The Laughing Barrel
The Laughing Barrel
DeeSoul Carson
“A work that pulses with grief, musicality, Black spirituality, and the tension between rage and resilience. Through powerful meditation on lineage, the body, spoken work, and spiritual contradiction, Carson crafts a book that does not shy away from the absurdities of daily survival in a world that demands Black people should shoulder grief without pause.”
—Tupelo Quarterly
“The poems of The Laughing Barrel testify and tease, weep and wink, dance on the edge of despair. DeeSoul Carson’s far-out forms reshape our everyday. Tony! Toni! Toné!, magnolia trees, and Granny watching Jeopardy! combat spam texts, spam ads, and spam speech. Every line possesses the kind of levity shared by laughter and prayer. Every poem is an invigorating invocation sent up and over to us. This is a remarkable debut by a truly original new poet.”
—Terrance Hayes
April 2027
ISBN: 9781967149155
Available in both print and digital formats.
Photo by Nicholas Nichols.
DeeSoul Carson is a poet and educator from San Diego, CA, currently residing in Brooklyn, NY. His work is featured in Muzzle Magazine, AGNI, The Offing, & elsewhere. A Stanford University alum, DeeSoul has received fellowships from the NYU MFA program, The Watering Hole, and the National Endowment for the Arts. His debut full-length, The Laughing Barrel, is forthcoming from Alice James Books in Spring 2027. Find more of his work at deesoulpoetry.com
Additional Praise:
"In this gripping, profound debut, DeeSoul Carson expertly reflects both humor and hurt with piercing lyricism. The Laughing Barrel is playful, profound, and formally adventurous, with a thrillingly unafraid poetic eye, that roams impressively from hummingbirds to Niggas, NASA to God, public transit to spam email, and finally, laughter and love. I was hooked from the first line— I dare you not to be."
—Morgan Parker, author of Other People's Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night
"Using inventive language and humor as both shield and mirror to the realities of Black life, Carson's debut reveals a rich inner world of devotion, rightful skepticism, and of course the necessity of laughter. The Laughing Barrel is a stunning debut. One whose pages remind us that while we are surveilled by grief, capitalism, and natural disaster, we still have the power to deem every moment Holy: praise be to our grandmothers sipping lemonade, praise be to a living room filled with the hooting and hollering of beloveds, praise be to mothers who show us it is okay to be faithful yet uncertain of the future. Carson's poems remind us that while life might be finite, love isn't. When we hear the silence from a God that doesn't deliver on His promise, love promotes us into becoming our own Gods. This love, that will be here long after empire has run its course, is ripe and abundant like a peach, and we must take a bite and allow it to drip down our lips."
—Karisma Price, author of I'm Always So Serious
More by DeeSoul Carson:
Featured:
