Imperial Liquor: Poems

"With a shaken lyric voice, Imperial Liquor burns going down. Like cities. Like the years spent trying to get along. Like the terror, anger, pain, and shame swallowed that Amaud Jamaul Johnson has uncapped here, poured out here, for kin and kith who came and went, his children, mine, the ones we were and are, the ones who raised us, the adults an empire's relentless thirst makes some of us too early. Johnson distills that here. A shattering achievement. It's eerie and terrible, no less than Beauty's dark miracle. It's Johnson's poetry. Sip this fire slowly." --Douglas Kearney
"Johnson's poems cannot teach his children how to protect themselves--there are too many aggressors. Instead, his poems catalogue the many dangers they face and the impossibility of predicting what could assail them. Johnson's poems are also a testament to a father's longing to protect his children even while suspecting he will fail to do so." --The Poetry Foundation
"Vibrant and deeply felt, Johnson's collection combines contemporary verve with an astonishing breadth of history and culture." --Booklist Starred Review

"There are countless models of black masculinity in America. Some are enshrined in pop culture while others collect dust in the archives of ivory towers. With Imperial Liquor, his third poetry collection, Amaud Jamaul Johnson arranges them, the familiar and the forgotten, with intense lyricism and formal dexterity, and in figures that lay bare the culture at America's core as well as the genius that produces it. Johnson is a crowd-pleaser, a hole-card-reader, a social critic and consummate chronicler of the Rap Age. He's got your number, don't sleep. You've got to peep this hustle, and delight." --Gregory Pardlo