Winner of the 2022 Alice James Award
Orders of Service
A Fugue
Cover Art by VintageMozart, Book Design by Tiani Kennedy
From the Author:
A love letter to the fever of fleeting relationships, Orders of Service captures the romantic & psychic quotidian of the Bible Belt for Black queer folk. complicating pastoral traditions with Millennial superstition & Old-School insight, this gospel fugue bends language in the backwoods of faith & desire In four movements, fully giving the Dark work.
Content Warning: adult language, American Disgruntlements
{for dreamin’…}
{SIDe A}: THE DAYSCAPE
A SPOTIFY PLAYLIST
[Powered by Stōnfruut]
Run Time: 2 Hr, 21 Min.
{NOTE: 4-second crossfade encouraged.}
{Side A} of the ORDERS OF SERVICE soundtrack, “The Dayscape” is a meditative companion playlist to enhance reader experience. compiled of the music Featured in poems like “Bird in the Rain,” “Rhapsody, or Revelation, or Cerberus to the Fireflies” & “Winged Victory of Samothrace,” “The Dayscape” alternates between Neo-Soul, Alt R&B, & Contemporary Gospel.
{may it lift you; may it serve.}
☆ Praise for Orders of Service ☆
• ☆ ☆ STARRED REVIEW IN PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY! ☆ ☆
• ☆ ☆ STARRED REVIEW IN PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY! ☆ ☆
“Kinard’s ambitious debut weaves disparate elements to create a textured consideration of queer Black identity in the deep South. Drawing on a diverse array of mythological figures from African and Western traditions as well as Black- and Southern-inflected Christian ritual, Kinard’s poems form an intricate cosmology that transcends the personal to reflect on a close-knit, complex community.”
—publishers Weekly
“To name a thing is to reach toward stability: stability of identity, of place, and so forth. But the problem of naming is that the borders of identity and of place are ever in flux. However, in this collection, naming does not set a boundary. Naming, instead, is expansive. […] After reading this collection, we have been gifted a new name: with this silk-spun debut, Willie Lee Kinard III has named a new model of form within and across the literary landscape. I say my own name, and from the sounding emerges the promise of being back in my body.”
—Daniella Toosie-Watson, Cincinnati Review
“Willie Lee Kinard III’s Orders of Service is an immensely readable and compelling debut that exemplifies why Kinard is already amassing accolades in the literary community. The author centers their relationship with their father, the name they share, and complications of Black masculinity with tremendous depth and grace. At its core, Orders of Service is intensely personal, but it also demonstrates Kinard’s command of the page, their understanding of White (and Black) space, and how to bend the text itself to mirror the movement within each poem.”
—Ronnie K. Stephens, The poetry Question
“Through repetition and variation, Kinard's couplets create a cadence similar to the call and response rhythms of many a Black church. The speaker's name is at once "a church," "a choir," and "a chorus"—both preacher and singer, in the same way gospel can mean music or the Word. Yet, at the same time, Kinard's speaker couples "a man on his back" with the spiritual metaphors, queering the lot. Even as their poems draw from classical and Biblical antecedents, Kinard sidesteps expected patterns of poetry and storytelling. Typically, an order of service is a prescribed process in pamphletized form for how to perform a rite or ceremony (such as a funeral, worship service, wedding, etc.). But Kinard's title, Orders of Service, pluralizes the phrase, adding melisma to its meaning. Instead of a single, structured outline, Kinard makes room outside the lines—for new poetic forms and new stories…”
—francxs gufan nan, Muzzle Magazine
“Kinard’s debut makes use of the page in a way that I rarely see—with poems that alternate between black page/white text, white page/black text, formal and innovative. This collection is one you want to read in one sitting and then instantly read again. The recurring suite ‘Boomerang, or a Chorus of Onlooking Fireflies Captions the Previous Poem’ builds out lines as the collection grows, an almost video-game-achievement-like marker of progress; it is, too, a test of attention—the poems positioning themselves in direct conversation with one another, the reader perhaps will return, give each ‘captioned’ poem another read before progressing. It is an order tactic I thoroughly enjoy, bringing extra life into this act of reading. Poems like ‘B{u/i}tter Pecan Apocrypha,’ too, play with a linear reading experience–the subheading under the title reads, ‘Directions: complete the passage by selecting the fitting pronoun,’ to precede lines like “Like the cruel misfortune of unwrapping / an already ruined package, {you/I} imagine / {your/my}self unsalvageable.’ This collection plays with reader address and speaker assignment over and over again, and it is as extraordinary as it is enjoyable.”
—Summer farah, The Millions
“A gorgeous song of a book exploring Blackness, queerness, nature, the South, loss, and more…”
“I read this during the Sealey Challenge, and let me just say that you’re going to want to read it. Kinard’s poems are lush with bees and crickets, queer desire, and choirs. They write about the Southern Black church, the natural world, loss and longing, and religion. They tangle with questions of holiness and inheritance. Many of the poems take experimental forms, creating surprising vessels for transformation on the page. I read this collection in one sitting, my breath coming short and my heart beating fast.”
—Laura Sackton, Book Riot
“An explosive debut that deals in sonic aftershocks lit up by wit and homage.”
—Rebecca Morgan Frank, Harriet Books
“Willie Lee Kinard III’s astonishing debut collection braids mythology, sex and desire, gutbucket and gospel—defying outdated notions of bodies, binaries, the black church, and the natural world. These verses render testimonies so electric, you can’t help but shout. Kinard knows caring begins in language. He knows black boys crafted of fable can become sharp-witted and tender lovers and loving men. Orders of Service cuts so clean and deep you’ll find yourself several pages in before you notice blood on your fingers.”
—Yona Harvey, YoU Don’t Have to Go to Mars For Love
“Orders of Service is at once music populating a sermon, a body gone stone after intercourse, and the queering bravado of a choir. Willie Lee Kinard III has a sultry way with the poem as he makes and re-makes it, bringing to the fore “a happy / kind of / blue,” a blue like being country, sweet, and in a kind of fragmented prayer. How do we get to love?, the poems ask, complicating that prayer. This book is as fierce and rich as the rigorous linguistic play that makes Orders of Service already Kinardian.”
—Dawn Lundy Martin, Good Stock Strange Blood
“A Willie Lee Kinard III poem is a fountain of sound and syntax sprung from a river in South Carolina. A Willie Lee Kinard III poem can teach you how to scream properly and how to change a tire in Babel. It displays the sensual fevers of Jean Toomer and the vernacular lucidity of Alice Walker. A Willie Lee Kinard III poem has room for Mariah Carey, Cesária Évora, SWV, the BeeGees and James Cleveland. It vibrates like a gospel-fugue sung by a chorus of fireflies. Orders of Service is a collection of Kinard’s spells, erasures, lavender linguistics; it’s a score of swerving feels and scriptures. These poems will inspire you to write or give up writing altogether. Orders of Service is a masterful, magical debut.”
—Terrance Hayes, So To Speak
Available for Purchase!
Get Orders of Service Now!
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{for cruisin’…}
{SIDe B}: THE NiteSCAPE
A SPOTIFY PLAYLIST
[Powered by Stōnfruut]
Run Time: 1 Hr, 57 Min.
{NOTE: 4-second crossfade encouraged.}
{Side B} of the ORDERS OF SERVICE soundtrack, “The Nitescape” is a playlist to enhance reader experience. Featuring Music meditated on poems like “Hymn: Chainsweat;” “Return Policy” & “Elegy,” “The Nitescape” oscillates between Progressive soul, Indie Folk & Alternative R&B.
{may it lift you; may it serve.}