**Finalist for the National Book Award in PoetryBrutal Imagination is the work of a poet at the peak of his considerable powers, confronting a crucial subject: the black man in America.“A hymn to all the sons this country has stolen from her African-American families.”—The Village Voice**This poetry collection explores the vision of the black man in white imagination, as well as the black family and the barriers of color, class, and caste that tear...

Winner of the 2022 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry PrizeFraternal Light: On Painting While Black is a lyric evocation of the life and work of the great African American artist Beauford Delaney. These poems pay homage to Delaney’s resilience and ingenuity in the face of profound adversity. Although his work never garnered the acclaim it deserves—and is finally receiving—Delaney was well known and highly respected in African American cultural circles, among bohemia...

From Cornelius Eady, one of America's most engaging voices, comes an exciting collection of poetry that at once delineates the arc of the poet's universe and highlights the range of his considerable talents.Cornelius Eady’s poems show him in full control of his considerable talents and displaying a rich maturity as he enters midlife. His poems are sly, unsentimental, and witty, full of truths that are intimate and profound.Hardheaded Weather ranges...

At age nineteen, Hugh Martin withdrew from college for deployment to Iraq. After training at Fort Bragg, Martin spent 2004 in Iraq as the driver of his platoon sergeant's Humvee. He participated in hundreds of missions including raids, conducting foot patrols, clearing routes for IEDs, disposing of unexploded ordnance, and searching thousands of Iraqi vehicles. These poems recount his time in basic training, his preparation for Iraq, his experience withdrawing from school, and ultimately, ...

Malin Pereira’s collection of eight interviews with leading contemporary African American poets offers an in-depth look at the cultural and aesthetic perspectives of the post–Black Arts Movement generation.This volume includes unpublished interviews Pereira conducted with Wanda Coleman, Yusef Komunyakaa, Thylias Moss, Harryette Mullen, Cornelius Eady, and Elizabeth Alexander, as well as conversations with Rita Dove and Cyrus Cassells previously in print. Largely published since 198...