We - (Penguin Poets) by Joshua Bennett (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

From an award-winning poet praised for his "rhapsodic, rigorous" work (The New Yorker) comes an immersive meditation on kindship, collectivity, and environmental thought

We is a formally and thematically ambitious collection inspired by Virgil's Georgics that examines community, the weight of history, and what we owe one another from a Black American perspective. It evolves from the personal--Bennett's family history in New York and current life in Massachusetts--to the historical, linking the past and present through place. The collection concludes with an epic poem that traces African American life in the twentieth century through four iconic figures: George Washington Carver, George Jackson, George Taliaferro, and George Clinton. The result is a sweeping collection that affirms poetry as a technology of memory.

About the Author

Dr. Joshua Bennett is the author of The Sobbing School (Penguin, 2016), which was a National Poetry Series selection and a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. He is also the author of Being Property Once Myself (Harvard University Press, 2020), Owed (Penguin, 2020), The Study of Human Life (Penguin, 2022), and Spoken Word: A Cultural History (Knopf, 2023). He has received fellowships and awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Society of Fellows at Harvard University. He is a professor of literature and Distinguished Chair of the Humanities at MIT.