Alicia Cook's Sorry I Haven't Texted You Back Week #1
A poetry collection as an art form
Hello, Poetry Heads!
This month we’re reading Alicia Cook’s third poetry collection, 2020’s Sorry I Haven’t Texted You Back. I was originally intending to cover this book in fourths, reading the first half of Side A followed by the second half of Side A and then moving on to Side B.
After diving into the book, I realized this was a mistake. Because Side B contains remixes of the poems on Side A, it makes more sense to read Side A and Side B together. Instead, I’m covering the first 26 poems (or tracks as Cook refers to them) from Side A and the first 26 tracks from Side B.
Next week, we will cover tracks 27-46 from Side A and Side B.
About Sorry I Haven’t Texted You Back
Sorry I Haven’t Texted You Back is Alica Cook’s third published poetry collection and her fourth book overall. Like her first poetry collection, this book is organized like an old-school mix tape. Side A contains original poems, ninety-six of them in this case, and Side B holds blackout remixes of each of the poems from Side A.
Blackout poetry feels a little inadequate as a means of describing the artistry Cook brings to these remixes. They are something you have to see on the page to fully understand.
Cook’s haunting, viral poem from 2019 gave this collection its name.
About Alicia Cook
Alicia Cook is a poet, essayist, and activist. Much of her poetry deals with the messy muddle of addiction, mental health struggles, and love. Cook was born in 1986 and is a passionate advocate for mental health and drug addiction recovery. The original fire for much of her fierce advocacy and stunning poetry was the death of her cousin from a drug overdose.
Cook hails from Newark, New Jersey. She has a bachelor’s degree in English Literature from Georgian Court University and an MBA from Saint Peter’s University.
A Poetry Collection as an Art Form
I was always going to buy an Alicia Cook poetry collection—even though I was not familiar with her work at all. All of her poetry collections are built as mix tapes or albums. In the music industry, each of her collections would be called concept albums—and I’m a sucker for concept albums.
There are two ways poets go about organizing poems for publication in a collection. The most common way is to sift through already written poems and either find a theme or look for poems with a theme in mind.
Another way is to create a concept collection like Cook has done. You write poetry with the idea that it will fit with other poems to make a cohesive whole.
Both methods can create beautiful echoes and linkages between otherwise unrelated poems. Simply having two poems next to each other in a collection changes your mood as you move from poem to poem.
However, not all poets take great care when curating their work for a collection. This curation is an art unto itself.
The difference between a carelessly curated collection and a carefully curated collection is the difference between listening to a Beach Boys Greatest Hits album and listening to their revolutionary work, Pet Sounds. Neither is a bad experience, but Pet Sounds is a piece of art unto itself in a way no compilation could be.
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