Minor Notes, Volume 2

by Joshua Bennett (Introduction), Jesse McCarthy (Editor)

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 Notes is 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. As Minor Notes clarifies, the work of contemporary Black poets is perhaps best understood 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 people's poetry within the black expressive tradition.

208 pages, Paperback

Expected publication March 30, 2027

About the author

Joshua Bennett received his Ph.D. in English from Princeton University. He also holds an M.A. in Theatre and Performance Studies from the University of Warwick, where he was a Marshall Scholar. In 2010, he delivered the Commencement Address at the University of Pennsylvania, from which he graduated with the distinctions of Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude.

Winner of the 2015 National Poetry Series, Dr. Bennett has received fellowships from the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, Cave Canem, the Josephine de Karman Fellowship Trust, and the Ford Foundation. His writing has been published or is forthcoming in Boston Review, Callaloo, The Kenyon Review, Poetry and elsewhere. He has recited his original work at venues such as the Sundance Film Festival, the NAACP Image Awards, and President Obama’s Evening of Poetry and Music at The White House. He is currently a member of the Society of Fellows at Harvard University.