We (the People of the United States)

From an award-winning poet praised for his "rhapsodic, rigorous" work (The New Yorker) comes an immersive meditation on kindship, collectivity, and environmental thought We is a formally and thematically ambitious collection inspired by Virgil's Georgics that examines community, the weight of history, and what we owe one another from a Black American perspective. It evolves from the personal--Bennett's family history in New York and current life in Massachusetts--to the historical, linking the past and present through place. The collection concludes with an epic poem that traces African American life in the twentieth century through four iconic figures: George Washington Carver, George Jackson, George Taliaferro, and George Clinton. The result is a sweeping collection that affirms poetry as a technology of memory.