Convenient Amnesia by Donald Vincent

Buy ‘Convenient Amnesia’ from the following preferred places:

• Directly from the publisher: Broadstone Books

• Buy a signed copy from me. Email me at hey[at]hidonaldvincent.com

• From Small Press Distribution

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Reviews of Convenient Amnesia

‘Convenient Amnesia confronts America’s memory problem’ by Stephen Scott Whitaker published in The Broadkill Review (July 2020 Issue)

If you are interested in reviewing Convenient Amnesia, please contact me by email at hey[at]hidonaldvincent.com.

Praise for Convenient Amnesia

“Convenient Amnesia takes upon itself the grave paradox involved in nothing being forgotten, everything being exposed, everything standing judged, all being overcome; Vincent's poems reveal and revel within poetry's genius for finding the edges and true centers of beauty and  truth in visible and hidden centers and hard to find outskirts everywhere. Vincent writes with historical purpose and communal love for living via poetry's advantage.  His poems invoke Dr. Martin Luther King, President Barack Obama, martyrs and musicians, family and friends; his poems are about these times and all times, they are unafraid to go where they must go if they are to do what poetry always wants to do.” - Dara Wier, author of In the Still of the Night

"Because Amnesia might, as a towering creative twin associate, stand in for America, there’s a hole, and I and eyehole, in the middle of each of the pages of this book, one that the reader must spin and un-spin, mix and remix, in order to reshuffle the changing turntable of “commas in the wrong place.” The hole is the whole of history, personal and under-surveillance, where public memory is the currency of flow. Thus Convenient Amnesia is a very versatile creative phrenology of the roots of a wise (yet casual) witnessing. In poems that climb, from source to sound, the known and unknown ladders of the cultural register, Donald Vincent is both cunning and courageous as well as full of the poetic swag it takes to mix and mingle with the old battles between justice and injustices that our ancestors were forced to leave unfinished. Here is a new record for future playlists and damn-near every groove contains a Black Ass Free mind treat!" - Thomas Sayers Ellis, author of The Corny Toys

“Donald Vincent's first book Convenient Amnesia is the book of a poet who says truthfully that he will "embody struggle/ defying expectation every day." A poet against the erasure of blackness, he is also a poet who is always "In It," the life of love, dating, family, friendship, culture, language itself, nuance, things we need to resist, as we have to resist the "you-never-go-back-charm" we generate with our history and histories which could make us forget. In his poem "Body-Camera," the "Ness" in the word consciousness breaks off and swims like a fearful mirage of a non-existent lake serpent. With all of his registers of poetry, from the lament, to the shared joke, to satires of privilege and love of celebrity, to love poetry and poems that celebrate the anarchy of desire and love, to poems that are political in only the way that somebody who is actually from Washington and has seen the liars up close and knows that we need truth, to poems that celebrate poetry itself—blues, hip hop, other kinds, too—Donald Vincent writes for being one whole person who is in it.” - David Blair, author of Barbarian Seasons.

“Convenient Amnesia highlights how Donald Vincent is humorous, sarcastic, critical, and somber all at once, and it doesn’t matter which coast he’s on or if he’s trekking through Paris. The poems ripple with observations and formal range. This book is filled with head nods and at least one utterance of damn at a moment that dissolves pretense. Damn!” - Tara Betts, author of Breaking the Habit

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