... Awkward-Rich's terse yet beguiling lyric articulates what it is to inhabit a particular body at a particular time in history, and, in the shadow of violence, to seek--or resist--openness.-- "The New Yorker"
Weighed down by the 'brutal choreography' of violence against black, queer, and trans bodies, the poet reestablishes buoyancy through will and formidable artistry... in these poems of bracing clarity, national violence is unflinchingly and meaningfully confronted.-- "Publishers Weekly"
Awkward-Rich seeks his own differentiation, recognition, the perhaps impossible goal of feeling truly seen for your whole self.--Stephanie Burt "Los Angeles Review of Books"
The poems in Awkward-Rich's second collection speak with poised urgency out of profound, enduring fear imposed by impossibly huge forces... and steady themselves, when steadiness seems possible, on the fact of an undiminishable self beyond language.-- "American Poets"
Awkward-Rich also grounds and interrogates corporal experience through a variety of poetic forms... [he] imagines building a world inside your body full of the people you love that have been taken from you, the beauty that you can find there.-- "Columbia Journal"
Such profoundly personal narration in debuts has been done--and will be done again--but Awkward-Rich's rawness and dexterity in conveying complex issues push his verse beyond stereotypes.-- "Publishers Weekly on "Sympathetic Little Monster""