Dēmos - by Benjamín Naka-Hasebe Kingsley (Paperback)

About the Book

"Unflinching, unrelenting, disarming, and brilliant . . . A powerhouse collection of poems by a powerhouse poet." --VICTORIA CHANG

Book Synopsis

An Electric Literature "Most Anticipated Poetry Book of 2021"

From the intersection of Onondaga, Japanese, Cuban, and Appalachian cultures, Benjamín Naka-Hasebe Kingsley's newest collection arrives brimming with personal and political histories.

"'You tell me how I was born what I am, '" demands Naka-Hasebe Kingsley--of himself, of the reader, of the world. The poems of Dēmos: An American Multitude seek answers in the Haudenosaunee story of The Lake and Her children; in the scope of a .243 aimed at a pregnant doe; in the Dōgen poem jotted on a napkin by his obaasan; in a flag burning in a church parking lot. Here, Naka-Hasebe Kingsley places multiracial displacement, bridging disparate experiences with taut, percussive language that will leave readers breathless.

With astonishing formal range, Dēmos also documents the intolerance that dominates American society. What can we learn from mapping the genealogy of a violent and loud collective? How deeply do anger, violence, and oppression run in the blood? From adapted Punnett squares to Biblical epigraphs to the ghastly comment section of a local news website, Dēmos diagrams surviving America as an other-ed American--and it refuses to flinch from the forces that would see that multitude erased.

Dēmos is a resonant proclamation of identity and endurance from one of the most intriguing new voices in American letters--a voice singing "long on America as One / body but many parts."

Review Quotes

Praise for Dēmos

"In a superbly inventive collection, Benjamín Naka-Hasebe Kingsley's work explores living under the dominance of whiteness in America and the history of violence, particularly against Native communities. These poems ask: is racial violence in this country's DNA? How far will it go, how long will this go on? It is a bold inquisition into the damage that has been done, accomplished with creative risk-taking." --Electric Literature, "Most Anticipated Poetry of 2021"

"Benjamín Naka-Hasebe Kingsley brings together Onondaga, Japanese, Cuban, and Appalachian cultures to investigate multiracial dislocation, American intolerance, and the question we all ask--who am I?--in the teeming Dēmos: An American Multitude."--Library Journal

"Benjamín Naka-Hasebe Kingsley's book Dēmos is a powerhouse collection of poems by a powerhouse poet. Dēmos showcases the range of the poet--one who can write lullaby lyrics and in the very next poem mold words out of fire. The energy in these poems is electric as Naka-Hasebe Kingsley explores and condemns the many injustices towards Native Americans and other marginalized communities throughout our short history. Naka-Hasebe Kingsley's poems are unflinching, unrelenting, disarming, and brilliant in their range, form, and language. This is a necessary book of ferocity and strength during a challenging time. "--Victoria Chang

"With this latest collection, Kingsley writes an encompassing work that's thematically wide-reaching and formally and linguistically playful, boasting poems that change in style, perspective, and temperament from one to the next. Kingsley proves an engaging, cerebral guide through it all."--Library Journal

"How do you secure a sense of self and home when those things are bloodied? In poems of visionary protest and tender restoration, Benjamín Naka-Hasebe Kingsley's Dēmos proposes answers to that distinctly American question. In Dēmos, place and body are like palimpsests inscribed over and over again by the violence of history and the violence of contemporary racial brutality. As one poem laments, 'I was born what I am in ash.' And yet, out of a scorched and brindled self, Naka-Hasebe Kingsley presents a lyric voice that is as powerful as any we now have in our poetry."--Rick Barot

"These poems are like found object sculptures--but the rivets are words, wordplay, and the invention. From Punnett squares as form to leftovers as metaphor for tri-racial identity, Benjamín Naka-Hasbey Kingsley presents a sensibility born out of multiple histories of oppression that asserts survival and demands understanding."--Heid E. Erdrich

"With language as his pigment, with poetic form as his palette knives, Kingsley creates layer upon intimate layer as he uncovers multitudinous selves, simultaneously exploring just who is this WE in this 'We the People.'"--River Heron Review

"Recommended for readers eager for nonquaint novels about seniors."--Library Journal

About the Author

Benjamín Naka-Hasebe Kingsley belongs to the Onondaga Nation of Indigenous Americans in New York. He is the author of Colonize Me and Not Your Mama's Melting Pot, winners and finalists of over a dozen awards. Affrilachian poet and Kundiman alum, Naka-Hasebe Kingsley is recipient of the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center and Tickner Fellowships. His work has appeared in numerous publications such as The BreakBeat Poets: LatiNEXT, Native Voices: Honoring Indigenous Poetry, Georgia Review, Kenyon Review, Oxford American, Poetry, and Tin House. He is an assistant professor of poetry and nonfiction in Old Dominion University's MFA program.