DEAR SLY STONE, Tobi Kassim

"I think I'm ready to give up on America, but it only lets me go / incrementally. So I sigh a little more. I love Everyday People..."

What's in an paean, ode, or prayer--or, "How I'm supposed to dance in all this noise"--asks these letters to Sylvester Stewart aka Sly Stone, erratic political hero, flower child, utopic herald, the man who "perfected funk." By examining Stone's presence and absence in our world, one might reveal some of the most intimate public moments of loss, ennui, and riot. Ultimately revealed, too, is the one "runnin' away" from one's own personhood--or perhaps that's the echo back, trailed by the 8-bit crunch of the drum machine. "Only music can enact its own mutiny, motherfucker..."

Dear Sly Stone, Tobi Kassim. 5.5" x 11.5", 16 pages. Covers printed on French Brick red cardstock, inner copy printed on French heavyweight text paper, bound with heavyweight staples. Copy set in BT Grotesk Spiral, first edition of 150, designed by The Aliens. $12 plus shipping (media mail).

Tobi Kassim was born in Ibadan, Nigeria, and has lived in the United States since 2003. His work has been supported by a Stadler Center Undergraduate fellowship and an Undocupoets fellowship. He also won Yale University’s Sean T. Lannan poetry prize. His poems have been published in The Volta, The Brooklyn Review, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, Zocalo Public Square, and elsewhere. He currently lives in New Haven, CT.