Minor Notes, Volume 2
Joshua Bennett · Jesse McCarthy
Feb 2026 · Penguin Random House Audio
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About this audiobook
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.
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.
About the author
Joshua Bennett (editor) is a professor of English and creative writing at Dartmouth College. He is the author of The Sobbing School (Penguin, 2016), a finalist for an NAACP Image Award; Being Property Once Myself (Harvard, 2020); Owed (Penguin, 2020); and The 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 is Spoken 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 collection Who Will Pay Reparations on My Soul? (Liveright, 2021) was a New York Times Editors’ Choice. He is the author of the novel The Fugitives (Melville House, 2021). He has published articles and reviews in the journals transposition, NOVEL, and African American Review and contributed chapters to Richard Wright in Context (Cambridge, 2021) and Ralph Ellison in Context (Cambridge, 2022) as well as an introduction for Vincent O. Carter’s memoir The Bern Book (Dalkey Archive, 2022).
Jesse McCarthy (editor) is an assistant professor of English and of African and African American studies at Harvard University. His critically acclaimed essay collection Who Will Pay Reparations on My Soul? (Liveright, 2021) was a New York Times Editors’ Choice. He is the author of the novel The Fugitives (Melville House, 2021). He has published articles and reviews in the journals transposition, NOVEL, and African American Review and contributed chapters to Richard Wright in Context (Cambridge, 2021) and Ralph Ellison in Context (Cambridge, 2022) as well as an introduction for Vincent O. Carter’s memoir The Bern Book (Dalkey Archive, 2022).
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