teenage bedroom/ in the upstairs window/ of someone else's house"), the dating game ("Contorting myself three ways in the toilet mirror,/ I decide I won't look like this forever./ I don't even look like this now"), and new adult worries ("my head was heavy with bills, wine, yesterday's/ deadline"), as well as many references to Long's gutsy mum. VERDICT Several poems here catch the poet asleep, her posture expressing the abandon that characterizes the easy flow of her language. But there's pain here, and the prickly wit can't be denied. For most readers.

Library Journal