Throwing the Crown

Jacob Saenz

APR/Honickman First Book Prize winner

Winner of the prestigious Honickman First Book Prize from the American Poetry Review, selected by Pulitzer Prize winner Gregory Pardlo, Throwing the Crown describes a boyhood on the edge. Set in a Chicago neighborhood dominated by gang life, Saenz sets the sweetness and vulnerability of youth against the cold reality of a gun pressed against a forehead. Full of accelerative sound—tight rhymes and short, percussive lines—these poems follow a fast-paced trajectory from danger to survival, pausing to acknowledge the beauty and humor in the details along the way.

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Paperback: $15.00 list price

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ISBN: 9780983300878

Format: Paperback

ISBN: 9780983300861

Format: Hardcover

About the Author

Jacob Saenz is the author of Throwing the Crown, winner of the 2018 APR/Honickman First Book Prize. His work has been anthologized in The Open Door: 100 Poems, 100 Years of Poetry Magazine and The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop. His poetry has appeared in Memorious, PANK, Poetry, Tammy, and other journals. A CantoMundo fellow, he’s been the recipient of a Letras Latinas Residency, a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship and a …

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Reviews

“His themes are easily sentimental… There’s a tension in the work that I just find incredibly fresh.” ―Gregory Pardlo, judge of the APR/Honickman First Book Prize, 2018