Happy Pub Day to Greensboro Review contributor A. Van Jordan! When I Waked, I Cried To Dream Again launches today from W.W. Norton.

from the Publisher:

A dynamic, moving hybrid work that celebrates Black youth, often too fleeting, and examines Black lives lost to police violence.

In this astonishing volume of poems and lyric prose, Whiting Award–winner A. Van Jordan draws comparisons to Black characters in Shakespearean plays—Caliban and Sycorax from?The Tempest, Aaron the Moor from?Titus Andronicus, and the eponymous antihero of?Othello—to mourn the deaths of Black people, particularly Black children, at the hands of police officers. What do these characters, and the ways they are defined by the white figures who surround them, have in common with Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, and other Black people killed in the twenty-first century?

Balancing anger and grief with celebration, Jordan employs an elastic variety of poetic forms, including ekphrastic sestinas inspired by the photography of Malick Sidibé, fictional dialogues, and his signature definition poems that break down the insidious power of words like “fair,” “suspect,” and “juvenile.” He invents a new form of window poems, based on a characterization exercise, to see Shakespeare’s Black characters in three dimensions, and finds contemporary parallels in the way these characters are othered, rendered at once undesirable and hypersexualized, a threat and a joke.

At once a stunning inquiry into the roots of racist violence and a moving recognition of the joy of Black youth before the world takes hold, When I Waked, I Cried to Dream Again expresses the preciousness and precarity of life.

“Theory When a Western Light Goes Out” by L.A. Johnson from Issue 111 of The Greensboro Review featured at Verse Daily Poems. Verse Daily is a poetry daily on the worldwide web. By republishing one new poem a day from fine literary magazines and books, Verse Daily promotes poets and their publishers while providing a wealth of excellent poetry to the public free of charge. Find out how you can support Verse Daily here.

“Post-Romantic” by Melissa Studdard from Issue 111 of The Greensboro Review featured at Verse Daily Poems. Verse Daily is a poetry daily on the worldwide web. By republishing one new poem a day from fine literary magazines and books, Verse Daily promotes poets and their publishers while providing a wealth of excellent poetry to the public free of charge. Find out how you can support Verse Daily here.

“Bargaining with the Universe, I Look for Loopholes” by Ronda Piszk Broatch from Issue 110 of The Greensboro Review featured at Verse Daily Poems. Verse Daily is a poetry daily on the worldwide web. By republishing one new poem a day from fine literary magazines and books, Verse Daily promotes poets and their publishers while providing a wealth of excellent poetry to the public free of charge. Find out how you can support Verse Daily here.

“Going Through the Motions” by Grant Clauser from Issue 110 of The Greensboro Review featured at Verse Daily Poems. Verse Daily is a poetry daily on the worldwide web. By republishing one new poem a day from fine literary magazines and books, Verse Daily promotes poets and their publishers while providing a wealth of excellent poetry to the public free of charge. Find out how you can support Verse Daily here.

“Directions” by Paul Guest from Issue 110 of The Greensboro Review featured at Verse Daily Poems. Verse Daily is a poetry daily on the worldwide web. By republishing one new poem a day from fine literary magazines and books, Verse Daily promotes poets and their publishers while providing a wealth of excellent poetry to the public free of charge. Find out how you can support Verse Daily here.

“Brayer” by Dan Albergotti from Issue 110 of The Greensboro Review featured at Verse Daily Poems. Verse Daily is a poetry daily on the worldwide web. By republishing one new poem a day from fine literary magazines and books, Verse Daily promotes poets and their publishers while providing a wealth of excellent poetry to the public free of charge. Find out how you can support Verse Daily here.