see if you / can find some place.”), the imperative is variation. At the beginning of the first section “block chapel,” the speaker tell us “played hymns for cinema and moth / and hot house epinonikon in a rocky / church with a club-bound feeling of / elbow.” This is a convalescence of the concrete and the tactile, where “freedom fighters” are “the cats who can tell a story.” The deluge of the first set, where small poems appear in highly visual blocks on different parts of the page and then diffuse into sinuous columns where the reader can choose to follow them across or down (“place her trill / inside.

Speaking these poems aloud helps capture the rhythm and cadence of the speaker and the assortment of images that comprise these poems’ inherent musicality. Readers are encouraged to dip and in out, as the poems have neither titles nor employ capitalization, a seemingly even yet textured terrain to mediate. While the melodies may fade in and out, the beat continues. Across three distinct sets that fully utilize the page and the tonal range usually available only to the instrument, the collection ducks in and out of the image in a fluidity reminiscent of long session jazz. In a trio, each performer must be perfectly on point or on pitch-whether singer, dancer, string or brass player, or a different configuration-and Fred Moten’s The Feel Trio proves to be no exception.

The Feel Trio by Fred Moten