In this astonishing volume of poems and lyric prose, Whiting Award?winner A. Van Jordan mourns the deaths of Black people, particularly Black children, at the hands of police officers. Jordan draws comparisons to Black characters in Shakespearean plays: Caliban and Sycorax fromThe Tempest, Aaron the Moor fromTitus Andronicus, and the eponymous antihero ofOthello. 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 this investigation with recognition of the joy of Black youth before the world takes hold, Jordan expresses the preciousness and precarity of life.
From "Such Sweet Thunder"
The circle of fourths comes full circle now. You bards,
Duke, Billy, the children are dancing! Enough: Let that be jazz.
