The Selected Reginald Shepherd: Poems

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.

About the Author :
Reginald Shepherd (1963Ð2008) was the author of five previous books of poetry: Fata Morgana; Otherhood; Wrong; Angel, Interrupted; and Some Are Drowning. His work has been widely anthologized, and has appeared in four editions of The Best American Poetry

Review :
Edited by Jericho Brown, this is a rich introduction to Shepherd’s work, which is elegant, erudite and wry, every poem an argument for language as a way of life. As one opens The Selected Shepherd, it is possible to feel his time has come. There is no one with Shepherd’s nervy combination of the refractory, sassy, and plangent, the witty, sorrowing, and unappeased, no one so torn up and twisted in the face of what he loves. Reginald Shepherd is also a cloud-spotter. One of the most potent joys of The Selected Shepherd, and of Brown's editorial acumen, is the resulting immersion in a compressed, intense iteration of Reginald's built world. An excellent introduction to this important poet. The Selected Shepherd is a very welcome arrival that may encourage readers to rediscover an award-winning, fiercely intelligent poet, anthologist, and critic. Gone much too soon at the age of 45, Reginald Shepherd showed in his increasingly stronger collections that he was well on his way to becoming a major force in American poetry. In an age when poets often vanish from larger cultural memory shortly after their last breath, this selected compendium, published fifteen year safter 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. 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. 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.