University of Pittsburgh Press
Some Are Drowning
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Some Are Drowning

By Reginald Shepherd
This poetry feels passionately truthful and his own, a gay young black man adrift between worlds, transcending the fragments of his life in song.
Poetry Flash
Winner, 1993 AWP Award Series in Poetry
Paperback $18.00

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This first collection of poems enacts the struggle of a young black gay man in his search for identity. Many voices haunt these poems: black and white, male and female, the oppressor’s voice as well as the oppressed. The poet’s aim, finally, is to rescue some portion of the drowned and the drowning.

More Praise

Shepherd's poems are reckless in the best sense. Passionate, brainy, and sad, they chronicle the mysteries, small and large, of emotional and intellectual life in language that's a weird amalgam of Latinate and Anglo-Saxon, richly original and distinctively American. Reading them is like listening to a good talker on a tear. He tells secrets that might turn out to be your own.

Chase Twichell
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88 Pages, 6 x 9 in.

January, 1995

isbn : 9780822955474

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about the author

Reginald Shepherd

Reginald Shepherd (1963–2008) was a Black, gay poet who grew up in the Bronx and went on to receive two MFAs, one from Brown University and one from the Iowa Writers Workshop. He authored two collections of poetry criticism and six poetry collections, all published by the University of Pittsburgh Press: Red Clay Weather, Fata Morgana, Otherhood, Wrong, Angel, Interrupted, and Some Are Drowning. His work has been widely awarded and anthologized and has appeared in four editions of The Best American Poetry and two Pushcart Prize anthologies. Shepherd received many awards and honors over his career, including grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, among others.

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Reginald Shepherd