Please Make Me Pretty, I Don't Want to Die - (Princeton Contemporary Poets) by Tawanda Mulalu (Paperback)

About the Book

"Please make me pretty, I don't want to die is the first book of poetry by Tawanda Mulalu. In four parts named for the seasons, these poems bring together descriptions of everyday experiences and sensory memories with an overarching focus on the pleasures and difficulties of intimacy and the anomie of United States culture. An immigrant to the U.S. from Botswana, Mulalu explores facets of his life and identity in a powerful first-person voice, including his relationships, his immigration, and his work as a teacher's assistant in a third-grade classroom in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The collection juxtaposes traditional poetic styles such as sonnets and elegies with less orthodox interjections, such as craggy prose-poem 'prayers' and other meditations, to create a poetic world both familiar and jarring-one in which history, the body, and poetry can collide in a single surprising turn of image ('The stars also suffer. Immense and dead, their gasses burn/ distant like castanets of antebellum teeth. My open window/ a synecdoche of country') or crystallize into lament: ('If I saw a starving/ black child my first thought would not be to take this picture of myself. Or wake. Everyone is dying. There/ are such pretty words for this.')"--

Book Synopsis

The debut collection of an exciting new voice in poetry

Please make me pretty, I don't want to die explores tactility, sound, sensuality, and intimacy. Set across the four seasons of a year, these fresh and original poems by Tawanda Mulalu combine an inviting confessional voice and offbeat imagery, and offer an appealing mixture of seriousness and humor.

The speaker of these poems probes romantic and interracial intimacy, the strangeness and difficulty of his experiences as a diasporic Black African in White America, his time working as a teacher's assistant in a third-grade classroom, and his ambivalent admiration for canonical poets who have influenced him, especially Sylvia Plath. Juxtaposing traditional forms such as sonnets and elegies with less orthodox interjections, such as prose-poem "prayers" and other meditations, the collection presents a poetic world both familiar and jarring--one in which history, the body, and poetry can collide in a single surprising turn of image: "The stars also suffer. Immense and dead, their gasses burn / distant like castanets of antebellum teeth. My open window / a synecdoche of country."

Review Quotes

"Winner of the Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry"

"Finalist for the Derek Walcott Prize, Arrowsmith Press"

"These fresh and original poems by Tawanda Mulalu combine an inviting confessional voice and offbeat imagery, and offer an appealing mixture of seriousness and humor. . . . [Please make me pretty, I don't want to die] presents a poetic world both familiar and jarring-one in which history, the body, and poetry can collide in a single surprising turn of image."-- "The Rumpus"

"Incredible. . . .A stunningly good book of poems."---Elisa Gabbert, New York Times

"A sensory and exciting debut. . . . These inventive, lyrical, and well-crafted poems offer memorable insights at every turn."-- "Publishers Weekly"

"Tawanda Mulalu's first book is an energetic and energizing assemblage of restlessly shifting modes, juggling forms and shuffling styles. The linguistic playfulness that animates his poems conceals neither their serious intent nor their underlying melancholy."---Troy Jollimore, Washington Post

"The collection's energy is constant, and some of the poems' most straightforward moments are the most affecting. . . . A sharp, playful, and thoughtful work for poetry lovers."-- "Library Journal"

About the Author

Tawanda Mulalu was born in Gaborone, Botswana, in 1997. He is the author of the chapbook Nearness, and his poems have appeared in many publications, including the Paris Review, Brittle Paper, and Lolwe. He lives in New York City.