Essays by Ross Gay, Kevin Simmonds, and Danez Smith

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On the Genesis of “Poetry & the New Black Masculinity”

By KEVIN SIMMONDS



 “If anything is ‘new,’ then, perhaps it’s a growing awareness of these multitudinous expressions of black masculinity that black people have always known. . . . As far as I can tell, black people just do the damn thing: create and innovate, upend and speculate, experiment and share, witnessing one another. Convening panels to discuss it all is secondary and usually not for our own edification.”

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The Imagining of Something Else

By ROSS GAY

“And this is what I want to ask today: What does it mean when in the popular imagination—in the images we all are exposed to, all of us—the fact of our murderability is again and again and again held before us?”

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a plea
By DANEZ SMITH

“Again and again, we are called to the pulpit of poetry to eulogize and galvanize, to pen sermon after sermon, poem after poem about the murder of our people at the hands of police and vigilantes, at our own hands, at their own hands. I want to be fierce in my pursuit of black joy, to forget what wicked things lurk behind joy’s shoulder.”

WRITER PORTRAITS BY AARON ALFORD