Nikky Finney
"In Nikky Finney's Head Off & Split the beauty of language soars and saves us even as we skirt the raw edge of terror. And something rare and precious is restored, a light, circling movement of the spirit. This is poetry to give thanks for."
– Meena Alexander, author of Quickly Changing River
"Beginning with the sweepingly inclusive and powerful 'Red Velvet,' a Middle Passage poem for our times, Nikky Finney takes the reader to a wonderfully alive world where the musical possibilities of language overflow with surprise and innovation. Finney has an ear to go along with the wildness of her imagination, which sweeps through history like a pair of wings. Her carefully modulated free verse is always purposeful in its desire to move the reader in a way that allows us to imitate access to necessary observations about ourselves. These poems, in other words, have the power to save us."
– Bruce Weigl, author of What Saves Us
"No one opens a vein on a page with a sharper and more nuanced gathered set of senses than Nikky Finney. In Head Off & Split, she takes aim at the heart of American wrong-headedness with a sense of purpose and integrity not only respectful of, but fueled by, her own brand of multiple kinships and rememberance, a grand struggle-swagger of powerful literary inheritance."
– Thomas Sayers Ellis, author of Skin, Inc.
"Again, Nikky Finney manipulates into music the words readers use to see, hear, and understand a soul's history. Head Off & Split is as Southern as it is American, as feminist as it is human, as black as it is a tide of colors knowing no bounds. These poems collapse time into one great knowing where Modjeska Monteith Simkins can look Condoleezza Rice in the eye and forgive her. Yes, "lightning can come though any open door," and this book is proof of it."
– Jericho Brown, author of PLEASE.
"Nikky Finney has been a fine poet much too long to say that this latest treasure is her promise coming into being. She exploded with so much talent with On Wings Made of Gauze and beautifully matured with Rice, yet Head Off & Split takes the promise of youth with the control of adulthood to bring her greatest exploration. Honest, searing, searching. We all, especially now, need this book of poems; we all, especially now, need this poet."
– Nikki Giovanni, author of Bicycles
"Finney has a knack for narrative and is a natural story teller for whom lyric seems compulsion, if not instinct. At her strongest, Finney weaves through lines like the seamstress with fresh, unusual, and imaginative metaphors. Her language is so rich you are compelled to read her poems aloud if only to feel the texture of her words on your literary pallet."
– Natalie N. Caro