Worldly Things

(Hardback)

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Finalist for the 2022 Minnesota Book Award in Poetry
A New York Times Book Review New & Noteworthy Poetry Selection
A Library Journal Poetry Title to Watch 2021
A Chicago Review of Books Poetry Collection to Read in 2021
A Readers Digest 14 Amazing Black Poets to Know About Now Selection
A Books Are Magic Recommended Reading Selection
An Indie Gift Guide 2021 Indie Next Selection

Sometimes, Michael Kleber-Diggs writes in this winner of the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, everything reduces to circles and lines.

In these poems, Kleber-Diggs names delight in the same breath as loss. Moments suffused with loveteaching his daughter how to drive; watching his grandmother bake a cake; waking beside his beloved to ponder trumpet mechanicscouple with moments of wrenching griefa fathers life ended by a gun; mourning children draped around their mothers waist; Freddie Grays death in police custody. Even in the refuge-space of dreams, a man calls the police on his Black neighbor.

ButWorldly Thingsrefuses to offer allegiance to this centuries-old status quo. With uncompromising candor, Kleber-Diggs documents the many ways America systemically fails those who call it home while also calling upon our collective potential for something better. Lets create folklore side-by-side, he urges, asking us to aspire to a form of nurturing defined by tenderness, to a kind of community devoted to mutual prosperity. All of us want, after all, our share of light, and just enough rainfall.

Sonorous and measured, the poems ofWorldly Thingsoffer needed guidance on ways forwardtoward radical kindness and a socially responsible poetics.

Reviews

Praise for Worldly Things

Finalist for the 2022 Minnesota Book Award in Poetry

A New York Times Book Review New & Noteworthy Poetry Selection

A Library Journal Poetry Title to Watch 2021

A Chicago Review of Books Poetry Collection to Read in 2021

A Readers Digest 14 Amazing Black Poets to Know About Now Selection

A Books Are Magic Recommended Reading Selection

An Indie Gift Guide 2021 Indie Next Selection

The full-throated poems in this debut collection see the world whole, allowing daily intimacies against a backdrop of social injustice. New York Times Book Review

In his debut poetry collection, Worldly Things, Kleber-Diggs takes his lived experience as a Black man in America, and with his pen, unpacks it . . . There are poems in the collection about Kleber-Diggs fathers death; his wifes miscarriage; about race and racism. Because these are the sorts of subjects he feels compelled to discuss . . . in ways that are candid, open-minded and openhearted. Through these hard conversations, he feels our most profound connections are made.Minneapolis Star Tribune

You should read [Worldly Things]. Because the work is so good and original, modest and quiet and piercing . . . More than anything, you should read this book because if a neighbor spends decades trying to find the right thing to say to you, you should listen. Mpls.St.Paul Magazine

A remarkable book . . . Kleber-Diggs attempts to hew hope from a mountain of despair, offering the world this plea: Let me bloom . . . let me be lovely. A truly moving, and very midwestern, collection.Books Are Magic, Recommended Reading

Though Michael Kleber-Diggs Worldly Things . . . is his debut poetry collection, his prowess as an essayist and literary critic isnt new. His prose is especially honest, engaging and descriptive, and this collection is sure to offer similar meaning and pleasure, with the sound, voice and impact that only poetry can deliver.Chicago Review of Books, Twelve Poetry Collections to Read in 2021

A stunning, expertly crafted work exploring themes such as grief, trauma, and fatherhood . . . This work is highly recommended for all collections.Library Journal, Starred Review

Loss laps at the edges of Worldly Things . . . The book as a whole, though, even as it decries the life cut short, relishes our being mortal, our having the chance to bloom and recede. Which is, in the end, what I suspect these poems want for all of us . . . that somehow we will all find our way into becoming lovely yet / temporal. Plume

Michael Kleber-Diggs's Worldly Things shows how he is sustained by family and nature in poems giving shape to the Black middle-class experience amid continuing political tumult.Library Journal

Worldly Things embraces the wondrousness of everyday existence . . . Poems of joy and celebration co-exist with elegies . . . [Kleber-Diggs] underscores that writing is itself an act of survival, a means of getting along in a universe that mixes joy with grief.Poetry Foundations Harriet Books blog

This debut poetry collection shines with moments of unexpected brilliance in scenes of domesticity, rural life, and African American experiences . . . Kleber-Diggs revels in evocative simplicity . . . A stunning new poetic voice similar to John Murillo and Tommye Blount. Booklist

[An] astonishing debut . . . a collection of perfectly crafted and expertly paced lyrics, each as arresting as the last.Minneapolis Star Tribune

Michael Kleber-Diggs wants us to know that an unrealized desire is not necessarily a thwarted or vanished or destroyed one . . . But as for communal peace and common purpose, we will have to persist in imagining these states of being. In Worldly Things, he gives us just enough rainfall to nourish, and give attention to, our twisted roots.On the Seawall

To follow Kleber-Diggs is to witness the modern conditionto notice it, interrogate it, appreciate it. His worldly things might be ephemeral, yet theyre anything but small. As these confident, unflinching poems accumulate, so too does a genuinely nuanced worldview: disappointed but never cynical, hurt yet forever hopeful.Joseph Holt, Great River Review

I am captivated, consoled, and bowled over by these poems, which are knifelike in their concision and oracular at their core.Worldly Thingsis so full of an age-old knowing I'm shocked it is Kleber-Diggs's debut. It is like the conundrum of the human soul: new and eternal at once.Tracy K. Smith

"When Michael Kleber-Diggs writes "my vision is common. / I dream about ordinary thingsstuff that could actually happen," he seems to write directly into the heart of this collection. And that is exactly what is so extraordinary about these poems. Plain spoken and insisting on the direct gaze,Worldly Thingsunveils the world that's right in front of us. The world that has been waiting, all this time, for someone to really see what is actually happening.Camille T. Dungy

Michael Kleber-Diggss Worldly Things gives us beautifully clear-eyed yet warmhearted poems, lamentations, and ruminations that reflect the difficult truths of the nation weve been living. These poems of fathers, sons, husbands, wives, daughters, mothers, and strangers show us how we could create community if we take the time and make the effort to treat each other with dignity and care. In the poem Worldly Things, Kleber-Diggs writes of his intent to craft / images and devices / meant to survive him. Hes succeeded in not only that but also in writing poems for our survival. Im grateful for this book I didnt know I was waiting for.Sean Hill

Michael Kleber-Diggss poems quietly put pressure on us to live up to our nations ideals. He gives voice to the experiences and aspirations of middle-class Black America, and though the promised land is far away, he finds grace in the natural world, long marriage, and fathering. These supple, socially responsible poems seem to me a triumphant, paradoxical, luminous response to a violent time in our history.Henri Cole

Winner of the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, Michael Kleber-Diggss Worldly Things is my standout poetry collection of 2021. Striking the right balance of small, precious moments (teaching his daughter to drive, learning to bake) and abject sorrow (the murder of his father, the death of Black lives at the hands of police), Kleber-Diggs explores life from all sides with refreshing franknesssee America is Loving Me to Deathwhile reminding us of the joys of the world and how there is always the possibility of something good. Keep an eye out for Gloria Mundi, maybe the most beautiful piece of writing Ive read this year. Nora, Staff Pick, Three Lives & Company

These poems are heavy with a deep and powerful ache, both the pain of loss and the longing for other futures, other ways of being. Michael Kleber-Diggss skilled hand writes down the feelings of an open heart and the musing of the clear-mindedmeditations on fatherhood and family, on Americas cruelty and racism, on death and on life. I earmarked many pages to return to and pass along to others, particularly the poems Coniferous Fathers and Gloria Mundi. Anna Siftar, Oblong Books

"From now on, if someone asks me why I'm never moving away from Saint Paul, Minnesota I'm just going to hand them a copy ofWorldly Things. Michael captures the nuances of our black and brown community here with unfiltered authenticity." Riley Jay Davis, Next Chapter Booksellers

This is a beautiful tribute to the reality of blackness in America. Moving, full of loss and love. Todd Miller, Arcadia Books

Author Bio

Michael Kleber-Diggs was born and raised in Kansas and now lives in St. Paul, Minnesota. His work has appeared in Lit Hub, the Rumpus, Rain Taxi, McSweeneys Internet Tendency, Water~Stone Review, Midway Review, North Dakota Quarterly and a few anthologies. Michael teaches poetry and creative nonfiction through the Minnesota Prison Writers Workshop.