The Selected Shepherd: Poems (Pitt Poetry Series)
Description
Drawing from all six of his collections, The Selected Shepherd offers a new retrospective on the work of an important and sometimes controversial Black, gay poet. Although well known for his erotic poems about white men, Shepherd also wrote consistently about the natural world and its endangerment and his grief over his mother’s death. Presented in both publication order and the order in which they originally appeared within each collection, these poems highlight the most important themes of Shepherd’s work, along with both his predictability and unpredictability as a poet. Jericho Brown’s introduction provides additional context and insight on the life and work of this complex, groundbreaking figure in American poetry.
Praise for The Selected Shepherd: Poems (Pitt Poetry Series)
“In an age when poets often vanish from larger cultural memory shortly after their last breath, this selected compendium, published fifteen years after Shepherd’s passing, is a true feat of treasure and salvage, ensuring that one of the most vibrant and charged voices of our young twenty-first century stays alive.”
—Ocean Vuong, author of Time is a Mother and On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
“The extraordinary Reginald Shepherd remains both a tidal force and an enigmatic planet in contemporary poetry and in legendary Pitt Poetry Series editor Ed Ochester’s vast constellation of stars. The brilliant Jericho Brown has distilled Shepherd’s magnificence—a style born of the Bronx, rural Georgia, Iowa City, Eliot’s Waste Land, and Orpheus’s underworld—to a dynamic, essential volume. The Pitt Poetry Series is proud to present this landmark compilation.”
—Terrance Hayes, author of So to Speak and coeditor, Pitt Poetry Series
“The discovery of Reginald Shepherd’s poetry—in an envelope, with a letter and a stamped self-addressed return—was among the highest points of my five years as editor of the Kenyon Review. Of course his poems were published, and a correspondence, a friendship ensued. His premature death was devastating. Rereading these poems, I follow the arc of their music, wit, erudition, narrative, tragedy: the chronicle of an exemplary (Black, gay, American, polymath out of the projects) life, but first of all, I admire, am in a bit of awe of, and thoroughly enjoy them.”
—Marilyn Hacker, author of Calligraphies