Black Detroit, Black womanhood, class, luxury and materialism, and matrilineage. A nontraditional coming-of-age, Good Dress witnesses a speaker coming into her own autonomy and selfhood as a young adult, reflecting on formative experiences.

With care and incandescent energy, the poems engage with memory, time, interiority, and community. The collection also nudges tenderly toward curiosity: What does it mean to belong to a person, to a city? Can intimacy and romance be found outside the heteronormative confines of partnership? And in what ways can the pursuit of pleasure be an anchor that returns us to ourselves?

BIO

Brittany Rogers is a poet, educator, and lifelong Detroiter. She has work published or forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Indiana Review, Four Way Review, Underbelly, Mississippi Review, Lambda Literary, and Oprah Daily. Brittany is a fellow of VONA, The Watering Hole, Poetry Incubator, and Pink Door Writing Retreat. She is editor-in-chief of Muzzle magazine and co-host of VS Podcast.

REVIEWS

"Audacious, grounded, and generous." -- Donika Kelly

"Captures the spirit of resilience and singularity through powerfully visceral verse." -- Airea D. Matthews

"A once-in-a-generation debut collection. . . . Brittany Rogers is already a legend and the first of a new kind of poet for whom truth is a posture of both the line and the mouth. A poet come to wake us up for good." -- Angel Nafis

"Through lush imagery, slick syntax, elegant diction, and play with form, Brittany Rogers is a generous and keenly observant poet. Good Dress knows Detroit and all its migrations: the East Sidedness of its own language; its Down South tell-it-like-it-is because I love you and mean it. Night deer in the pastoral of empty house lots, the heaven of a corner deli that knows you by your name. These poems force us to consider what we mean when we say home, and who gets to tell that story. Exploring gentrification, queer eroticism, motherhood, and church-girl-blues, Brittany Rogers makes it her business to insist we look at it all— the catastrophe and the beauty—and leave none of its wisdom behind. This self-assured, dazzling debut has a story to tell. And says it with its chest, its whole mouth." -- Aricka Foreman

"Rogers’ electric debut enfolds us in what we didn’t know we needed to understand about how we can move in the world, to dance and roller skate and cry, to imagine ourselves adorned passionately with life." -- Khadijah Queen

"Brace yourself for what Rogers pulls off in this collection." -- Tommye Blount

[P]  Tin House Books  /  October 15, 2024

 0.6" H x 8.8" L x 5.8" W (0.26 lbs) 104 pages