with/holding

Chantal Gibson’s with/holding is a conceptual book of poetry that interrogates the intersections of race, media, and lyric form. The pages are formatted to resemble, by turns, the interface of a browser, a web advertisement, an online checkout cart, and an instructional manual, among other things, with insistent interruptions that call attention to the ways in which consumption and language are intertwined. While the critique is consistent, the many forms of poetic “undoing” are erratic in the best sense. “Add to Cart,” for example, is a series of short poems, across three columns, the first of which lists commodities: “Moorish bath set,” “Mammy throw pillow,” “Justice 4 Breonna duvet cover,” “Frantz Fanon Cognitive Dissonance weekender tote.” In the second column, we encounter semi-ironic descriptions of each item; in the third, we learn the cost. Such poems offer a deliberate deconstruction of virtue messaging and its social capital, showing how calls for justice and accountability have been transformed by capitalism into ways of performing good politics through consumerism and not much else. Through these juxtapositions, Gibson is arguing that solidarity is often bought and used literally as a form of cover or as nourishment for those who are not under threat. While the book is thoughtful and the poetic explorations both clever and interactive, there were times when I felt the method of critique was unremitting, making the work read more like a manifesto or zine rather than a collection of poems.