“Though Michael Kleber-Diggs’ Worldly Things . . . is his debut poetry collection, his prowess as an essayist and literary critic isn’t new. His prose is especially honest, engaging and descriptive, and this collection is sure to offer similar meaning and pleasure, with the sound, voice and impact that only poetry can deliver.”

“You should read Worldly Things. Because the work is so good and original, modest and quiet and piercing . . . More than anything, you should read this book because if a neighbor spends decades trying to find the right thing to say to you, you should listen.”

“Loss laps at the edges of Worldly Things . . . The book as a whole, though, even as it decries the life cut short, relishes our being mortal, our having the chance to ‘bloom and recede.’ Which is, in the end, what I suspect these poems want for all of us . . . that somehow we will all find our way into becoming ‘lovely yet / temporal.’”

“A stunning, expertly crafted work exploring themes such as grief, trauma, and fatherhood . . . This work is highly recommended for all collections.”

“Michael Kleber-Diggs wants us to know that an unrealized desire is not necessarily a thwarted or vanished or destroyed one . . . But as for communal peace and common purpose, we will have to persist in imagining these states of being. In Worldly Things, he gives us ‘just enough rainfall’ to nourish, and give attention to, our twisted roots.”

“To follow Kleber-Diggs is to witness the modern condition—to notice it, interrogate it, appreciate it. His worldly things might be ephemeral, yet they’re anything but small. As these confident, unflinching poems accumulate, so too does a genuinely nuanced worldview: disappointed but never cynical, hurt yet forever hopeful.”

“Michael Kleber-Diggs’s Worldly Things gives us beautifully clear-eyed yet warmhearted poems, lamentations, and ruminations that reflect the difficult truths of the nation we’ve been living. These poems of fathers, sons, husbands, wives, daughters, mothers, and strangers show us how we could create community if we take the time and make the effort to treat each other with dignity and care. In the poem ‘Worldly Things,’ Kleber-Diggs writes of his intent to ‘craft / images and devices / meant to survive’ him. He’s succeeded in not only that but also in writing poems for our survival. I’m grateful for this book I didn’t know I was waiting for.”

“These poems are heavy with a deep and powerful ache, both the pain of loss and the longing for other futures, other ways of being. Michael Kleber-Diggs’s skilled hand writes down the feelings of an open heart and the musing of the clear-minded—meditations on fatherhood and family, on America’s cruelty and racism, on death and on life. I earmarked many pages to return to and pass along to others, particularly the poems ‘Coniferous Fathers’ and ‘Gloria Mundi.’”

“This is a beautiful tribute to the reality of blackness in America. Moving, full of loss and love.”