Vintage Sadness by Hanif Abdurraqib

Vintage Sadness Reviews

• 
  elisa

  every time i read hanif willis-abdurraqib’s work, i have to catch my breath. he has the careful balancing act between tender and terrifying down pat—the strange liminal space between the two locates a part of me that i have only felt flounder at certain hours. most of them sunset. i love his brain:
  
  

  I just want to touch someone who thinks of me while their coffee cools. I just want to kiss a mouth that has grown my name inside. I just want to make good use of all this nighttime.
• 
  Kurt Neumaier

  My favorite writer. The greatest poet to ever write a poem about Carly Rae Jepsen's magnum opus E-MO-TION
• 
  Madina

  honestly, you can already tell this 5 star review was coming. i read the bootlegged version (hanif thank you thank you thank you for making the book accessible for a brokeass non-american teenage girl) & i was like.... choking all the time reading it. but god AND WHAT GOOD WILL YOUR VANITY BE WHEN THE RAPTURE COMES tore me into pieces & i don't regret that at all.
• 
  Denise

  DAMN. Hanif is stupidly talented, and is very quickly becoming my favorite contemporary poet. How blessed we are to have two of his books coming out in 2017. This is a great, restrained collection, but still incredibly powerful. If you loved The Crown Ain't Worth Much, you'll undoubtedly love this...if you can get your hands on one of the limited copies!
• 
  Joe Miller

  A fantastic excuse to listen to Ginuwine's "Pony" or Bone Thugs' "Crossroads."
• 
  joanne

  "In the interview, they asked if you believe in love at first sight. You said I think I have to. You didn’t say we are all one hard storm away from dissolving, vanishing into the frenzied dusk. But I get it. I know what it is to walk into the mouth of an unfamiliar morning and feel everything. I touch hands with a stranger who gives me my change at the market, and I already know their history. I suppose this is survival. I will love those who no one else thinks to remember."
  
  tender and brilliant notes on death, grief/survival, hunger, desire-as-hunger and occasionally as-an-act-of-conquering, & the fields of ohio. the frequency of run-on sentences without punctuation give the words a frenzied feel, where scenes are spun out with sweeping, visceral images. enjoyed this one a lot!!
  
  favourites: Duran Duran - Girls on Film, Carly Rae Jepsen - Emotion, There are Prince Songs You Do Not Play Before Sunset, Bone Thugs N Harmony’s “Crossroads” Plays at the House Party on the Night the Police Officer Gets Acquitted in Cleveland, Olivia Newton John - Let's Get Physical, And What Good Will Your Vanity Be When the Rapture Comes, and three pieces titled only with two forward dashes //.
• 
  Anthony

  "he tells me this is called ghosting.
  or, what it means to be defined only by the emptiness that once held you."
  
  Reading anything by Hanif feels like I'm being given access to his most intimate thoughts but incredibly polished, raw and genuine at the same time. I got a free copy online and decided to give this a read. As always, he writes with enough emotional vigor to have you captivated throughout.
  
  
• 
  camila

  quería citar algo que me haya gustado mucho acá pero no me podía decidir entre “dying is hard when you have given birth to so much” y “son, you do not have to be afraid anymore. there is no city that is not my arms. I am everyone who loves you” y “this works better if you imagine loneliness / as something that can be uprooted & worn around the shoulders” y “Momma, if I die, / it will not be from a lack of anything. / I am full, I am full, I can barely / move” y todo el resto del poemario básicamente.
• 
  Clint Morin

  Read the bootleg on a dim phone screen until the battery died . 5/5 would sacrifice Candy Crush and Reddit for this again.
• 
  Nikki

  You can read this for free here:
  https://www.biglucks.com/store/vintag...
  
  Love Abdurraqib's writing style. His words pack a punch, for sure. Will be reading more of his works soon!
  
  WATCHING THE FIRST SCENE OF “BELLY” WITH THE LIGHTS OFF, 2002
  
  we ran from the nightclub / when the newspaper / told me that five people / were pulled from the Avalon’s bloody tile / it didn’t feel like I had survived / anything other than a Friday / with money in my pocket / but I still grabbed my boys / by the shirt / & hugged them in the front yard / like we just made it back from war / & there I go again / making another death romantic
  
  
  
  
  
  
• 
  A.J

  No I liked this a lot actually. I feel like I have to read everything this man has ever written and ever time I read something new he makes me question something. Like. Idk. I have all these feelings about this and no where to put them down
• 
  Adam

  Damn.
• 
  Jak Krumholtz

  That missing star probably reflects more on my relationship to poetry than Abdurraqib's work.
• 
  Jeché

  He’s still getting his footing here, but still manages to pen several jaw-dropping pieces. I will continue to read whatever I get my hands on from this author.
• 
  Ruby Warhol

  I loved this poetry collection, it's moving and inspiring and sad and funny and simply brilliant. Every unexpected line and well-crafted sentence was like a punch to the stomach, and I can't get enough of being punched.
  There is grief, racism, poverty, love, sex, loneliness, and so much more, described in painfully beautiful words. Despite some of the poems being quite specific, you'll still be able to find yourself in the words if you're not a Black man in America. Emotions are universal, and the pictures that Hanif Abdurraqib paints can't leave anyone untouched.
  
  Even before I got to the end, I already wanted to read it again immediately, and will probably return to it many times, if only to cure my own writer's block. And judging by the other reviews, I'm not the only one who read this and felt compelled to start writing.
  
  I had downloaded the book as a free PDF on Big Lucks, but because it was so good, I think I'll have to buy it and keep it forever on my shelf, so I can still cherish it when the days of electricity have ended, the metaverse has exploded, and the internet has died.
• 
  emma_troubadour

  and what good will your vanity be when the rapture comes
  
  Ugh. Brilliant as always.
• 
  Gabrielle Squailia

  There are very few living writers whose every word I will purchase if given the chance, but Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib has just rocketed to the top of that list. This was a limited edition thing so I can't tell you to buy it, but I can tell you buy The Crown Ain't Worth Much, and to wait with sweaty excitement for the next thing and the next.
• 
  floreana

  "this is how i remember you / as grass / as flowers / as anything pushing out of the earth / in the name of its own survival / I throw a handful of dirt into the wind / it blows back into my eyes / and, there / I feel it kiss my forehead."
• 
  Jason

  "I wake and remember only a harsh wind. I love nothing that can see its own reflection."
  
  Vintage Hanif.
• 
  jaeski

  god i love poems that remind you what it's like to feel alive. thank you hanif abdurraqib. 5 lines into the first poem and i was already trying to hold back tears. the poems about platonic love......... im a wreck
  
  i remember watching his spoken word/slam poetry on youtube back when i was 16/17 and the line
  
  

  
  "so i'm not exactly sure which wound is the wound i belong to anymore."

  
  
  struck me so hard i remember it even now.
  
  so when i found out hanif abdurraqib now has entire poetry collections i was so happy and god you can tell he came from slam poetry bc so many of these poems just have to be read aloud the rhythm and musicality of them....... love the run-on lines and prose poetry too.
  
  trying so hard not to just. bawl at the 2nd last poem
  

  "I saw their faces and it was like I was given the eyes of a newborn
  again and once you know what it is to be lonely it is hard to
  unsee that which serves as a reminder that you were not always / empty"

  
  
  also
  

  " I am a nation of vacancies
  a haunting of sorrow
  I have borders around my borders
  one hundred abandoned tongues
  scattered across the walls of a dark room"

  
  
  every poem was so beautiful i cannot quote them all. these poems reminded me what it feels like to be alive.
• 
  Leylamaría

  “There is more than one way to cover a temple in platinum. Maybe we both long for an era when there were less things to record death. In the interview, they asked if you believe in love at first sight. You said I think I have to. You didn’t say we are all one hard storm away from dissolving, vanishing into the frenzied dusk. But I get it. I know what it is to walk into the mouth of an unfamiliar morning and feel everything. I touch hands with a stranger who gives me my change at the market, and I already know their history. I suppose this is survival. I will love those who no one else thinks to remember. This is all that is promised: there will be a decade you are born, and a decade that you will not make it out of alive. All of the rooftops where the parties were in the year of my becoming are now dust. No one dances so close to the sky anymore. I say I, too, am a romantic, and I mean I never expected to survive this long. I have infinite skin. I keep dry when the rain comes. There will always be another era of bright suits that don’t quite fit, but must. There will always be a year where the cameras are hungry for whatever sins we can strangle out of the night. There will always be another spoon for boys to lick the sugar from.”
  
  —
  
  First read of 2023. Really special stuff
• 
  Ada

  4.5
• 
  Nadiya

  i am so sorry about what all this / has done to your heart
• 
  Rachel

  everything man touches turns to gold!
• 
  Carolina

  Volvi a leer en Inglés después de muchos años con esta obra y es 💥