"Nikky Finney has been a fine poet much too long to say that this latest treasure is her promise coming into being. She exploded with so much talent with On Wings Made of Gauze and beautifully matured with Rice, yet Head Off & Split takes the promise of youth with the control of adulthood to bring her greatest exploration. Honest, searing, searching. We all, especially now, need this book of poems; we all, especially now, need this poet." -Nikki Giovanni, author of Bicycles
"Beginning with the sweepingly inclusive and powerful 'Red Velvet,' a Middle Passage poem for our times, Nikky Finney takes the reader to a wonderfully alive world where the musical possibilities of language overflow with surprise and innovation. Finney has an ear to go along with the wild-ness of her imagination, which sweeps through history like a pair of wings. Her carefully modulated free verse is always purposeful in its desire to move the reader in a way that allows us intimate access to necessary observations about ourselves. These poems, in other words, have the power to save us."
--Bruce Weigl, author of What Saves Us
"With Head Off & Split, Nikky Finney establishes herself as one of the most eloquent, urgent, fearless and necessary poets writing in America today. What makes this book as important as anything published in the last decade is the irresistible music, the formal dexterity and the imaginative leaps she makes with metaphor and language in these simply stunning poems. This is a very, very important achievement." —Kwame Dawes, author of Hope's Hospice
"In her stupendous fourth volume, Head Off & Split, winner of the 2011 National Book Award for poetry, Nikky Finney instantly becomes America's exemplar of how to put the skeletons into poetic truth." —John Freeman, Cleveland Plain Dealer
"This fourth collection from Finney . . . should prove hard to forget. Against other black poets' interest in congregations, Finney is drawn to defiant individualists, to black women who let no one tell them what to do." —Publishers Weekly
"Finney’s dedication to what can be salvaged, her unfaltering consciousness and conscientiousness, and her dedication to the sublime power of language demand our attention. This fourth book is stunning, a definite must-read." —Indiana Review
". . . a stunning work of graceful remembrance." —Laura Pegram, The Millions
"This is a stunning book; the sort that reminds the reader of some of poetry’s highest aspirations." —NewPages.com
"Poetry can be so many things in the right hands. It can elevate the senses, challenge perceptions, or increase understanding of complex topics. Nikky Finney’s Head Off & Split, which won the National Book Award for poetry in 2011, does all that and more with poems grounded in reality, yet also stretching the limits of imagination in regards to imagery and symbolism." —La Toya Hankins, Black Lesbian Literary Collective
