Nick Laird takes a long look at Claudia Rankine for the New York Review of Books:
When we march under one banner for different causes, when we gather many different cases under the title “Black Lives Matter,” for example, simplification is needed. Political movements require basic statements like these in order to gather disparate groups into one powerful bloc. But lyric poetry tends not to work like that. It chases particulars. Its symbols are not public ones. It aspires to compress without simplifying.
