PRAISE FOR VINTAGE SADNESS

"I’ve heard Hanif say that many of these poems were inspired by songs he didn’t know were about sex: how you start with that conceit & end up with poems that move me to get up & yell is beyond me. They say some days you need the music, and other days, the lyrics. Hanif gives us both. As Richard Pryor, in incandescent & open mouthed despair, gave humans the stretch of their own possibility, so does Hanif in every poem, every book, every group chat message. Look: Hanif is a maker of worlds, of tender and urgent moments. When Hanif writes of nostalgia, I want to live forever in nostalgia. Vintage Sadness reminds that we don’t listen to songs so much as to what’s behind them, which, gasp, is always us. Hanif reaches deep into the core of a riff and reveals its red-hot interior: desire, loss, the doubled-edge of mortality, how it gives and steals away. No one sets music to music like Hanif. Blessed are we to hold in our hands, and place on our bookshelves, this collection by Hanif. Who speaks always with a wealth of patience, lyric precision, and measured sight.”

—Sean DesVignes, José Olivarez, Angel Nafis, Danez Smith, Safia Elhillo, Desiree Bailey, Cortney Lamar Charleston, and Aziza Barnes

VINTAGE SADNESS: THE PLAYLIST

Listen to some of the songs and artists referenced in the book!