An Audacious Book Club Pick
Ms., A Best Poetry of the Year
Electric Literature, A Best Poetry Book of the Year
Our Culture Magazine, A Most Anticipated Book of the Summer
“Fascinating . . . This is a smart, troubling, and important book. One of its most powerful aspects is its ability to put you—whatever your race, class, or gender—in the complicated, upsetting, and sometimes sublime situations Byas describes, as you work to dispel whatever privilege of ignorance you might enjoy or whatever wish you might have to look away.” —Adam Day, Action, Spectacle
“A beautifully rendered collection of some of the profound observations, questions, and heartbreaks that attend existence in a Black feminine body. These poems will spark recognition in women of every origin, artists, and lovers of art. Whether chronicling childhood, the day-to-day of human relationships, the viewing and making of art, or the ways in which certain revered artists terrorized their subjects, every poem considers (mis)perception and clarity from a unique perch.” —Gianni Washington, Chicago Review of Books
“Byas’s talent for pairing restrained emotional nuance with formal constraints is also showcased in I Done Kicked My Heels Three Times, her debut full-length collection from 2023 about a Black woman’s journey through the South Side of Chicago and inspired by The Wiz. But it’s her second full-length collection Resting Bitch Face where Byas both deploys those formidable talents and returns wholly to that sense of both watching and being watched, in particular the way in which that dynamic shapes the experience of living as a Black woman. From sculpture studies to examinations of WandaVision, from erasure poems to villanelles, from reflections on Gauguin to ruminations on jokes dropped in the group chat, Byas’s collection is inventive and intimate, intelligent and meticulously crafted.” —Roxane Gay, An Audacious Book Club Selection
“What we see in something as superficial (and alluring) as a face is a throughline Byas tugs and torques through her new collection, in sections named after painting terms (‘Canvas,’ ‘Gesso,’ ‘Dry Down’), in responses to canonical artworks (‘Well Damn, Picasso’) and meditations sparked by museum- and moviegoing. Byas’s pantoums, duplexes, and sonnet sequences flaunt a rigorous formalism, but she may be even better at decomposing than at composing: blacking out and recontextualizing her own polished words, refuting her poems with contrasting poems packed into footnotes, Byas scrutinizes the multiple facets of every face.” —Christopher Spaide, Literary Hub
“This astute and ingenious collection shines.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Striking . . . Ranging from bildungsroman-esque, self-image-themed poems to elegant verses in conversation with art, film, poetry, photography, and historical figures, these works consider the perspective of muse and artist, observer and observed . . . Byas deploys strong, startling wordplay and clever imagery . . . A thought-provoking, gracefully executed collection.” —Booklist (starred review)
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