Author Description

<p>"His themes are easily sentimental. . . . There's a tension in the work that I just find incredibly fresh." --Gregory Pardlo, judge of the 2018 Honickman First Book Award</p> <p>Winner of the prestigious Honickman First Book Award 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.</p> <p>From "Blue Line Incident":</p> <p>. . . the boys of 15th and 51st, I say,<br> they're my boys, my friends.<br> I was fishing for a life-<br> saver & he took, hooked him in<br> & had him say goodbye like we was boys<br> & shit when really I should've<br> gutted that fuck w/the tip<br> of my blue ballpoint.</p> <p>Jacob Saenz was born in Chicago and raised in Cicero, Illinois. His poetry 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. A CantoMundo fellow, he has been the recipient of a Letras Latinas Residency and a Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship. He serves as an associate editor for RHINO.</p>