within-group variance

Leslie McIntosh’s brilliant debut within-group variance pushes beyond the limitations of identity politics in pursuit of a “me that is me everywhere.” Through archival fabulation, data theory, diagrams, redactions, and epistles, McIntosh weaves a kaleidoscopic lyric that probes the terrains of Black identity and history, invoking a multidisciplinary network of muses along the way, including Bayard Rustin, Phillis Wheatley Peters, and Charles Gaines. With tenderness and rigor, these poems insist on the multiplicity of the self and the possibilities of language to hold it.