In Recipe for the Poet, Osayande coaxes us through memory, through the familiar, through the stuff that holds us together. A relationship, a life, as seen through the vista of a fiddle, the winding curve that is the process of love as seen through simple gestures and feel of roses, all of it the material stuff that is mixed, sifted, stirred, and baked in the warmth of the everyday. Here, we feel the poet's world through the rhythm of words, the revelation of memories. Here we breath in and back in shared beautiful lyric air.-D.A. Lockhart, author Devil in the Woods (Brick Books, 2019) and Breaking Right (Porcupine's Quill, 2020) Deonte Osayande emerges from the pandemic with a beautiful necessary recipe for survival in a time of reflection, loss and necessary healing. A delicate and powerful collection that kisses wounds while demanding justice for his community. These poems honor the natural order of life and death and questions all of it at once. A homage to authentic love and a humbling of a body, a moving forward of ancestor spirit. Heartfelt and wonderfully crafted, is the work of Deonte Osayande.-Jessica Care Moore, Author of "We Want Our Bodies Back", Publisher at Moore Black Press

Recipe for the Poet

Literature & Fiction

Osayande, Deonte

Poetry

Finishing Line Press

What happens when love becomes a show? Circus puts love on display for the whole world to gawk at. Life is a bizarre circus, from personal relationships to the political sphere. It is beautiful, and tragic, and chaotic, made up of a million silent moments. Deonte Osayande brings the rhythm and intensity of his slam poetry to his second full-length collection. His poetry addresses love and loss, race and family, politics and life in America. Which act will hold your attention?

Circus: Poems

Brick Mantel Books

One of the Midwest's finest slam poets, Osayande brings his work to the written page and delivers a lyric exploration of everyday life in Detroit in his debut full-length collection Class. In his voice you can hear and feel the lineage of some of Detroit's finest poetic voices, stretching back to David Blair, Murray Jackson, and Naomi Long Madgett. He captures the rhythms, images, and deepest meditations of life both hardscrabble and painfully beautiful in a fashion that calls us to know that survival is much more about living than cowering in fear. As a teacher Osayande brings us before his classrooms, let's us linger on the experiences and moments of growing up in a city that feels lost amidst the promises of America, and takes us through the high cost of being black in a place where the colour of one's skin can deliver a trauma that only the strongest can survive. His poems show us the Detroit that has always been here. Both heartbreaking and empowering the poems in this collection ask the reader to consider the America that is kept hidden from Prime Time television, that carries on because it must, and understands that the act of speaking is the best therapy and resistance that one can offer to a world given at best to indifference and at worst insidious violence.

Class (Crossroads Poetry)

Urban Farmhouse Press

In a look at what makes a black man in today's society, Osayande brings us through central questions of belonging, love, and happiness in his native home of Detroit. In his largest collection of poetic pieces yet, the renowned Detroit performance poet, writer, and educator answers how one responds to a world seemingly stacked against. Whether with love, with the law, finances and even with ones own mental health, these are poems that illustrate the battles against the cold-heartedness of contemporary American and that ever looming demon in the back of his own mind.

Civilian

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Osayande, Deonte. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Osayande, Deonte

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Osayande, Deonte. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Recipe for the Poet

Circus: Poems

Class (Crossroads Poetry)

Civilian