A Mercy: Two Books by Hanif Abdurraqib

Abstract

Hanif Abdurraqib is always alert to those moments when ordinary life gets inhabited by the presence of something larger. Perhaps this is why his writing on music and pop culture in the US is furnished with words like grace, mercy, prayer. Consider for instance how an otherwise ordinary domestic scene is transformed into something holy in the poem, ‘When We Were 13, Jeff’s Father Left the Needle Down on a Journey Record Before Leaving the House One Morning and Never Coming Back’. Abdurraqib recasts this episode from his childhood in Columbus, Ohio, in the 90s, as a religious experience, an exorcism.