Keynote
A debut collection that examines US-Cuba tensions, transnational Black identity, and revolutionary gatherings
Book Title
Party Line
Subtitle
Poems
Cover Image
“In this wonderfully bustling book of poems, Lopez plays with ‘parties’ as both social events and political entities through profound reflections on his Cuban heritage and illuminating insights into ballroom drag scenes. . . . An urgently timely, eye-opening, and incandescent collection.”—Diego Báez, Booklist (starred review)
Poem Excerpt
I walk up to a party I didn’t pay to attend since I’m on the list. The gays throwing it craft lengthy manifestos on community care and the impermissibility of all“-isms” within the space and charge fifty to eighty at the door. You, too, can cruise utopia nightly for the price of one disposable income. The money you have and the people you know: two ropes. A climb to safety, or a bind round the neck.
—From “Public Policy”
Body
Kyle Carrero Lopez’s electrifying debut collection centers three interconnected forces: social life, US-Cuba relations, and the lives of Black people in the United States and Cuba. Through familial, satirical, and geopolitical lenses, Party Line considers how countries—and people—wield power over those they have othered.
The collection features a series meditating on tensions embedded in party spaces. Carrero Lopez challenges assumptions that these spaces are apolitical or purely escapist, revealing unexpected connections between individuals’ actions and those of the state. His work expands bridges between US and Cuban art by developing an urgent poetics around the material conditions of the US embargo and challenging whitewashed images of Cuban Americans in the US imagination.
Alternating between humor and lyric severity, playfulness and political critique, these poems negotiate contradiction with linguistic dexterity and critical consciousness, proving that political poetry can be both serious and joyously alive.
The collection features a series meditating on tensions embedded in party spaces. Carrero Lopez challenges assumptions that these spaces are apolitical or purely escapist, revealing unexpected connections between individuals’ actions and those of the state. His work expands bridges between US and Cuban art by developing an urgent poetics around the material conditions of the US embargo and challenging whitewashed images of Cuban Americans in the US imagination.
Alternating between humor and lyric severity, playfulness and political critique, these poems negotiate contradiction with linguistic dexterity and critical consciousness, proving that political poetry can be both serious and joyously alive.
List Price
$17.00
Purchase at
Purchase at:
About the Author
Credit: Credit: Tiye Rose
Upcoming Events
Kyle Carrero Lopez reading and in conversation about PARTY LINE as part of The Poetry Society of New York's Salon Series, hosted at The Urbane Arts Club
Date:
Location:
The Urbane Arts Club in Brooklyn, NYview map
Pay what you can for admission. Book sales will be hosted by Taylor & Co. Books. Find more information and purchase tickets here.
Praise
“In Party Line, Kyle Carrero Lopez brilliantly balances the necessity for beauty and the necessity for sharp, clarifying truth. These poems are electric and fully alive with a radical politic, but also tender, also vibrant with image, also clever and warm.”—Hanif Abdurraqib
“Carrero Lopez’s voice is both electric and haunting, moving through queer nightlife, family history, and Cuban American memory. Attuned to every room’s vibe and every room’s violence, these poems reveal how a body gathers joy and danger in the same breath.”—Jasbir K. Puar
“Party Line is a masterful choreography of form and feeling: Willi Ninja meets Essex Hemphill; Martha Graham meets Natasha Trethewey. It’s the dance track your father plays DJing the party. It’s the parts and the parting in the party line. Party Line is a brilliant dance.”—Terrance Hayes
“In this boisterous and alluring debut, Kyle Carrero Lopez reminds us that the purpose of any party—be it political or disco—is the people inside of it. Urgent, brilliant, and, at the same time, so fun. . . . Party Line will strike your soul like a hand to a drum.”—Danez Smith
