Perfect Black

"Crystal Wilkinson's Perfect Black is powerful witch-work. In these cascading lyrics, Wilkinson casts her glittering net of protection over the bodies and hearts of every Black girl. The poet's past self, 'a girl, not yet trouble,' is a dreamer whose desires—for love and intellectual play, for spiritual radiance and sexual empowerment—still carry sweet potency. Here, Black Rapunzel lets down her miraculous ladders of wisdom and vision, while Black grandmothers and church ladies transform into sailboats, safe harbors. Read this book and swerve, in Wilkinson's 'perfect cursive,' along paths ancestral and deliciously strange."—Kiki Petrosino, author of White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia

"'I can read time by my own shadow,' Wilkinson writes, and she conjures these heart piercing, authentic poems from the very ground of her life, from the water, from the mountains, from history and memory. It is in every sense a very particular woman we meet in Perfect Black, and it takes the artistry of this very particular poet to also give voice to her forbears, challenge injustice, and offer us a vision of what is possible. Wilkinson's range is astonishing: lyrics, narratives, laments, prayers, reminiscences, and more. Equal parts light and heat, these poems are incandescent."—Richard Hoffman, author of Noon until Night

"If we are Black it should be Perfect. Crystal has shared a wonderful book. Curl up with a cup of soul and enjoy it."—Nikki Giovanni, Poet

"In the beautifully illustrated Perfect Black, when Silas, a water witching grandfather, does anything but read and when Crystal Wilkinson finds a familiar ache in Prince's wildness, you know just how married she is to everything country especially her people and you learn quickly that being country ain't a compliment nor an insult. It's a warning and a promise that has everything to do with folk ways. With the earth. And with truth—no matter how much it hurts. With the same authentic voices that anchor her fiction and twice the personal risks, these poems will hand wash you in the creek and leave you on the line to dry. Utilizing evocative cinematic images that walk right off the page so easily you can taste the seasonings, smell the honeysuckle, feel the blades of grass beneath your bare feet and hear Crystal's allegiance to mountains, creeks and people the color of tobacco from the very first line."—Frank X Walker, author of Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York

"There is an ambience in Crystal Wilkinson's Perfect Black that captures the nostalgic sentiment of place with all its complexities. Wilkinson's inner ear is prominent and pronounced, and within this poetry collection lies the embodiment of women who know the 'creek' and the 'looking-glass' and we, the reader, are innocuous within the words. Imagistically, we are shown what it means to grow up country, girl and Black behind the backdrop of Appalachia. I cannot think of a more authentic voice from the 'holla' than what Wilkinson gives us in Perfect Black."—Randall Horton author of {#289-128}: Poems

"Crystal Wilkinson is Black woman chameleon. Perfect Black proves its joyous heart and weight in devastating truth. Needle-like lines and language thread the Black tradition and southern resilience. This hip strong poetry moves within the spirits of mothers and grandmothers, and a woman's evolution takes center stage and gravity. Wilkinson has long shapeshifted between the literary worlds of prose and poetry. Fiction has reaped her brilliance long enough. It's poetry's turn!"—Parneshia Jones, author of Vessel

"Perfect Black is the long-awaited first poetry volume from the acclaimed Affrilachian novelist, Crystal Wilkinson. Collecting poems that were written across two decades, Perfect Black tells the story of one woman's Kentucky life, a hymn to how Wilkinson emerged from a rural girlhood to build a transformative legacy of activism and artistry. As the poet remembers and survives traumas like sexual assault, mother-loss, and racism, she also reminds the reader that by staying close to her roots, and the land in which they grow, a woman can learn how to do more than survive—she can come out singing, she can thrive. Perfect Black is not just a compelling book of poetry, it is the inspiring memoir-in-verse of the writer who became the Commonwealth's first African-American woman to be named Poet Laureate."—Rebecca Gayle Howell, author of American Purgatory

"'Sometimes the dead appear in my kitchen,' Wilkinson writes in this collection, which mines her Kentucky girlhood for lyrics (illustrated by her partner, Ronald W. Davis) about family and heritage."—The New York Times

"The narrative poems in Perfect Black by Crystal Wilkinson invoke a world with the imagistic and geographic precision of Jean Toomer's Cane; the witty invitation of Lucille Clifton; and the rolling panoramas of Black life explored in the work of Gwendolyn Brooks. . . . When Wilkinson grasps at the limitations of what we can control or know, she is deeply funny and cutting."—The Poetry Foundation

"I read this, and I'm sent back in time to my own grandmother's kitchen on a North Carolina summer day on the tobacco farm, the smell of corn bread frying in the cast-iron skillet, her cotton dress soaked in sweat, and the heat seemingly never less than 100 degrees. Crystal Wilkinson's first poetry collection, and fourth book, Perfect Black, does this to readers."—The Southern Review of Books

"Perfect Black . . . reads like the collection of a seasoned writer who knows just what she wants to say and how she wants to say it, a rare quality in poets of any age."—UnderMain

"In her new book Perfect Black, Crystal Wilkinson has done more than revisit the moments and environment and relationships that made her. . . .There's discipline and finesse that's astounding in its steadiness as she describes incidents, perpetual struggles and impressions and tributes (especially to the 'women that made me a woman') in poems and short essays. The collection's strengthened with visual accompaniment through illustrations by Ronald W. Davis."—LEO Weekly

"Wilkinson gives readers a kaleidoscope of poems, many of them inspired by her life. Each poem delves into ideas around being a Black, Appalachian woman from a long line of such women. From prose poems about foodways to more lyrical poems about living as a young girl with a mother struggling with mental illness, Wilkinson's work illustrates her incredible range and impressive skill."—Book Riot

"Perfect Black paints an intensely variegated and intersectional picture of life as a Black woman growing up, coming of age, and maturing in Appalachia."—Cleveland Review of Books