This is a self-consciously “Very. Important. Book.” Claudia Rankine is aiming for a Whitman-level scope here, and mostly she achieves it, I think. This poem deserves its reputation. But I think because Rankine's aim was to write a “Very. Important. Book” about “Very. Important. Issues” that are both “Topical” and “Transhistorical,” “Particular” and “Universal,” so overwhelmed me that I sometimes missed the subtlety of much of this American epic poem. And the subtlety is there, to be sure.

Let me explain...

As virtually everyone knows at this point, “Citizen” is a much-lauded poem written in the wake of Trayvon Martin’s death (I’d call it a murder, but a jury in Florida disagreed) and the subsequent BLM movement, which called attention to fact that, for Black people everywhere (Rankine writes about America), encounters with the police carry an added threat of physical assault and murder. “Citizen” was published in the year that police officer Darren Wilson killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, sparking a backlash that would evolve into the nationwide movement, culminating in the massive 2020 BLM protests.

This is all heavy stuff, and this is what Rankine is tackling.

At one point, as she reflects on the Black experience—from microaggressions to institutional racism and state-sponsored murder—Rankine sarcastically writes: "No one should adhere to the facts that contribute to narrative, the facts that create lives. To your mind, feelings are what create a person, something unwilling, something wild vandalizing whatever the skull holds. Those sensations form a someone. The headaches begin then." 

It's a beautiful passage. It’s an unclear passage. It surely describes Rankine’s experience with the socially and institutionally induced migraines—the torturous headaches—that Black people endure throughout their lives in the United States. But this passage also describes experiences that white people can understand, in other ways. I certainly related to it. The degree to which I related to this passage is, however, complicated by the fact that, as a white man, my American citizenship (and the accompanying rights and prestige that come with my American citizenship) are rarely if ever called into question. I am, in almost every space I inhabit, safe. That safety is not afforded to Black Americans, no matter their class or status.

Regarding safety, Rankine writes:

"And where is the safest place when that place
must be someplace other than the body?" 

Who can answer this question when a Black American asks it? Seriously, who? Rankine, at another point, quotes James Baldwin: "The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions hidden by the answers." Rankine definitely lays bare those questions in “Citizen.”

I can’t say enough about the visual artwork that is integrated into Rankine’s poem. It…packs a punch. Every single image. I can’t say enough about it, so I won’t say much of anything, except that it moves and disgusts and inspires and nauseates the reader, that it adds so much beauty and power to this poem. 

But the ambition and the confusion…I don’t know, after a while, I got very tired reading this poem. Which is the point, I know, especially because I’m a white reader. I admire Rankine’s ambition so much, but…there’s just something here that I can’t articulate, something that doesn’t quite satisfy me. Something about “Citizen” seemed very incomplete to me. Disjointed. Confusing. Maybe it’s because I want a winner, I want answers, I want justice and atonement and forgiveness and all that. But that’s not possible, not yet, for the readers of “Citizen.” As Rankine says in the last line…well, I won’t spoil that for you.

I want to give “Citizen” five stars and three stars. I’m giving it three stars because I think enough readers have given it five. But this is clearly a five-star poem, no question. I had a three-star experience reading it, but a very unusual and confusing sort of three-star experience. Maybe its awareness of the scope and enormity of its themes, of its stories, bothered me a bit. I don’t know. But that doesn’t make it less impressive or powerful.