An irreverently tender profile of Black trans life surviving & thriving during contemporary political turmoil.
"A jayy dodd poem is a jayy dodd poem: singular, wrought, rhythmic, pulsing. Their new collection, Mannish Tongues, equal parts testimony and performance, both sings and mourns the Black body, the church, the spaces we inhabit, our identities."-Devin Kelly, Entropy Magazine
"In Mannish Tongues, jayy dodd demonstrates a mastery of lyric, and more than that: they fully inhabit language, manipulating it so intimately that every proclamation doubles as a confession. The presence of "tongues" is laid out across the whole book; the speaker's language belongs exclusively to them."-Logan February, The Bind
"A poet, visual/performance artist, and writer, their work marvelously speaks to culture, Blackness, queer theory, and gender, while taking on a unique and fine-tuned post-internet aesthetic."-Devyn Springer, AFROPUNK
"This collection by jayy dodd be a Black soundtrack remixing a questioning condition-be a pristine 16-bars: poplocking & unlocking all our imprisoned ignorance-be a praise song-blasphemous & righteous simultaneous-an altar-an alter ego-a negro narcissus blowing kisses at the mirror of their divine fineness-yes, lawd, these poems root us in the truth-sprout lovely-the opposite of wilt-they 'flower in your hand'-bloom sonic in your ear like anti-anthem shading flamboyant & deathdropping to the pulse of its own parade. Amen."-t'ai freedom ford
"Who is Narcissus? If I thought I knew the answer to that question, I no longer do. Does jayy dodd's The Black Condition ft. Narcissus offer a mythology remixed, queered, Blackened, etc? For sure! jayy dodd inscribes and incarnates a dialectical desire for presence and a line of attack into 'The Black Condition' as written by White Supremacy, faggotry as written by Hetero/Homo & Trans normativities, femininity as written by misogynoir, genius as written out of and against Black queer/trans/femme subjectivities. But far more than critical mirror or melancholy echo, dodd's Narcissus emerges as generative principle, birthing the most vulnerable of possibilities, and deftly intimate, if joyously irreverent, critique. Their book is beautiful, voluptuous, daring and demanding of new shapes for becoming, loving and where necessary, destroying. jayy
dodd is a genius and I will say that again."-Trish Salah
"If Amiri Baraka the poet, the pure technician, musician, chronicler of all that is black, blue, purple and lyric, were to metamorphosize and return as a blxk trans femme in spirit they would be jayy dodd. dodd's poetry captures the magic and the 'tude, the swing, swagger and tender hands of their experience. It's an epic, a record, recording, A&B side, CD with bonus track, most importantly it is gospel bristling with raw and
tender truths and yearning."-Pamela Sneed
"A sawing motion-that is how I would describe the "work" (force x distance) of jayy dodd's The Black Condition ft. Narcissus, a collection full of lines so sharp I often do not realize I have been flayed until their edges have exited me. And in a masochistic way, it was a flaying I came to desire-having comfort in my body, comfort in my heterosexuality and cis gendering, comfort in my blkness all sliced into as the speaker in dodd's poems oscillates between a titanesque confidence ('i write my own anthems. make you sing them back to me') and an endearing anxiety ('i'm as scared/ of being ignored as i am of being seen'). What is more demigod? What is more blk and trans and femme than to want so earnestly to be seen or touched and to know either could finish in your death? No hyperbole: 'i've accepted my body/ can't be both safe & beautiful.' These poems grasp beauty and life and ugliness and death, reaching through and above and below us."-Kyle G. Dargan
