Registration required:
Online, 1 session / $100
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Join us at the Poetry Society for this single-session seminar on the poetry of Reginald Shepherd, led by Pulitzer-prizewinning poet Jericho Brown.
“I will not entirely die,” writes Reginald Shepherd making an allusion to Horace, and affirming the fact of eternality in poetry. In this seminar, we will read a few of Shepherd’s poems from The Selected Shepherd for a discussion of that which is immortal about his work—its craft—and that which may or may not be only evidence of the times in which he wrote—his subjects. This means we’re in for a course on looking at how poetry’s possibilities expand through the work of a man who completed the poems of his final book while on his deathbed.
Reginald Shepherd (1963–2008) was a Black, gay poet who grew up in the Bronx and went on to receive two MFAs, one from Brown University and one from the Iowa Writers Workshop. He authored two collections of poetry criticism and six poetry collections, all published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Shepherd received many awards and honors over his career, including grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, among others.
Recommended textbook purchase: The Selected Shepherd
Class modality: Online synchronous (real-time attendance required)
Required textbook purchases: No
Recorded: No
Writing: No
Workshopping & feedback: No
Jericho Brown is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award and fellowships from The Academy of American Poets, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Brown’s first book, Please (2008), won the American Book Award. His second book, The New Testament (2014), won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was named one of the best of the year by Library Journal, Coldfront, and the Academy of American Poets. He is also the author of the collection The Tradition (2019), which was a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award and the winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. His poems have appeared in Buzzfeed, The Nation, the New York Times, the New Yorker, the New Republic, Time, and the Pushcart Prize Anthology, and several volumes of the Best American Poetry anthologies. Brown is the editor of The Selected Shepherd (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2024).
A limited number of need-based scholarships are available to cover the enrollment costs of Poetry Society classes. To receive and fill out a scholarship survey, email parker@poetrysociety.org.
