"His themes are easily sentimental. . . . There's a tension in the work
that I just find incredibly fresh." --Gregory Pardlo, judge of the 2018
Honickman First Book Award
Winner of the prestigious Honickman First Book Award from the American
Poetry Review, selected by Pulitzer Prize winner Gregory Pardlo,
Throwing the Crown describes a boyhood on the edge. Set in a Chicago
neighborhood dominated by gang life, Saenz sets the sweetness and
vulnerability of youth against the cold reality of a gun pressed against
a forehead. Full of accelerative sound--tight rhymes and short,
percussive lines--these poems follow a fast-paced trajectory from danger
to survival, pausing to acknowledge the beauty and humor in the details
along the way.
From "Blue Line Incident"
. . . the boys of 15th and 51st, I say,
they're my boys, my friends.
I was fishing for a life-
saver & he took, hooked him in
& had him say goodbye like we was boys
& shit when really I should've
gutted that fuck w/the tip
of my blue ballpoint.
Jacob Saenz was born in Chicago and raised in Cicero, Illinois. His
poetry has been anthologized in The Open Door: 100 Poems, 100 Years of
Poetry Magazine and The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the
Age of Hip-Hop. A CantoMundo fellow, he has been the recipient of a
Letras Latinas Residency and a Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship. He serves
as an associate editor for RHINO.
