I’m not really able to collect my thoughts at the moment upon hearing of the much-too-early passing of Reginald Shepherd from complications of cancer. His death is a massive loss for the poetry, African-American, and gay communities, and all the various combinations thereof.

I’ve gone back to look at the e-mails we exchanged when he was providing suggestions for an anthology I was editing and I was proofreading a manuscript he was putting together. They show a deeply generous, fiercely intelligent man who was committed to the craft of poetry and to the promotion of so many writers’ work.

For now, I’ll put a list of Mr. Shepherd’s publications below the fold and recommend that anyone interested in good writing find and read his books immediately.

Some Are Drowning (1995) (poems)

Angel, Interrupted (1996) (poems)

Wrong (1999) (poems)

Otherhood (2003) (poems)

Iowa Anthology of New American Poetries (2004) (editor)

Fata Morgana (2007) (poems)

Lyric Postmodernisms: An Anthology of Contemporary Innovative Poetics (2008) (editor)

Orpheus in the Bronx (2008) (essays)

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