Minor Notes, Volume 1: Poems by a Slave; Visions of the Dusk; and Bronze: A Book of Verse

(Paperback)

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A new Penguin Classics series that recovers and rediscovers the work of African American poets from the 19th and 20th centuries, curated by Joshua Bennett and Jesse McCarthy A Penguin Classic As scholars of African American literature and cultural history, Bennett and McCarthy repeatedly find themselves struck by the number of exciting poets they come across in long-out-of-print collections and forgotten journals, whose work has been neglected and, in some cases, entirely ignored, even by those academic circles devoted to the study of Black poetry. Minor Notes is an excavation initiative that addresses this problem by recovering archival materials from these understudied, though supremely gifted, African American poets of the 19th and 20th centuries. By pairing neglected collections of poetry with prefatory commentary provided by contemporary poets, Minor Notes bridges scholarly interest with the growing audience outside the university that reads, writes, and circulates Black poetry. Minor Notes Vol. 1 features the work of three poets. Published in 1837, Poems by a Slave is one of the lesser-known works by George Moses Horton (1798-1883), once popularly known as the "black bard of North Carolina." Visions of the Dusk (1915) is an American prose poem known for its formal innovation by Fenton Johnson, a poet, essayist, editor, and educator from Chicago. Georgia Douglas Johnson was the most widely read black woman poet in the US during the first three decades of the 20th century. Bronze- A Book of Verse (1922) was introduced with a foreword by W.E.B. Du Bois. Bennett and McCarthy will provide an introduction and Suggestions for Further Reading.

Reviews

You feel youre meeting them on a human level. The book is slim and portable, as the best poetry books are () Bennett and McCarthy, in their introduction, set out their criteria for inclusion in Minor Notes. They list things like minimal appearance in anthologies and very little, if anything, in the way of secondary literature focusing on their work. But it becomes plain that they chose these poets because they still speak across generations. This is a passion project.() This is a reclamation project that goes through you like a spear.
Dwight Garner, The New York Times

Joshua Bennett and Jesse McCarthy, both scholars of African American literature, aim to widen the canon of Black poetry by spotlighting poets who have been overlooked () giving readers an understanding of their unique voice and poetic concerns. () David Wadsworth Cannon Jr., Henrietta Cordelia Ray, Anne Spencer, and other poets interrogate everything from labor politics to friendship in finely wrought lyrics that delight and surprise, prompting the reader to wonder how these geniuses could have been sidelined for so long.
Poets & Writers

The first in a series recovering the out-of-print words of Black poets whose work shaped the 19th and 20th centuries, Minor Notes, Volume 1 draws a bright line between the creations of the past and those of todays bards. Curated by Joshua Bennett and Jesse McCarthy, while featuring a foreword from former poet laureate Tracy K. Smith, the book centers clear, resonant voiceslike that of Angelina Weld Grimks, who ruminates joyfully on the beauty of living in a Black body.
Essence

Author Bio

Joshua Bennett is a Professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College. He is the author- The Sobbing School (Penguin, 2016) a finalist for an NAACP Image Award, Property Once Myself (Harvard, 2020) and Owed (Penguin, 2020). He received the 2021 Whiting Award for Poetry and Nonfiction. His first work of narrative nonfiction, Spoken Word- A Cultural History, is forthcoming from Knopf in 2023. Jesse McCarthy is assistant professor of English and African and African American studies at Harvard University. He is an editor at the Point and has written for n+1, Dissent, the Nation, and the New Republic. His critically acclaimed essay collection Who Will Pay Reparations on My Soul (Liveright 2021) was a NYT Editor's Choice.