Minor Notes // Volume 2 (Pre-order, March 30 2027)

The second volume in an anthology series that amplifies the voices of unsung Black poets to paint a more robust picture of our national past, and of the Black literary imagination
A Penguin Classic

Joshua Bennett and Jesse McCarthy repeatedly found themselves struck by the number of exciting poets they came across in long-out-of-print collections and forgotten journals whose work has been neglected or entirely ignored, even by scholars of Black poetry.Minor Notesis an excavation initiative that recovers and curates archival materials from these understudied, though supremely gifted, African American poets of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and aims to bridge scholarly interest with the growing general audience who reads, writes, and circulates poetry within that tradition. AsMinor Notesclarifies, the work of contemporary Black poets is perhapsbestunderstood through the lens of a long-standing tradition of the poet as witness, as prophetic voice, as communal bard, and as scholar of the everyday and the miraculous.

The central theme of volume 2 is an archival exploration of young peoples poetry within the Black expressive tradition.

Joshua Bennett(editor) is a professor of English and creative writing at Dartmouth College. He is the author ofThe Sobbing School(Penguin, 2016), a finalist for an NAACP Image Award;Being Property Once Myself(Harvard, 2020);Owed(Penguin, 2020); andThe Study of Human Life(Penguin, 2022). He has received fellowships and awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Society of Fellows at Harvard University. His first work of narrative nonfiction isSpoken Word: A Cultural History(Knopf, 2023).

Jesse McCarthy(editor) is an assistant professor of English and of African and African American studies at Harvard University. His critically acclaimed essay collectionWho Will Pay Reparations on My Soul?(Liveright, 2021) was aNew York TimesEditors’ Choice. He is the author of the novelThe Fugitives(Melville House, 2021). He has published articles and reviews in the journalstransposition,NOVEL, andAfrican American Reviewand contributed chapters toRichard Wright in Context(Cambridge, 2021) andRalph Ellison in Context(Cambridge, 2022) as well as an introduction for Vincent O. Carter’s memoirThe Bern Book(Dalkey Archive, 2022).

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publish Date: March 30, 2027
• Pages: 208
• Language: English
• Type: Paperback
• EAN/UPC: 9780143137276
• Dimensions: 7.8 X 5.1 X 0.5 inches | 0.4 pounds
• BISAC Categories: Poetry, Literary Fiction