Hold What Makes You Whole bookcover

Hold What Makes You Whole

4.9/5.0
21,000+ Reviews
Bookshop.org has the highest-rated customer service of any bookstore in the world

Description

Rest like the sun does:


Schedule some time

to stay out of sight

when too many people

praise warm energy ...




THE BOOK.


Poet Laureate Marcus Amaker's (he/him) tenth book, Hold What Makes You Whole, is a pocket-sized full-color collection of new and selected works from an award-winning opera librettist, musician, and graphic designer.

Hold What Makes You Whole is a 200-page compilation of jazz, Blackness, self care, fatherhood, Star Wars, social justice, music, and memory. Along with the audiobook and e-book, the Hold project also features short films, two full-length albums, and an interactive website.

On the cover of the book is Amaker's great-great aunt Ruth Robinson, a poet and community leader who published her first book at the age of 65. Robinson passed in 2020 when she was 94 years old.

"It's an honor to introduce you to her Spirit," Amaker said.


THE AUTHOR.


Marcus Amaker is a husband, a dad, a son, a music nerd, and a Star Wars obsessive. He served as the first Poet Laureate of Charleston, South Carolina, from 2016-22. In 2021, he became an Academy of American Poets fellow.

His work has been recognized by The Washington Post, The Kennedy Center, American Poets Magazine, Chicago Opera Theater, The Portland Opera, Button Poetry, NPR, The Chicago Tribune, Edutopia, Town & Country, PBS NewsHour, South Carolina Public Radio, Charleston Magazine, Charleston City Paper, Post and Courier, and more.


He's also a prolific performer, the award-winning graphic designer, a musician, an opera librettist, the creator of a poetry festival, a teaching artist, and an advocate for youth poets. His poetry was used by the Washington National Opera for its Presidential Inauguration Day Concert in 2021.

In addition to more than 40 independent electronic music albums, Marcus' poem "The Rain" is on two Grammy-nominated records.

He lives in North Charleston, SC, with his wife, their daughter, and a cat named after Wu-Tang Clan.


Product Details

PublisherFree Verse Press
Publish DateApril 04, 2023
Pages202
LanguageEnglish
TypeBook iconPaperback / softback
EAN/UPC9781734673722
Dimensions7.0 X 4.4 X 0.4 inches | 0.3 pounds
BISAC Categories: Poetry, Poetry

About the Author

Marcus Amaker is a husband, a dad, a son, a music nerd, and a Star Wars obsessive. He served as the first Poet Laureate of Charleston, SC from 2016-2022. In 2021, he became an Academy of American Poets fellow. Hold What Makes You Whole is his tenth book. He's also a powerful performer, the award-winning graphic designer of a national roots music journal (No Depression), an electronic musician, an opera librettist, the creator of a poetry festival, a teaching artist, and an advocate for youth poets. His poetry has been recognized by The Washington Post, The Kennedy Center, American Poets Magazine, The Washington National Opera, The Portland Opera, Button Poetry, NPR, The Chicago Tribune, Edutopia, Town & Country, PBS Newshour, SC Public Radio, Charleston Magazine, Charleston City Paper, North Dakota Quarterly, Post and Courier, and more. In 2019, he won a Governor's Arts award in South Carolina and was named the artist-in-residence of the Gaillard Center, a world-renowned performance and education venue. His poetry has been studied in classrooms around the country and has been interpreted for ballet, jazz, modern dance, opera, and theater. Marcus has recorded three albums with GRAMMY(R) Award-winning drummer and producer Quentin E. Baxter. He also created a publishing company, Free Verse Press, to release poetry books from authors in his community. He lives in North Charleston with his wife, their daughter, and a cat named after Wu-Tang Clan.

Reviews

Marcus Amaker is a poet committed to living abundantly on this earth. These are big-hearted poems, rich with sound and story, enlivened by metaphor and magic. In "Why I Write Poems," his speaker says, "a sharp turn of phrase / can sting like the edge of a blunt piece of paper." This book both stings and heals. - Beth Ann Fennelly (she/her), poet laureate of Mississippi, 2016-21


Hold What Makes You Whole is a gratifying meditative collection of poems accompanied by kaleidoscopic visual imagery that pulls you in, settles your mind, and makes way for one's own reflections. A journey of words through the micro and macro elements of a life. Amaker has created a collection made perfectly for this moment in time. - Lisa Willis (she/her), executive director of Cave Canem Foundation


Dedicated to his great-great aunt Ruth, Hold What Makes You Whole is a celebration of the ways we each contain all the elements in the universe. From our families and our home place to the larger sweep of history, Marcus reminds us about the things that make us whole. Sprinkling wisdom on every page, he reminds us that "joy doesn't have / to go far / to find a home." For Marcus Amaker, "writing a poem is world building," and the worlds he brings us in this glorious collage of text and image is one where "You are free / to find heaven /even if / you don't believe / heaven exits," This book is a gift for all of us. - Marjory Wentworth (she/her), poet laureate of South Carolina, 2003-21


In Hold What Makes You Whole, Marcus Amaker harnesses the slick and psychic echoes that our living creates. His handling of this mastery turns up an awareness of how choral and connected a self can be ó across spaces, across times, across realities. And that whelming possibility is at the core of this poet's grace, because, as Amaker hears it, "what could be / more spiritual / than realizing / your spirit / has outgrown / the body / it was given?" Bless this book. - Geffrey Davis (he/him), author of "Night Angler" (BOA Editions)


One of the most multitalented poets in the country, Amaker turns his eye and ear to the body in his new collection, Hold What Makes You Whole. Combining poems, photography, and illustration, Amaker asks big questions of the vessels that carry us through life: How do our bodies hold grief? Identity? Loved ones? How is it that "My eyes are closed / and I can / still see you?" How can the exhaustion of fatherhood make one's eyelids "heavy with daylight?" "I've come to be in bloom," Amaker says, and for him, the flower has many kinds of petals. Conducting his way through a symphony in which he is also the instruments, Amaker harmonizes words with images with handwriting with typography. "Everything that has wings is kinfolk," he says, and everything Amaker touches in this beautiful book begins to fly. - P. Scott Cunningham (he/him), founder/director, O, Miami Poetry Festival


Earn by promoting books

Earn money by sharing your favorite books through our Affiliate program.sign up to affiliate program link
Become an affiliate