The selected Shepherd

The selected Shepherd

Reginald Shepherd, 1963-2008

Book - 2024

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.

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Subjects
Interpersonal relations > Poetry
Mother and child > Poetry
Grief > Poetry
American poetry > African American authors > Specimens.
American poetry > African American authors.
Poésie américaine > Auteurs noirs américains.
Poésie américaine > Auteurs noirs américains > Spécimens.
American poetry > African American authors
poetry.
Poetry.
Poésie.
Genres
poetry
Poetry
Poésie
Published
Pittsburgh, Pa. : University of Pittsburgh Press [2024]
Language
English
Main Author
Reginald Shepherd, 1963-2008 (author)
Other Authors
Jericho Brown (author of introduction etc)
Physical Description
xvii, 163 pages ; 22 cm
ISBN
9780822948216
  • Introduction
  • Some Are Drowning
  • The Difficult Music
  • The New World
  • Slaves
  • Paradise
  • The Lucky One
  • Sappho's Fragment Thirty-One Revised
  • Two or Three Things I Know about Him
  • Kindertotenlieder
  • Two Boys Glimpsed in Late Light
  • The First Farewell to Antinoüs
  • Tantalus in May
  • Sunday
  • Until She Returns
  • Angel, Interrupted
  • Depth of Field
  • Narcissus at the Adonis Theater
  • Two Versions of Midsummer
  • My Brother the Rain
  • A Man Named Troy
  • He and Sleep Were Brothers
  • The Gods at Three A.M.
  • Jouissance
  • Black Ice on Green Dolphin Street
  • Drawing from Life
  • Tornado Watch
  • Same Cooke Would Be Sixty-One This Year
  • A Plague for Kit Marlowe
  • A Little Knowledge
  • Narcissus and the Namesake River
  • Wrong
  • Antibody
  • Deepest of the Great Lakes, Largest Too
  • Surface Effects in Summer Wind
  • Vampires
  • Hermes, the Trickster
  • Locale
  • Who Owns the Night and Leases Stars
  • That Man
  • Littler Sonnet
  • Nights and Days of Nineteen-Something
  • Otherhood
  • Reasons for Living
  • Little Hands
  • Periplus
  • Burnt from the Notebooks
  • Three Songs about Snow
  • Les Semblables
  • Hygiene
  • Apollo on What the Boy Gave
  • Apollo Steps in Daphne's Footprints
  • Semantics at Four P.M.
  • Cygnus
  • Weather Comes from the West
  • Manifest
  • Imaginary Elegy
  • Fata Morgana
  • Orpheus Plays the Bronx
  • How People Disappear
  • For My Mother in Lieu of Mourning
  • Pear Tree, Bartlett, Quotations
  • At Weep
  • Things Waiting to Be Dangerous
  • Eve's Awakening
  • Objects in Mirror Are Closer than They Appear
  • Self-Portrait in the New World Order
  • A Handful of Sand
  • With the Wind Blowing Through It
  • Light Years
  • Red Clay Weather
  • Attempted Bidcage Number Three
  • To Be Free
  • The New Life
  • My Mother Was No White Dove
  • What Nature Doesn't Show
  • My Mother Dated Otis Redding
  • Flying
  • Falling
  • Some Dreams He Forgot
  • Play Dead
  • Next Year in Gomorrah
  • Kings Go Forth
  • Seize the Day

A Muse ​He winds through the party like wind, one of the just who live alone in black and white, bewildered by the eden of his body. ( You, you talk like winter rain .) He's the meaning of almost-morning walking home at five A.M., the difference a night makes turning over into day, simple birds staking claims on no sleep. Whatever they call those particular birds. He's the age of sensibility at seventeen, he isn't worth the time of afternoon it takes to write this down. He's the friend that lightning makes, raking the naked tree, thunder that waits for weeks to arrive; he's the certainty of torrents in September, harvest time and powerlines down for miles. He doesn't even know his name. In his body he's one with air, white as a sky rinsed with rain. It's cold there, it's hard to breathe, and drowning is somewhere to be after a month of drought. Excerpted from The Selected Shepherd: Poems by Reginald Shepherd All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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