Resting Bitch Face
Poems
Catapult · Print & ebook · August 26, 2025
An Audacious Book Club Pick The author of the award-winning national bestseller I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times returns with a poetry collection that transforms the Black female speaker from object, artistic muse, and victim to subject, critic, and master of her story Resting Bitch Face is a book for women, for Black women, for lovers of art and film criticism, and for writers interested in work that finds a middle ground between poetry and prose.
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- Who it’s for
- Poetry lets Black women answer back to art, film, and the histories of looking.
- Themes
- Black female subjectivity, Art and film criticism, Reclaiming the muse’s voice
- Genres
- African American Poetry, Women Poets, American Poetry
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Start with this bookAbout this book
An Audacious Book Club Pick The author of the award-winning national bestseller I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times returns with a poetry collection that transforms the Black female speaker from object, artistic muse, and victim to subject, critic, and master of her story Resting Bitch Face is a book for women, for Black women, for lovers of art and film criticism, and for writers interested in work that finds a middle ground between poetry and prose.
Continue reading
Taylor Byas uses some of our most common ways of “watching” throughout history (painting, films, sculpture, and photographs) to explore how these mediums shape Black female subjectivity. From the examination of artwork by Picasso, Gauguin, Sally Mann, and Nan Goldin, Byas displays her mastery of the poetic form by engaging in intimate and inventive writing. Fluctuating between watcher and watched, the speaker of these poems uses mirrors and reflections to flip the script and talk back to histories of art, text, photography, relationships, and men. From Polaroids to gesso primer to sculpture, Byas creates a world in which the artist calls out and the muse responds. For not only does she enter the world of the long-revered classic artist, but she also infuses her poems with such iconic pop culture works as The Joker, WandaVision, and Last Tango in Paris.
Looking Back
Poetry lets Black women answer back to art, film, and the histories of looking.
Come here for
- Poetry in conversation with art criticism and pop culture
- Mirrors, photographs, and paintings seen from the other side
Expect
- A speaker shifting between watcher and watched
- Intimate poems that talk back to art and its histories
Where it sits
| African American Poetry | 97% |
|---|---|
| American Poetry | 61% |
| Women Poets | 40% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- African American Poetry
- Poetry - General Themes
- Women Poets
- Authors
- Taylor Byas
- Publisher
- Catapult
- Published
- August 26, 2025
- Format
- Print & ebook
- Theme
- Black female subjectivity · Art and film criticism · Reclaiming the muse’s voice
- Reading lane
- African American Poetry