Description

Deborah LeFalle celebrates the legacy of 20th century African-American poets through golden shovel poems

Since the creation of the golden shovel poetic form by Terrance Hayes, it has been most closely associated with Black poetry, and specifically homage to Black poets. This new collection by Deborah LeFalle declares this intention in her title, and the poets she has chosen to honor in her "offering of golden shovel poems" constitute a pantheon of 20th century Black authors, including Gwendolyn Brooks of course (whose poetry first inspired Hayes to create the form), Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Bob Kaufman, and many others, as well as writers like James Baldwin not always thought of as poets. In keeping with Claudia Rankine's prescription that a golden shovel should be "in conversation with" the poem and poet that inspired it, LeFalle's original poems here establish a dialogue with her predecessors, and treat the same themes describing Black experience and the still much unfinished work of achieving social justice and equality. As such they function not only as fully-realized poems of their own, but more importantly in looking back to the examples of Black literary activists, and paying tribute to their words and works, she calls upon readers to continue the struggle: "Time to stop sitting; time to stand up and go."

Poetry. African-American Studies.