The Laughing Barrel [9781967149155]

Overview

DeeSoul Carson’s anticipated debut, The Laughing Barrel, considers the absurdities that permeate the lives of Black people—racism, capitalism, genocide, constant personal and communal grief, among others—in a personal examination into the utility of laughter and humor in a country that has yet to shed its oppressive structures.

Expansive in form and register, these poems engage in a rhetorical experimentation that highlights the realities facing Black people, how they make sense of their survival, and how they live despite their suffering. The poems are centered around the laughing barrel, an artifact of Afro-American folklore meant to provide a space for Black people to laugh without provoking the reprimand of their white counterparts.

The structures of the poems oscillate between sonnets, elegies, and direct addresses to God, asking: in the face of our struggles, what can we do but laugh? And what do we do after that? The poems interrogate faith as the barrel's surrogate, how God serves as a vessel for what we fail to rationalize. The collection is interested in who laughs with Black people when they aren’t in on the joke. When they shouldn’t be laughing at all.