Poet Sarah Blake will be reading from her unauthorized lyric biography, Mr. West: Poems Wesleyan University Press, ($24.95), at Labyrinth Books on Thursday, May 21 at 6 p.m.

According to Andrew DuBois’s recent notice in the New York Times Book Review, “The central connection Blake makes (and the main strength of the book) is between herself, as impending mother to a son, and Kanye’s mother, Dr. Donda West. A touching elegiac strain is evident throughout these poems of motherhood, although in this triangle of affection, with the two women as the base, Kanye is still the uppermost point.”

Says poet Evie Sockley, author of the new black: “Mr. West transforms the poet’s fascination with the rapper into an amazing group of poems that explores what she knows or can find out about West, alongside her own life. The poems construct West as unmistakably human and larger than life — as much like as unlike the poet. The work is tender without being sentimental, funny without being cruel, and obsessive without being exploitative. It is a study in nuance and it is strangely moving.”

Sarah Blake is the founder of the online writing tool Submittrs, an editor at Saturnalia Books, and a recipient of an NEA Literature Fellowship. Her poetry has appeared in Boston Review, Drunken Boat, FIELD, and The Threepenny Review.