The Golden Shovel Anthology: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks
()
About this ebook
—Claudia Rankine in the New York Times
The Golden Shovel Anthology celebrates the life and work of poet and civil rights icon Gwendolyn Brooks through a dynamic new poetic form, the Golden Shovel, created by National Book Award–winner Terrance Hayes.
An array of writers—including winners of the Pulitzer Prize, the T. S. Eliot Prize, and the National Book Award, as well as a couple of National Poets Laureate—have written poems for this exciting new anthology: Rita Dove, Billy Collins, Danez Smith, Nikki Giovanni, Sharon Olds, Tracy K. Smith, Mark Doty, Sharon Draper, Richard Powers, and Julia Glass are just a few of the contributing poets.
This second edition includes Golden Shovel poems by two winners and six runners-up from an international student poetry competition judged by Nora Brooks Blakely, Gwendolyn Brooks’s daughter. The poems by these eight talented high school students add to Ms. Brooks’s legacy and contribute to the depth and breadth of this anthology.
Terrance Hayes
Terrance Hayes is the author of four collections including Lighthead, winner of the 2010 National Book Award in Poetry; Hip Logic, which won the National Poetry Series; and Muscular Music, winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. He is a professor of creative writing at The University of Pittsburgh and lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with his wife, the poet Yona Harvey, and their family.
Related to The Golden Shovel Anthology
Related ebooks
The Glass Constellation: New and Collected Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMaybe the Saddest Thing: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5semiautomatic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Anaphora Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Newest Employee of the Museum of Ruin Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSeize Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Life Assignment Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Arrow Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Smudge Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Doppelgangbanger Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Native Guard: Poems: A Pulitzer Prize Winner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Verging Cities Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Digest Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Cracks Between What We Are and What We Are Supposed to Be: Essays and Interviews Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5CURB Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5How to Pull Apart the Earth Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Fantasia for the Man in Blue Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems: A National Book Award Winner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5American Hybrid Poetics: Gender, Mass Culture, and Form Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCleave Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5White Egrets: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sleeping with the Dictionary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Eleven More American Women Poets in the 21st Century: Poets Across North America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sho Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5To Be Named Something Else Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDeluge Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Rerun Era Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Rest of Love: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Poetry For You
Pillow Thoughts II: Healing the Heart Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rumi: The Art of Loving Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Love Her Wild: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Way Forward Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Daily Stoic: A Daily Journal On Meditation, Stoicism, Wisdom and Philosophy to Improve Your Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Odyssey Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All Along You Were Blooming: Thoughts for Boundless Living Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tao Te Ching: A New English Version Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Leaves of Grass: 1855 Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beyond Thoughts: An Exploration Of Who We Are Beyond Our Minds Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Gilgamesh: A New English Version Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dream Work Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Twenty love poems and a song of despair Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You Better Be Lightning Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bedtime Stories for Grown-ups Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Journey to the Heart: Daily Meditations on the Path to Freeing Your Soul Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Road Not Taken and other Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Inward Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dante's Inferno: The Divine Comedy, Book One Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Prophet Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Odyssey: (The Stephen Mitchell Translation) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Edgar Allan Poe: The Complete Collection Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Enough Rope: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beowulf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Weary Blues Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Canterbury Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Golden Shovel Anthology
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
The Golden Shovel Anthology - Peter Kahn
SECOND EDITION
The cross-section of poets with varying poetics and styles gathered here is only one of the many admirable achievements of this volume.
—CLAUDIA RANKINE in the New York Times
Varied and dazzling.
—Kenyon Review
A lovely tribute, as well as an excellent collection of new work by a wide range of many of our most exciting contemporary poets.
—New York Times Magazine
Fresh and vital.
—Poetry
A substantial and dynamic contribution to American literature.
—Booklist
An expansive and extraordinary assemblage.
—Boston Globe
Seesaws between the familiar and the strange, the comfort of received language and the shock of the never-before said.
—Broad Street Review
The Golden Shovel Anthology
NEW POEMS HONORING GWENDOLYN BROOKS
SECOND EDITION
Edited by Peter Kahn, Ravi Shankar, and Patricia Smith
With a Foreword by Terrance Hayes
The University of Arkansas Press
Fayetteville
2019
Copyright © 2019 by The University of Arkansas Press
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
ISBN: 978-1-68226-095-1
e-ISBN: 978-1-61075-664-8
23 22 21 20 19 5 4 3 2 1
Text design by Ellen Beeler
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Kahn, Peter (Peter R.), editor. | Shankar, Ravi, 1975– editor. | Smith, Patricia, 1955– editor. | Hayes, Terrance, writer of foreword. | Brooks, Gwendolyn, 1917–2000, honouree. | Container of (work): Brooks, Gwendolyn, 1917–2000. Poems. Selections.
Title: The golden shovel anthology : new poems honoring Gwendolyn Brooks / edited by Peter Kahn, Ravi Shankar, and Patricia Smith ; With a foreword by Terrance Hayes.
Description: Second edition. | Fayetteville : The University of Arkansas Press, 2019. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2019008580 (print) | LCCN 2019012108 (ebook) | ISBN 9781610756648 (electronic) | ISBN 9781682260951 | ISBN 9781682260951(paperback :alk. paper) | ISBN 9781610756648(e-ISBN)
Subjects: LCSH: Brooks, Gwendolyn, 1917–2000. | Brooks, Gwendolyn, 1917–2000—Influence. | Poetry, Modern—21st century.
Classification: LCC PS3503.R7244 (ebook) | LCC PS3503.R7244 Z655 2019 (print) | DDC 811/.608—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019008580
Contents
Foreword by Terrance Hayes
Acknowledgments
Preface to the Second Edition
Introduction
The Golden Shovel Terrance Hayes
Selected Poems by Gwendolyn Brooks
A Sunset of the City
kitchenette building
Boy Breaking Glass
a song in the front yard
The Bean Eaters
The Anniad
ARACELIS GIRMAY
After
HAILEY LEITHAUSER
What There Is to Spend
Appendix to the Anniad
PAUL MARTINEZ-POMPA
Next Time Honey
RACHEL RICHARDSON
A Halo for Her Invisible Hair
The Artists’ and Models’ Ball
ANNE SHAW
Weather Report
An Aspect of Love, Alive in the Ice and Fire
PATTIANN ROGERS
First Summer Song
RENÉE WATSON
An Aspect of Love
Ballad of Pearl May Lee
SUSAN WHEELER
Stay, Dear
The Ballad of Rudolph Reed
ANDREW MOTION
Conjunction
The Bean Eaters
BONNIE JO CAMPBELL
Resurrection
CAITLIN DOYLE
The Parrot Man
SANDRA M. GILBERT
The Fava Bean-Eaters
NIKKI GIOVANNI
At the Evening of Life
DIANE GLANCY
Evening
JACK POWERS
Roadside Diner: Fairfield, Maine
CHRISTIAN ROBINSON
Next to the Flatware
PHILIP SCHULTZ
New Year’s Eve in Times Square
Beverly Hills, Chicago
DIDI JACKSON
Golden Shovel Buddha
MAJOR JACKSON
Stand Your Ground
ANGELA NARCISO TORRES
September, Chicago
The Birth in a Narrow Room
JENNY BOULLY
Child Tipping Forever
The Blackstone Rangers
JUDY BLUNDELL
What is betrayal but a construct?
CHELSEA DIXON
The Ache
RANDALL HORTON
A Love Jones in a Booming Economy
QURAYSH ALI LANSANA
1972 ford ltd
MIKE PUICAN
FUNERAL Sign
KELLY REUTER
After the Eulogy
NATALIE RICHARDSON
Cure and Curry
DEBRIS STEVENSON
i. Cecil Park—High as the Swings ii. Dutch Pot Dancing
Boy Breaking Glass
MEENA ALEXANDER
Imagine This
CATHERINE BROGAN
Boys Breaking Glass
HANNAH GAMBLE
Asked why I always have to be so negative I
M. AYODELE HEATH
Ornithology
PAM HOUSTON
Behind in the Count
TROY JOLLIMORE
Sleeping under Stars
PHILIP LEVINE
The Second Going
ERIKA MEITNER
Meadowlands
MICHAEL MEYERHOFER
Opening Ceremonies, 2012
DEB NYSTROM
When He Doesn’t Come Home
CLARE POLLARD
Boy Breaking Glass, Peckham
EMMETT, JIM, AND KAREN SHEPARD
Vagrant
DAVID WAGONER
That Boy Is Still Breaking Glass
JOHN COREY WHALEY
So There
A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi. Meanwhile, a Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon
TERRY BLACKHAWK
Tallahatchie
KWAME DAWES
Grown Up
RAVEN HOGUE
Yazoo City
Bronzeville Woman in a Red Hat
LATASHA N. NEVADA DIGGS
Cling
EUGENE GLORIA
The Maid
MAXINE KUMIN
At the Capitol Hill Suites, 1985
STEPHANIE STRICKLAND
In a Red Hat
The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock
SHARON DRAPER
Bleeding Brownish Boy
RITA WILLIAMS-GARCIA
Meanwhile in the Henhouse
JAKE ADAM YORK
In Little Rock
The Chicago Picasso
MAURA STANTON
The Seahorse
KEVIN STEIN
Ars Poetica Composed While Dressing in the Dark
LIANE STRAUSS
Tender Visits
The Children of the Poor
SIOBHAN CAMPBELL
The Climb
BRENDA CÁRDENAS
What Will We Give Our Children?
KYLE DARGAN
Sustenance
REGINALD GIBBONS
A Neighborhood in Chicago
LAURIE ANN GUERRERO
Play the Song
JANICE N. HARRINGTON
Eve Wept
RUTH ELLEN KOCHER
If Divorce Were Our Concerto
SASHA PIMENTEL
At the Lake’s Shore, I sit with the sister, resting
SHAZEA QURAISHI
The Inconditions of Love
DON SHARE
On a Station of the L
BRUCE SMITH
Cry, Baby
Garnet Mimms & the Enchanters sang & The Sky is Crying
STEPHANIE LANE SUTTON
Women of the Poor
SPRING ULMER
Slave Ship Captain’s Great-great Granddaughter
RONALD WALLACE
Lost softness softly makes a trap for us
The Coora Flower
JERICHO BROWN
Stay
Exhaust the Little Moment. Soon It Dies.
KAREN VOLKMAN
Two Collisions
The Explorer
ADRIAN MATEJKA
The Explorer
First Fight. Then Fiddle.
LISA WILLIAMS
First Fight. Then Fiddle.
Garbageman: The Man with the Orderly Mind
FRANNY CHOI
INSTRUCTIONS: Say it like it is.
OLIVER DE LA PAZ
Blue Graffiti
DENISE DUHAMEL
Recycling
DAVID GUTERSON
The Occasioned Contrition of a Cynic
LLOYD SCHWARTZ
Is Light Enough?
GRAEME SIMSION
Truth and the Garbageman
MATTHEW ZAPRUDER
Is Light Enough?
Gay Chaps at the Bar
SANDRA BEASLEY
Non-Commissioned (A Quartet)
CM BURROUGHS
Stillborn [In Memory Of]
LAURA MULLEN
Amen
CHRISTINA PUGH
Stand Your Ground
DANEZ SMITH
The 17 Year-Old & The Gay Bar
LEWIS TURCO
Omen
Jessie Mitchell’s Mother
JASWINDER BOLINA
Jessie Mitchell’s Father
MIRIAM NASH
Greatgrandfather’s Woods
UGOCHI NWAOGWUGWU
Split Personality
Kitchenette Building
GREGORY DJANIKIAN
Feather and Bone
PETER KAHN
Gray
JOSÉ OLIVAREZ
On My Eyelashes
ALICIA OSTRIKER
Dry Hours
MAYA PINDYCK
Close Memory
BARBARA JANE REYES
We pray, and
SASHA ROGELBERG
Who Has Given Us Life
GEORGE SZIRTES
We are things of dry hours and the involuntary plan
ROBERT WRIGLEY
Even If We Were Willing
The Last Quatrain of the Ballad of Emmett Till
CHRISTIAN CAMPBELL
After the Burial: A Stanza
MICHAEL COLLIER
Len Bias, a Bouquet of Flowers, and Ms. Brooks
MYRA SKLAREW
Money, Mississippi 1955
PATRICIA SMITH
Black, Poured Directly into the Wound
The Life of Lincoln West
HONOR MOORE
Variation, the Birth of Lincoln West
A Light and Diplomatic Bird
FIKAYO BALOGUN
Birdie
TRACI BRIMHALL
Humbug Epithalamium
STEPHEN DUNN
I Do Not Want to Be
LEONTIA FLYNN
1982
NIKKI GRIMES
Storm
DOROTHEA LASKY
A Final and Unrepentant, Silent, Sorry Bird
LISA GLUSKIN STONESTREET
the little-known bird of the inner eye
TERESE SVOBODA
Bird Boy
TANA JEAN WELCH
Sanctuary
JANE YOLEN
Solitaire
A Lovely Love
NICOLE COOLEY
Of Marriage: River, Lake and Vein
REBECCA HAZELTON
House With an X on the Door
COLLEEN MCELROY
Throwing Stones at the All White Pool
The Lovers of the Poor
NATHANIEL BELLOWS
A Legacy
ALISON HAWTHORNE DEMING
Cartoon
NATHAN HOKS
The Empathy Nest
AMY LEMMON
Logistics for Thursday
RACHEL MCKIBBENS
Black Friday
GREGORY PARDLO
The Wedding Planners
LEAH UMANSKY
The Left-Hour
A Man of the Middle Class
ELISE PASCHEN
Division Street
TRACY K. SMITH
Semi-Splendid
Mentors
SHARON OLDS
Golden Nosegay
BARON WORMSER
Sentence
The Mother
JEHANNE DUBROW
My Mother Speaks to Her Daughter, Not Yet Born
RACHEL CONTRENI FLYNN
Daughter-Mother
ADAM M. LEVIN
We were gonna go through with it, and then we lost it.
GAIL MAZUR
Believe That Even in My Deliberateness I Was Not Deliberate
PATRICIA MCCARTHY
Childless Woman
PAULA MEEHAN
The Ghost Song
SHARON OLDS
Missing Miss Brooks
KEVIN PRUFER
From the Hospital
ALBERTO RÍOS
Even-Keeled and At-Eased
JOSHUA MARIE WILKINSON
My Own Dead
RICHARD ZABRANSKY
The Single Neighbor Threatens My Family
My Dreams, My Works, Must Wait till after Hell
AMA CODJOE
Body of a Woman, Tail of a Fish
BILLY COLLINS
I remember those long nights when I
ANDREA HOLLANDER
Her Mouth, His Eyes
PATRICIA SPEARS JONES
After Hell
JOYELLE MCSWEENEY
ASEA
WILLIE PERDOMO
The Best Thing to Do
RICHARD POWERS
So I Wait
BOB SHACOCHIS
Send Me Home
AL YOUNG
Key to the Dollar Store
My Own Sweet Good
RITA DOVE
From the Sidelines
The Near-Johannesburg Boy
JACKIE WILLS
Johannesburg 2013
Negro Hero
JOHN KOETHE
The Killer inside Me
DAVID LEHMAN
Exact Change
Of De Witt Williams on His Way to Lincoln Cemetery
WESLEY ROTHMAN
Incarceration Blues
Of Robert Frost
JON DAVIS
Of Gwendolyn Brooks
ISHION HUTCHINSON
Homage: Gwendolyn Brooks
ELIZABETH MACKLIN
Some Glowing in the Common Blood
MICHAEL RYAN
No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.
Old Mary
TARA BETTS
Go
One Wants a Teller in a Time like This
BOB HOLMAN
One Wants a Teller in a Time like This
A Penitent Considers Another Coming of Mary
AMANDA AUCHTER
Mary
Primer for Blacks
DOMINIQUE CHRISTINA
The Hunger
AARON SAMUELS
When Grandma Goes to the Moon
Pygmies Are Pygmies Still, Though Percht on Alps
AMY GERSTLER
Cosmic Party Crasher
JOHN HEGLEY
Pygmalion Director Wishes to Enliven Production
Queen of the Blues
KIM ADDONIZIO
Queen of the Game
Riders to the Blood-Red Wrath
JENNIFER PERRINE
From Iraq, A Tattoo
Riot
DAVID BAKER
Stolen Sonnet
ASIA CALCAGNO
Gravestones
RACHEL DEWOSKIN
Taunting the Turkey Vultures with Love
HELEN FROST
Softer Sounds
LIZ LOCHHEAD
Beyond It
ROGER ROBINSON
Brixton Revo 2011
The Rites for Cousin Vit
MONA ARSHI
Blue Finch
HOA NGUYEN
Offbeat
WILLIAM STOBB
Cousin
DAN SULLIVAN
There Are Mornings
Sadie and Maud
FLORENCE LADD
Sadie and Maud
GAIL CARSON LEVINE
Maud and Sadie
The Second Sermon on the Warpland
DANIELLE CADENA DEULEN
Medics
MARK DOTY
Advice from Ms. Brooks, With Elaborations
CHERISE A. POLLARD
Reflections on Invictus
MAUREEN SEATON
Bigly in the Wild Weed
The Sermon on the Warpland
MALIKA BOOKER
A Parable of Sorts
A Song in the Front Yard
JOHN BURNSIDE
A Peek at the Back
PETER COOLEY
My Life Has Been No Smaller Than My Mind
MARIAHADESSA EKERE TALLIE
Gap-Toothed Woman
AISLING FAHEY
Walthamstow Central
LINDSAY HUNTER
Our Home
ANGELA JOHNSON
Troubled
JACOB POLLEY
Twelve Weeks
JON SANDS
Statue
DIANE SEUSS
back yard song
EVIE SHOCKLEY
song in the back yard
JEANANN VERLEE
Careful the Blood
FRED WAH
Somewhere where
The Sonnet-Ballad
NICK LANTZ
Deployed
JAMAAL MAY
The Names of Leaves in War
MICHELE PARKER RANDALL
Breaking House
VIRGINIA EUWER WOLFF
Dusk
TIMOTHY YU
Moon
Speech to the Young, Speech to the Progress-Toward
MARILYN NELSON
Bird-Feeder
Still Do I Keep My Look, My Identity
MONIZA ALVI
I still don’t know
RAYMOND ANTROBUS
The Artist
HANNAH SRAJER
Third Infidelity
Strong Men, Riding Horses
ONI BUCHANAN
Pasted to Stars Already
TISHANI DOSHI
Strong Men, Riding Horses
DOUGLAS KEARNEY
The Strong Strong Men Riding Strong Strong Horses after the West
The Sundays of Satin-Legs Smith
PATIENCE AGBABI
Her Secret
TERI CROSS DAVIS
One Night Stand
MARTY MCCONNELL
note to the unconceived
EILEEN MYLES
Hot Water
LAWRENCE RAAB
Judas
RAVI SHANKAR
The Narcissist Breaks Up
DARA WIER
For Gwendolyn Brooks
A Sunset of the City
ELIZABETH BERG
Yard Sale
MAXINE CHERNOFF
The sun had dimmed already
DANIEL DONAGHY
Somerset
PERCIVAL EVERETT
A circle finds its way and
MARIA MAZZIOTTI GILLAN
In Honor of Gwendolyn Brooks: A Shovel Poem
FANNY HOWE
Twang they. And I incline this ear to tin.
LANGSTON KERMAN
This Feels Permanent
DORIANNE LAUX
Lapse
LEE MARTIN
Twig by Twig
E. ETHELBERT MILLER
Just a Friend after Sunset
KAMILAH AISHA MOON
Golden Shovel
NII AYIKWEI PARKES
Awaiting Dawn
LINDA PASTAN
One Day Soon
KATHLEEN ROONEY
American Realness
FIONA SAMPSON
Travel Literature
MARTHA SERPAS
Funland
LEE UPTON
Already
JULIE MARIE WADE
Avow
DANIELLE ZIPKIN
Cold Sore
Throwing Out the Flowers
ELEANOR WILNER
Over and Over and All
To An Old Black Woman, Homeless, and Indistinct
YONA HARVEY
Necessarily
To Be In Love
JULIA GLASS
Two Poems for Alec
MAURA SNELL
Hotel Lobby, April Evening
TONY TRIGILIO
To Be in Love
To Black Women
SHARON G. FLAKE
She never saw life as hard
To the Young Who Want to Die
BOB HICOK
Oath
Truth
CAMARA BROWN
What I would ask of Manman Brigitte after seeing the African Burial Ground
INUA ELLAMS
No apps for sunlight
CHRIS HAVEN
The dark hangs heavily
ELLEN DORÉ WATSON
True & False
INDIGO WILLIAMS
Truth
The Vacant Lot
SUE DYMOKE
The Way He Lived Now
PHILIP GROSS
Memento Mori
FRANCINE J. HARRIS
The Lot, Vacant Then
We Real Cool
MARY CALVIN
1950: Norco, Louisiana
STUART DISCHELL
Parisian Shuffle
CAMILLE T. DUNGY
Because it looked hotter that way
JOY HARJO
An American Sunrise
EDWARD HIRSCH
As Young Poets in Chicago
ELLEN HOPKINS
How Cool Are We?
GAHL LIBERZON
The Old NZ
TYLER MILLS
Hansel in College
DOROTHY MOORE
Cool Kids
SHARON OLDS
Thanks to Miss Brooks
HALEY PATAIL
The Golden Shovel (to bury the ghost)
KADIJA SESAY
Kriolising Kulcha
MAGS WEBSTER
Jessie from the Golden Shovel
SHOLEH WOLPÉ
We, the Basij
When You Have Forgotten Sunday: The Love Story
BRENDA HILLMAN
Orb-Weaver Spiders, In Early Spring
ALYSSA KELLY
Unforgivable
MARCUS SEDGWICK
Before That Sunday
LEONA SEVICK
A Love Story
XV
DAN BEACHY-QUICK
Places Never Gathered
You Did Not Know You Were Afrika
WANG PING
She Shall Not Be
Young Afrikans
DEXTER L. BOOTH
Neo-Afronaut Anthem
KIMIKO HAHN
The Real Cool
Non-Brooks Golden Shovels
HANA BEACHY-QUICK
Golden Shovel
CURTIS CRISLER
On the other side of that window
PHIL DACEY
Parenthood
KENDRA DECOLO
Last Night On Earth We Go to Wendy’s
SHARON DOLIN
It takes so little
NICK FLYNN
Sky Burial
ANTHONY JOSEPH
She threw verbs and arrows at my
IAN KHADAN
Death in Brain
TONI ASANTE LIGHTFOOT
Middle Dreams
BILLY LOMBARDO
At Johnnie’s after Basketball Practice
NICK MAKOHA
The Shepherd . . .
BLAKE MORRISON
The Road to Wales
JOHN O’CONNOR
Immigrant
PASCALE PETIT
Square de la Place Dupleix
KEVIN SIMMONDS
Social Security
DOROTHEA SMARTT
Headway
LISA RUSS SPAAR
Even a Broken Clock Is Right Twice a Day
DAVID ST. JOHN
Robert Johnson’s Double-Edged Shovel
JEAN VALENTINE
Poem with Endwords by Reginald Shephard
KAREN MCCARTHY WOOLF
Of Ownership
AVERY R. YOUNG
pedagogy of a whoopin
Variation and Expansions on the Form
RAPHAEL ALLISON
Double Golden Shovel
JULIA ALVAREZ
Behind the Scenes
ELLEN BASS
Morning (a twisted shovel)
MELISA CAHNMANN-TAYLOR
Frijolero Ex-Pats
MARILYN CHIN
Sadie and Maud, Redux
FRED D’AGUIAR
Golden Shovel Borrowed from Derek Walcott and Gwendolyn Brooks
CALVIN FORBES
The Devil’s Own
DAVID GILMER
When a Grief Has Come
KEITH JARRETT
Outside St. Dominic’s Priory. Snapshot, July 2015.
A. VAN JORDAN
People Who Have No Children Can Be Hard
AMIT MAJMUDAR
Selected Psalms from the Book of Brooks
CAROL MUSKE-DUKES
Accident
MOLLY PEACOCK
The Art of the Stroke:
TOM SLEIGH
Net
JACINDA TOWNSEND
Father
CATHERINE WAGNER
A Chat with the Endwords
BUDDY WAKEFIELD
A Private Service Announcement
TYRONE WILLIAMS
That’s Mr. Robert Johnson to You
The Golden Shovel Poetry Prize
STEPHANIE YEN
Knead
ZOSY J. ARGUETA
Figure It Out
ISABELLA GONZALEZ
(Not Actual) Strangers
CORINA ROBINSON
Royalty
AMRITA CHAKRABORTY
Cold Alchemy
REUBEN GELLEY NEWMAN
(B)Less(ed) Ground(ed) in Queer(ed) Sky
MARLENA WADLEY
Gemini
CHLÖE MOBLEY
Mad Boy / Sad Boy at School
Afterword
Title Index
Author Index
Foreword
This project is first and foremost a tribute to Gwendolyn Brooks. Because where do poems come from if not other poems? Where do forms come from if not other forms? So when Peter Kahn brought up the idea an anthology, I may have said something like, Go for it: Honor Ms. Brooks.
Yes, I did write a poem using her We Real Cool,
as the spine, but otherwise, I have done little more than admire Kahn’s tireless work to make this anthology come into being. Peter Kahn is the kind of reader of poetry, teacher of poetry, and poet who makes the world easier for other readers, teachers, and poets. Along the way he enlisted the help of the brilliant poets, Patricia Smith and Ravi Shankar, and talked scores of poets into writing their own Golden Shovel poems. I didn’t doubt for a moment that he’d produce the marvels awaiting you. The work here, like my own poem, is a way of maintaining, or making material, a link to one of our great poets. (I could just about end this foreword with that.)
When my son was five and my daughter eight, I decided they should each memorize a poem. I gave my daughter a copy of Luck
by Langston Hughes and my son a copy of We Real Cool
and had them write the poems out and then recite them to me every day until they had them memorized. As I write this, it sounds a bit like some weird style of parental abuse. I’ve had time to consider where the idea originated: at the funeral of my father’s mother a month beforehand. She was a woman of few words.
Remember Brooks’s poem a song in the front yard
? The speaker has stayed in the front yard all her life, but wants to peek at the back where it’s rough and untended and hungry.
My father’s mother was a backyard woman.
He was her only child, born when she was fourteen under conditions she never shared. She kept a switchblade folded between her breasts; her hair was a wild plumage as gray as her effusive cigarette smoke before she died of lung cancer. She was the kind of woman Brooks would have depicted in a poem. Sometimes I think of my father’s mother when I read The Mother,
or A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi. Meanwhile, A Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon,
or Jessie Mitchell’s Mother,
or Sadie [scraping] life with a fine toothed comb,
even Winnie Mandela, the resolving fiction
who sometimes would like to be a little girl again.
Bear with me. I’m only thinking of Gwendolyn Brooks’s myriad portraits of women on my way to the postfuneral scene at the home of one of my father’s cousins. When Gwendolyn Brooks died in the winter of 2000, she did not receive, at least beyond Chicago and poetry, a worthy send-off. It should have been a day of national mourning. I don’t know about you, but I have been, since her passing, returning to her work again and again with the feeling not enough has been made of it or her. She was the first black writer to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Literature. She was also poet laureate of Illinois from 1969 to 2000, 29th Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, and recipient of the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contributions to American Letters. She was a poetry advocate, a poetry patron, a poetry champion. Perhaps we can never say enough about Brooks. Certainly, poets like Elizabeth Alexander, Haki Madhubuti, and anyone graced by Brooks’s friendship, teaching, and presence continue to celebrate her. Still there have never been enough tributes, enough parades, enough Association of Writers and Writing Programs panels, enough statues and memorials.
The house, when my father’s mother passed, was full of people who were strangers to me. My father is technically my stepfather. His mother never approved of his marriage to my mother when I was four. The sum total of my conversations with her wouldn’t fill a page. But that’s probably true of everyone she spoke with, maybe even her son. She died a mystery. No one shared stories and recollections as they had when, just a few years before, her sister died. And with no consoling stories to tell about the deceased, they turned inevitably to Bible verses and prayer. I’ve forgotten which verses were shared, but at some point someone pushed a three-or four-year-old boy into the center of the living room. We were spellbound as he recited the 23rd Psalm from memory with two big clear eyes set in a big freshly barbered head. Then he recited Psalm 24, and then, maybe Psalm 25. It seemed he could have gone on reciting verses by heart all night. When he was done, there was an explosion of applause. A blinding, radiant pride issued from his father’s face. Mildly appalled, I said to myself, Damn, you can fill a kid’s head with just about anything.
Then mildly awestruck,