Life in a Box Is a Pretty Life

Author: Dawn Lundy Martin

Publisher: Nighboat Books (2015)

Life in a Box Is a Pretty Life continues leading American poet Dawn Lundy Martin's investigation into what is produced in the interstices between the body, experience, and language, and how alternative narratives can yield some other knowledge about what it means to be black and queer in contemporary America.

“The book’s deft movement between broken lines and long ones, a perfect “poemy” moment and a hard crack on the ear (say “Trauma sack”), harbors no romanticism. Instead it insists on how aesthetics are born out of the politics of racism, capitalism, and unfreedom. One of the many marquees reads, “WHEN WE ARE INSIDE THE PRISON / WE CAN ONLY THINK OF BEAUTY.”

–Karen Lepri

Winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Poetry

Finalist for the The Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry

Winner of the Firecracker Award for Independent Publishing in Poetry