{"product_id":"phantom-number-an-abecedarium-for-april-9781961209176","title":"Phantom Number: An Abecedarium for April","description":"\u003cb\u003ePoems that ask an urgent question: how might a white friend write in protest of intimate Black death without becoming complicit in the commodification of Black trauma? \u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003ePhantom Number\u003c\/i\u003e listens for an absent voice. To survive and answer to her best friend and fellow poet April Freely's death, Spring Ulmer rips meaning apart in her poems, then repairs it, only to rip it up again. Words bend, meaning shifts--abstraction a tool Ulmer wields to better get at the question at the heart of \u003ci\u003ePhantom Number\u003c\/i\u003e: How might a white friend write in protest of intimate Black death at a time when the push is to write Black joy as antidote to the commodification of Black trauma? Ulmer understands her position is suspect yet cannot shirk her love or rage. Ulmer asks the reader to do the work or else. Her abstracted poems vibrate, emotion emerging from a poem made rag. Ulmer's abecedarium long form holds these fragments, inviting lines into an order of alliteration and words into an otherwise coherence, a belonging that has nothing to do with their origin. \u003ci\u003ePhantom Number\u003c\/i\u003e finds in abstraction a radical wail.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Tupelo Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 02\/01\/2025\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781961209176\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 82\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.37lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.95h x 6.00w x 0.29d","brand":"Spring Ulmer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45097027895477,"sku":"9781961209176","price":16.96,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0473\/0804\/6492\/files\/img_d67a106a-d367-4716-9e2b-80dd9a0af2dc.jpg?v=1739283042","url":"https:\/\/pastforward.org\/products\/phantom-number-an-abecedarium-for-april-9781961209176","provider":"Past Forward","version":"1.0","type":"link"}