This Elegance is a poetic meditation on beauty, pleasure, and transcendence in a time of collective uncertainty. These poems respond to solitude, grief, and fear with a radical inward turnseeking ecstasy, presence, and the reclamation of self.Interweaving the sacred and the erotic, This Elegance engages with visual arts through the concept of sacra conversazione (sacred conversation), a style of Renaissance painting that imagines divine communion across time and space. Here, artists, thinkers, and pop icons commune in a similar sacred dialogueKathleen Collins, Andr Leon Talley, Richmond Barth, Lyle Ashton Harris, Juan de Pareja, Janelle Mone, Symone, and others appear as guiding spirits and creative kin.For a Black, queer body so often dislocated from time and place, pleasure becomes an act of resistancea grounding in the now. This Elegance is a love songan offering to Black artistry, a tribute to visionary lives, and a testament to the power of beauty in even our most precarious moments.
