At hip beer garden and wine den Fadensonnen in Old Goucher, words and wine collide to bring local poetry lovers a “Hidden Palace.” The series—which takes place on the first Wednesday of the month and is organized by writers Ashleigh Phillips, Joseph Grantham, and the staff at Remington’s Greedy Reads bookstore—gathers writers in the upstairs tavern to share their poems and other compositions of all genres. 

“No matter who finds ‘Hidden Palace,’ as soon as the writer starts reading, everyone in the room is ready to listen,” Phillips says. “It never gets old.”

The winner of the 2019 C. Michael Curtis Short Story Book Prize for her debut collection Sleepovers, Phillips says that the event took off in the early days of COVID-19, when she was transitioning from working behind the bar at Fadensonnen to managing its natural wine shop, Angels Ate Lemons. When her book came out, Fadensonnen owner Lane Harlan bought a copy for everyone on staff, and later asked Phillips to curate the reading series after pandemic restrictions loosened. 

“It was like Lane read my mind,” Phillips says. “Joseph and I have both hosted reading series in other cities. I had been wanting something like that in Baltimore.”

The very first installment in March 2022 featured local Poet Sylvia Jones, along with North Carolina novelist Mesha Maren and New York City poet Joshua Garcia. In the year since, other participants have traveled from as far as Louisiana and Oregon.  

“Often, it’s the first time many of these writers have been to Baltimore,” says Phillips, a Baltimore transplant from North Carolina. “It’s fun to get to show them around the city that Joseph and I have come to love so much.”

The monthly events are free to the community, and typically feature readings from four different writers and poets. In the digital age, Phillips is pleased to see gathered lit lovers put down their phones and tap into the power of good storytelling.

“Sadly, so many readings these days are rarely about the words,” she says. “So often they’re about networking, who knows who, and who ends up in what picture on Instagram.

“But here in Baltimore, it’s so inspiring to see a packed house of people giving themselves over to the poem and the story. People who come aren’t trying to meet a literary agent or an editor at a magazine, they’re there to really listen. It speaks to what Baltimore’s about.”

Dean Bartoli Smith is a Baltimore native, coming of age just in time to watch the Colts and Orioles in all their late ’60s glory. And, just in time to witness Baltimore’s long economic decline and the subsequent fraying of the city’s fabric.

A published author, freelance journalist, and poet, Smith’s first book of poems, American Boy, won the 2000 Washington Writer’s Prize and was awarded the Maryland Prize for Literature in 2001. Locally, his fiction has appeared in The Loch Raven Review and Little Patuxent Review. His prose has appeared in the Best American Poetry blog, Zocalo Public Square, The Catholic Review, Indiewire, and the Woodstock Independent, among other publications.

Currently the director of Duke University Press, Smith’s new collection of poems, Baltimore Sons, captures the city’s struggles as well as his own, as both his family and Baltimore seem to be decaying separately and together across the past half-century-plus—ultimately forming a broader story of acceptance and empathy.

One of my favorite small poems in the collection is the four-line piece, Cardboard Note. It’s such a simple, clear-eyed noticing of one of life’s poignant details—“due to the passing of Miss Annie Mae.” It seems like a lot of your poems are made of such tactile observations.
That poem remained tacked on my forehead for 30 years until I sent it to the journal Poetry East in 2019. The Polk Street Diner [where the note was taped] was a smaller version of The Wyman Park Restaurant and I lingered in the doorway. So much depended on Miss Annie Mae. What happened to her? That’s where the reader comes in and gets to finish the story.

Speaking of diners, At the Bel-Loc Diner is so bittersweet. We see your father reliving his divorce—specifically the painful separation from his two boys—through your divorce. Did the power of the moment register at the time?
Everything still registers. I could somehow see behind his shades tears welling in the sunlight that morning. We have very few extended and unfettered one-on-one moments in this world. It stayed with me and it took years to get right.

These poems span a Baltimore lifetime, from childhood memories to fatherhood to the death of your mother. How long was this collection in the making?
Thank you for mentioning my mother. I describe her as “murderous and beautiful.” That says something about the process and my own sense of what I was going with the collection. It took me more than 20 years to finish it.

Can we ask you about a favorite poet or influence? Someone whose craft you appreciate?
Robert Lowell’s Life Studies opened the door. Sylvia Plath was inside the room. The voice and craft of Gwendolyn Brooks, who I met at UVA as an undergrad. Paul Muldoon’s poem, “Meeting the British.” Mark Strand told me the best poems cultivate a shared sense of suffering. David Lehman got me back to the desk.

Many of the poems deal with drinking, drugs, and guns, sometimes personally, sometimes in Baltimore, and in America more broadly. It doesn’t seem like the city or country has become any easier to live in. At times, in pieces like “Father’s Day Shotgun Sale,” the poetry seems almost surreal.
It can be a brutal read, but there is hope. There is empathy. Isolation is the real killer. I went for a walk in the city recently on a beautiful day. I had so many things to do and felt guilty at first. I saw something akin to “Cardboard Note” that could form the basis of a new collection of poems—a response to Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro.” I’ve waited my entire life for that.

The great Pittsburgh poet Jack Gilbert has a line in The Great Fires about deep-rooted memories—“What lasted is what the soul ate.” For him, in middle age, what has lasted is unexpected. Do you agree?
What has lasted is far beyond my wildest dreams. My life for one thing. The urge to write the next poem.

West Baltimore native Tariq Touré grew up in awe of the businesses in his community—from streetwear designers to eateries like Shareef’s Grill, a takeout restaurant that serves Halal meats and now has multiple locations in Baltimore. “We would come out from Juma [Friday prayer] and everybody would buy his wraps religiously,” recalls Touré, a Muslim husband, father, and award-winning writer.

So when he wrote a poem nearly four years ago describing the story of how the dollar flows through a community, he was drawing from a personal desire to explain that process. Years later, he realized the poem was something he wished he’d had growing up, so he turned it into a children’s book.

David’s Dollar follows the story of David Kareem, a Muslim kid who expresses curiosity about what happens to a dollar after it’s spent. “He’s happy to have his candy, but he’s sad to see his dollar be spent,” says Touré, who has three children himself. “So his father says, ‘Well, let me show you,’ and then takes him around the neighborhood and shows him all the different businesses, and the dollar happens to keep popping up.”

Slated for a September release (pre-orders are currently sold out), David’s Dollar follows Touré’s two other self-published poetry books. After struggles with publishers who wanted to make fundamental changes, Touré took matters into his own hands. In May, he launched a fundraiser for the illustration costs, which far surpassed its $7,000 goal. The crowdfunding campaign followed his philosophy of “do it for self,” a concept he learned more about through his community, which also happens to be a recurring message in the book.

Despite all of the research, Touré doesn’t plan to sit his kids down and talk about the meaning of the dollar until the book is out. He wants to let them read it and have their curiosity guide a discussion.

“Right now, they know nothing about it,” he says. “I just want them to walk into a room full of books and be like, ‘What’s this?’”

Here’s what the author had to say about his upcoming book, the value of the Black dollar, and Baltimore’s tight-knit Muslim community:

What was your inspiration for David’s Dollar?
Maybe three or four years ago, I wrote a poem that described how a young boy would ask his father how money passes through a community in the realm of [I guess you would say] futurism, because it doesn’t really happen like that right now. [Laughs] Basically, if this was a community where people spent money with each other, how would a young child be able to see that?

So, what prompted you to turn it into a book?
When I was done with it, I thought it’d be something cool to share with my kids at some point in time when they were ready to digest that information. Then I realized, well, I already wrote two poetry books, what would it look like if I were to write a children’s poetry book that tells a really dynamic story that I think people would rally behind?

On the cover, you have David and his father dressed in Muslim garb. Is it important for you that you remain as authentic as possible in your writing?
Building it out autobiographically, it’s important for me to make the way it feels and looks there authentic. [For] Black Muslims, a lot of us dress this way on the regular. A lot of our parents make sure we shop Black on the regular anyway. We get so caught up into representation that we forget we have a dope story that carries with it anyway.

Growing up, were you aware of the disparities in the Black community in Baltimore?

I grew up around a lot of hustlers, some entrepreneurs, but very little actual business owners. Sometimes as writers we write for wishful thinking, and it’s like, this is what could possibly be if we spend more money with each other.

When you were younger, do you remember having an understanding of financial literacy?
Not really. The one thing that I feel like was preached in my community was, you know, different income and stuff like that. But as far as walking somebody through it? No, that wasn’t a thing. So it will be good to have literal depictions of how these things work.

What do you think are some of the reasons behind the failure to keep the Black dollar in some communities?
Well, number one, we lack patience sometimes. Papa John’s pizza probably wasn’t fire when he first made it. [Laughs]. We have to believe in the seed that people are planting and understand that it goes through stages, and that people don’t reach perfection off the jump. For whatever reason, we’ve been indoctrinated to believe that, if there are two lemonade stands and one is a white-owned lemonade stand, business there is going to be at a heightened level and [they] therefore deserve that money

What do you think about the timing of the release of this children’s book aligning with everything that’s going on in the world with the youth-led Black Lives Matter movement?
Well, since it’s something that I wrote three or four years ago, it was going to get written regardless—there was a need regardless. It isn’t a “strike while the iron’s hot” decision or something like that. If anybody knows me, they know that I write religiously, so I don’t need a specific moment to spur me to write what I feel is necessary. David’s Dollar was going to be David’s Dollar with or without any sort of a climax of injustice because I believe this is something that is going to need to be revisited constantly by the community. And if it adds to what people are trying to fight for, then, you know, that’s a blessing, too. But I don’t want to get pigeonholed into a “Hey, I’m writing this for this exact thing.” I wrote David’s Dollar because I felt like this story would be useful in the hands of kids like myself who needed it spelled out for them in interesting ways.

What do you hope that people take away from this book?
My goal is for Black children to walk into a store with their parents, see them spend their money, and maybe they don’t even ask the question. In the back of their head, they just say to themselves, “Where did my dollar go? Where did mommy’s dollar go? Where did daddy’s dollar go?”

In April, 19-year-old Deleicea Greene was crowned this year’s Baltimore City Youth Poet Laureate, becoming the fifth local student to hold the coveted title. We asked the Woodlawn High School alum to share the poem “What If…,” which she created based on the idea that everyone can create their own heaven. “No one knows what truly makes an individual happy and content,” Greene says. “So anybody—more specifically a black boy from Baltimore—can already have their heaven without having to die.”

What If…

What if another black boy from Baltimore was murdered by the police
his body still
his white tee bloody
his True Religion jeans soaked in deep red
His Freddie Gray New Balances stained
his soul is no immortal
and drifts
until he reaches heaven

but what is his heaven?

when he arrives do they play Lor Scoota
instead of gospel hymns?
Do the Angels wear “RIP insert black boys’ name”
on the back of their wings?

Does God have straight hair and blue eyes
or
does he rock a cruddy and fronts?

What if
His heaven was a chicken box
salt pepper ketchup and a half and half

You’re a Baltimore Police Academy instructor as well as a published poet. Which came first: police work or poetry?
I’ve always loved writing and reading, and I’ve always been fascinated by service. I started poetry in college, and in retrospect I wish I’d been an English major, but I became a history major because my plan was to become a military officer. I was in the Reserve Officers Training Corps at George Washington University, but I got injured, so when I graduated I looked toward education.

So you were a teacher before you joined the police force?
My first two years were in Baltimore City Public Schools, right out of college. I’d never been to a public school in my life. It was very much a fish-out-of-water situation. I had never seen an inner city. I had never seen a housing development. I had never seen that type of violence. It was nonstop culture shock, but it was very educational.

What kinds of situations did you face as a teacher that surprised you?
I would talk to the kids about what it was like to be in college, and I remember one student saying to me, “Did you have to fight a lot of people?” I said I didn’t fight with the people in college—I just went to class. There’s this moment of him staring at me like, “Why don’t you understand what I’m talking about?” and me saying, “Why would you ask that?” But, of course, I had to understand that a big part of his existence was establishing yourself through violence.

How did you transition into police work?
In 2011, I was in Johns Hopkins’ Master of Liberal Arts program and working for the university’s Success For All Foundation. One day I sat down to do my work, and my officemate said, “Hey, a plane hit the World Trade Center.” The second plane hit, and I thought, “Okay, I think this is my time to do something different.” 9/11 really got me focused. Four years later, I finished my master’s, I got my black belt, and I was in the first class of 2005 at the police academy. Now, I train officers. I teach classes on implicit bias, police legitimacy, hate crimes, white supremacist extremists, and sovereign citizens. I teach recruits about policing in Baltimore and the history of the city—good and bad.

How does your line of work influence your poetry?
Police work has worked its way into my writing quite a bit. I look for the poetry in the things that I see around me; there’s great raw material that just lays out in front of you. Milan Kundera, who wrote The Unbearable Lightness of Being, said that every culture has its kitsch and its shit. You can see both in doing police work. It’s like, here’s the human condition: What do you make of it?

How would you describe your three poetry collections?
The first two [Masala Tea and Oranges and On the Later Addition of Sancho Panza] are pretty free-flowing. My best friend read my work, and he said, “Your work tends to be about myth, violence, and sensuality.” And those two books flow through those three big themes. The third one is named Socorro Prophesy after a place in New Mexico that I found particularly fascinating, and it’s about myth, legend, and the culture of mythic storytelling.

Does being a poet make it difficult to relate to other police officers?
Police work includes such a diverse group of people. I’ve definitely had situations in which I didn’t relate well. I worked in one unit where there was a set idea amongst some officers that there are these cultural shibboleths that you must have to be an officer—or a male officer, or a black male officer—and if you don’t put those things forth then you can’t be included in the tribe. Whereas I’ve met other cops that read a lot. Once you scratch the surface, it’s amazing the backgrounds you find here. I’ve met artists and photographers, other writers, rappers. It’s a neat learning environment because it is so diverse.

What on-the-job moments have stood out as visual or auditory poetry?
I was walking up to the library at Penn North and there was a woman sitting there. I leaned down and said, “Are you okay?” She spoke to me in that muted tone of a hearing-impaired person, and she used sign language to say, “Yes, I’m fine. I’m waiting, thank you very much.” As we were talking, a trans woman walked up and started talking to us. Then, this young man with a sketch pad—it’s almost as if someone ordered this very diverse group of people from central casting—walked up and said, “Hold still, I’m sketching all of y’all.” And I thought, I want these people, all these people who are so diverse and so flawed and beautiful, to feel like they’re safe.

The Master Plan: My Journey from Life in Prison to a Life of Purpose

Chris Wilson with Bret Witter (G.P. Putnam’s Sons)

After reading Chris Wilson’s memoir, one word stands out: endgame. He shares his account of growing up in a violent D.C. neighborhood, receiving a life sentence for murder at 18, and the creation of his “Master Plan.” As he grows from boy to man, we see him check off each item on that list—get a high school diploma, get an AA degree—while continuing to add bigger dreams. Beating all odds, his sentence is reduced, and he ends up in Baltimore as a free man. We see him go from sleeping on a friend’s couch and mowing lawns for a living, to starting his own business (Barclay Investment Corporation), sharing his story with people all over the country, and becoming a positive member of his community. It’s a story of perseverance, hope, and redemption. And he also sets forth a challenge for readers: What is our endgame? And how are we going to get there?

Chris Wilson will be reading on February 9 at 7 p.m.at The Church of the Redeemer, 5603 N. Charles St. He will be joined by Wes Moore for a discussion on the path that led him to be an entrepreneur who employs returning citizens.

2 Parts Oxygen: How I Learned to Breathe

Tariq Touré (self-published)

This collection sometimes feels like a self-help book in the guise of poetry, complete with affirmations and messages of self-love, healing, and transcendence over collective wounds. Touré, who grew up in West Baltimore and now lives with his family in Northern Virginia, writes of stray bullets and the ancestral oppression of the black community, but also how his Islamic faith helped him overcome obstacles, with frequent references to the Holy Quran. Some poems read like ecstatic, 21st-century prayers with a call to action. He looks at racial injustices through a micro and macro lens, exploring its personal and cultural repercussions. The new father wrestles with identity, not just his own but the generations to come, and his—and their—connection to the past. What’s most striking about Touré’s collection of about 100 poems is its ability to contain so much gravity and yet allow so much light to pierce through, sometimes in the same breath.

See our full interview with writer Tariq Touré.

What was your early exposure to poetry? Who are some of your early literary influencers?
My mom introduced me to poetry and fiction when I was around 7. She treated the library like Disneyland. Maya Angelou, Shel Silverstein, DMX, KRS-One, Styles P, Nas—they’re all poets that birthed me.

When and why did you begin writing poetry?
I was about 7. Initially it was for school, but I would then start to write my own work that I would keep to myself mostly.

Can you talk a little about how you “learned to breathe”? What keeps you grounded and centered in your daily life?
I think a lot of times people who have the privilege of describing a side of their life that isn’t traumatic don’t because trauma sells. People enjoy seeing black people suffer. I couldn’t be removed from my city, walking through nature every weekend, and spending time to nurture my family and still have 100 percent of my writings reflect a context that I’m not completely living in. It’s just respect for people who have to endure the reality of certain things. Have I experienced the gamut of oppression in many ways? Yes. But I’ve been blessed, too.

I learned to breathe by accepting that today was going to be “today” and that there was nothing I could so about that. So with that said, I’ve been giving energy to the smaller parts of life that I took for granted. My family has made that easier.

I read private affirmations every day. I don’t think they’ll end oppression, but I need to remind myself often that I’m worthy and capable of walking this path laid before me.

Islam, more than anything, provides the regimen to stay grounded. The state of mind and soul it requires leave little room for second-guessing my purpose.

You write a lot about our wounds and the monsters we feed but also nourishment through love and faith. How intentional was it to strike this balance, as you were writing and compiling pieces for this book?
This was important because I felt like I was growing into a space where I could only draw inspiration from pain. For me, I was intentional about this project being a source of light.

You earned a master’s degree in social work and write about societal issues, like Hurricane Katrina and 9/11. Do you see your poetry as a form of civic engagement or activism? Do you see it as another source for healing?
I believe art, when set to the right intention, can capture the emotions of the people it connects with. In a world that is constantly pushing to become numb and indifferent, poetry is one of our last vanguards against soullessness.

On that note, what do you get from reading poetry that you don’t get from reading other genres?
I’ve always been intrigued with language. In particular, I’ve always been amazed with the efficiency and depth in great writers’ work. Poetry is heat seeking missiles drafted for the heart. The fact that you are only given a small space to make a world come alive will always be significant for me.

Visual Art

First Fridays Free Curatorial Tour: Meleko Mokgosi: Acts of Resistance
As part of a free series at the Baltimore Museum of Art, curators give tours of exhibitions they curated and explain the shows in further detail, providing rich insight into the artists and their work. This month, senior curator of contemporary art and department head Kristen Hileman will lead a group through the much-talked-about show Meleko Mokgosi: Acts of Resistance. Mokgosi explores race and gender through intimate yet larger-than-life portraits and paintings of domestic environments. Curatorial tour from 2-3 p.m. Aug. 3; the show remains up through Nov. 11. Baltimore Museum of Art, 10 Art Museum Drive.

We Are Everywhere: Travels of the African Diaspora
Photographer Schaun Champion will show images from Baltimore and around the world that represent the African diaspora in her exhibit We Are Everywhere: Travels of the African Diaspora at Ida B’s Table, a beloved Southern soul food restaurant in downtown. The show is part of the monthly series Necessary Tomorrows, created by resident curator Sharayna Christmas to feature work that complements the visit and mission of the restaurant. Opening reception and artist talk, 5-8 p.m. Aug. 7. Ida B’s Table, 235 Holliday St.

Counterweight
Sera Boeno, Cevahir Özdoğan, and Noa Heyne examine concrete as a material and as a gender—its cultural and sociological implications and history—in the show Counterweight. Artist talks, a printmaking/archiving workshop with Lebanese archivist and artist Celia Shaheenon (Sept. 9), and an exhibition catalogue release on Sept. 21 will accompany the show. Aug. 10-Sept. 21, opening reception from 7-10 p.m. Aug. 10. The Menial Collection, 243 W. Read St.

Music

Summer in the Squares: Symphony Number One
Pull up a chair (or blanket) for the finale of this season’s Summer in the Squares. Symphony Number One will perform at Mount Vernon Place for the free series of shows that bring the work of emerging composers to the stage alongside beloved pieces by classical greats. During this show, the Baltimore-based chamber orchestra will feature the Aaron Copland’s “Appalachian Spring” alongside new works and pop favorites. 7-8:30 p.m. Aug. 29, Mount Vernon Place, 699 Washington Place

Baltimore International Surf Music Showcase
Four instrumental surf acts from around the world will take the Ottobar stage this month for a totally tubular night. Headlining the show will be Surfer Joe, based in Italy and often called the “international surf ambassador.” The legendary California surf band The Volcanics, and Les Agamemnoz (France) will also perform alongside local surf rockers the Flying Faders. 8 p.m. Aug. 15. Ottobar, 2549 N. Howard St.

Art/Sound/Now: Suldano Abdiruhman and The Compositions
In collaboration with the High Zero Foundation, The Walters Art Museum will present its annual ART/SOUND/NOW, featuring artists creating soundscapes throughout the museum’s various gallery spaces. This year’s event highlights work by interdisciplinary artist Suldano Abdiruhman, a member of the artist collective BALTI GURLS and cofounder of 4c Gallery. 7-8:30 p.m. Aug. 23. The Walters Art Museum, 600 N. Charles St.

Film

High Fidelity / Empire Records Double Feature
When a beloved music shop in Baltimore turns 25, a nostalgic screening of two cults classics is in order. The Sound Garden was born in 1993, and shortly thereafter, the films Empire Records and High Fidelity were released—in 1995 and 2000, respectively—both set amid the backdrop of record stores. And if watching these back-to-back on the big screen weren’t nostalgic enough, please note they’ll be screened on 35mm. 7-11 p.m. Aug. 30. The SNF Parkway Theatre, 5 W. North Ave.

Theater

Variations on Sacrifice
Rapid Lemon Productions will present its annual Variations Project this summer with Variations on Sacrifice. Eleven 10-minute plays by local authors will premiere during two weeks, followed by a third week (new this year) of staged readings of eight additional plays. Audiences of 2017’s Variations on Magic voted to select this year’s theme, Sacrifice. Plays, Aug. 3-12; staged readings, Aug. 16-19. Baltimore Theatre Project, 45 W. Preston St.

Literary Arts

‘Sentiments’ by Press Press: Baltimore Book Launch
What could be better than a summertime potluck? A summertime potluck hosted by Press Press, with readings to satiate your palate. The launch of “Sentiments: Expressions of Cultural Passage,” the latest publication by Press Press, will feature readings about creating sanctuary, by Bilphena Yahwon, Rami Karim, and others, beginning at 5 p.m., plus a reading of “Manifesto for Sanctuary-Building & Sanctuary-Keeping.” Bring along a snack or something to grill at this community potluck of Baltimore creatives. 3-7 p.m. Aug. 11. Press Press, 427 N. Eutaw St.

Miscellanea

Comedy, Music and Poetry Showcase with Heda Rose and Guests
A lineup of Baltimore talent will take the Motor House stage for an evening of poetry, standup comedy, and music, headlined by vocalist, songwriter, actress, model, activist, and film producer Heda Rose. The remaining lineup includes comedian Larry Lancaster, comedian Ebony “Miz Jaxxxn” Jackson, comedian Ray Diva, and poet Gradalove. Heda will perform a comedy set and music set with a live band. 8-11 p.m. Aug. 31. The Motor House, 120 W. North Ave.

Fluid Movement’s ‘The Water Ballet’
The Baltimore-based performance art group Fluid Movement channels the master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock for its latest production, “The Water Ballet” at Patterson Park. Take a deep dive into all that horrifies you. Day and night shows, Aug. 3-5. Patterson Park.

Visual Art

Reflections: Intimate Portraits of Iconic African Americans
Photographer Terrence A. Reese’s career has led him to take portraits of such stars as Lauryn Hill and George Clinton. The artist, who goes by TAR, will exhibit a selection of his work at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum this month in the show Reflections: Intimate Portraits of Iconic African Americans. Black-and-white images will depict such luminaries as the Nicholas Brothers and Gordon Parks in their natural environments and living spaces so as to better reflect who they are, through their personal objects, style, and the context of their lives. Wednesdays through Sundays, Feb. 1 through Aug. 12, at Reginald F. Lewis Museum, 830 E. Pratt St.

Artist talk with Shirin Neshat
Iranian artist Shirin Neshat explores gender, identity, and politics in her work, as well as the differences in culture between the West and Muslim countries. Because she tackles such complex themes, there is no shortage of questions and discussion surrounding her work. It also makes her a perfect candidate for MICA’s Mixed Media lecture series, which brings to Baltimore artists from across the globe. For this installment, Neshat will be in conversation with Baltimore Museum of Art Director Christopher Bedford. 7 p.m. Feb. 15 at Falvey Hall, Brown Center, 1301 W. Mount  Mount Royal Ave.

Music

Charm City Django Jazz Fest
Nothing like some live gypsy jazz to add a little heat to a cold winter’s day. Creative Alliance has got us covered with not one but three days of its annual Charm City Django Jazz Fest, which will bring in acts from across the region and world, including headliner Samson Schmiit, a legendary Manouche gypsy guitarist from France. Swing on by to see Sara L’abriola, Ultrafaux, ‘Nuff Said, and others, to experience a range of styles within the genre. Feb. 23 to 25 at the Creative Alliance, 3134 Eastern Ave.

Out of Darkness: Two Remain
A new opera looks at what you might consider atypical Holocaust survivors: one, a political prisoner, and the other a homosexual Protestant, both of whom used words to overcome the traumas of captivity during the war. World-renowned composer Jake Heggie developed the two-act opera based on the true stories of these characters who “survive through their poetry,” says Garnett Bruce, stage director of the Peabody Chamber Opera’s production of the piece. Feb. 8 through 11 at Theatre Project, 45 W. Preston St. The composer and librettist will attend opening night, with a talk following the show.

Theater

Constellations & Crossroads
Constellations & Crossroads is a theatrical double-header steeped in American history and exploding with life. Baltimore Rock Opera Society partnered with Arena Players, Baltimore’s historic African-American community theater, to present two short musicals in their entirety, backed by a live band. The Determination of Azimuth tells the story of Katherine Johnson, a black mathematician who worked for NASA and was responsible for comp[uting paths for rocket ships sent into space. Battle of Blue Apple Crossing leans more on fiction to tell the tale of blues legend Robert Johnson, said to have sold his soul to the devil in exchange for musical ability. The score follows America’s musical heritage from field spirituals to rock ’n’ roll to garage rock. 8 p.m. Feb. 9 through 18 at Arena Players’ venue at 801 McCulloh St.

All She Must Possess
The Rep Stage premiere of All She Must Possess tells the story of Baltimore’s famed Cone sisters, Claribel and Etta, extravagant world travelers and collectors of art and curios. During the early 20th century, they stored thousands of paintings—including work by Matisse and Picasso, among other greats—in their homes, amassing what would become one of the world’s largest collections of modern art (a large portion would eventually be housed at the Baltimore Museum of Art, where it is today). In the theatrical version of their lives, written by University of Maryland Baltimore County professor Susan McCully and directed by Rep Stage artistic director Joseph W. Ritsch, paintings come to life and Gertrude Stein—Etta’s lover—makes an appearance. Coinciding with the play is an exhibition of historical women’s clothing from the Cone sisters’ time, on display at Howard Community College’s Rouse Company Foundation Gallery through March 11. The play runs Feb. 8 to 25 at Rep Stage at Howard Community College.

Dance

The Community Project
Each year, The Collective pulls together dancers from the community and pairs them with a professional choreographer to develop the Community Project performance. This year, 22 dancers—ranging in age from teens to baby boomers and across all skill levels—met on several cold January weekends to rehearse under dancer Caitlin McAfee for this year’s show, which is but one component to the Baltimore Dance Invitational. Set to Indian Wells’ song “Cascades,” the group will show through movement how the mind races, gets distracted, and follows its own trails of thought. Gordon Center for Performing Arts on Thursday, February 15, 2018 at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 15 at the Gordon Center for Performing Arts, 3506 Gwynnbrook Ave., Owings Mills. 

Beyonce vs Rihanna Dance Party: Round 2
The Ottobar event flier states it best: “Are you ‘Drunk In Love’ or ‘Drunk On Love’?!” At the Beyonce vs Rihanna Dance Party, that is precisely the question. And also, are you ready to duke it out—through dance, of course, to support your diva de jour. The dance party battle will light up with Beyonce tracks from DJ Mills and Rihanna tracks from Ottobar owner Craig Boarman. 9 p.m. Feb. 16 at the Ottobar, 2549 N. Howard St.

Miscellanea

African-American Arts Festival
The University of Baltimore helps us to celebrate Black History Month specifically through art at its annual African-American Arts Festival. Its offerings span an array of artistic mediums: film, visual art, music, theater. Some highlights: a panel with Black Ladies Brunch Crew of D.C., an African drumming circle, readings of Langston Hughes poetry spliced with live, improvised jazz piano, and a screening of Jonathan Demme’s film of Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved. Feb. 15 to 18 at the University of Baltimore, 1420 N. Charles St.

Exhibit of Original Costumes

We may be 2,500 miles from Hollywood, but John Klisavage brings us a touch of its wonder by way of costume. At his bookstore in Havre De Grace, he’s displaying several outfits worn in major motion pictures, including Hunger Games and The Notebook. February and March at Washington Street Books & Music, 131 N. Washington St., Havre De Grace.

A culinary documentary on Basque cuisine
Parkway Theater has teamed up with a local restaurant to bring a food and film pairing, naturally. After a screening of The Txoko Experience: The Secret Culinary Space of The Basques, scriptwriter Marcela Garces and director Yuri Morejon will answer any questions the audience has, and then . . . everyone can partake in the food portion of the evening: passed pintxos from the Basque-inspired La Cuchara restaurant. Renowned Basque chefs serve as narrators of the culinary documentary, which explores Txokos, groups of people who gather to explore innovative and experimental ways of cooking. As Morejon puts it, “Txokos represent a distinctive, albeit enigmatic element of Basque gastronomy. As the private temples of traditional Basque cuisine, they captivate people with their warmth, ambiance, and great respect for fresh products.” 7 p.m. Feb. 22 Parkway Theater, 5 W. North Ave.

Visual Art

Scott Pennington’s Two-Minute Joys
Scott Pennington’s art is nothing if not fun. He draws from his experience as a furniture maker to craft large-scale, interactive artwork. Through several light-based installations and wall pieces, his latest show, Two-Minute Joys, explores a tradition Pennington grew up with: the carnivals that make their rounds from town to town, bringing people together among their bright lights, rich colors, and the sweet scent of carnival food. It’s what the artist refers to as the “carnival aesthetic,” prevalent throughout his work. Indulge in a carnival trip of the mind at Maryland Art Place, courtesy of Pennington. Jan. 18 through March 10, MAP, 218 W. Saratoga St. Reception from 6 to 9 p.m. Jan. 18.

Curatorial tour of Beyond Flight: Birds in African Art
The Baltimore Museum of Art exhibit Beyond Flight: Birds in African Art shows the many uses of birds in sub-Saharan art. See the dramatic masks worn during rituals, herbalists’ staffs, and household objects embellished with bird imagery while meditating on how these winged creatures have piqued our curiosity over the centuries. As BMA associate curator of African art Kevin Tervala pointed out, birds make up less than one percent of living things and yet are used extensively throughout all artistic genres. Through June 10, BMA, 10 Art Museum Drive; curatorial tour from 2 to 3 p.m. Jan. 5.

Art talk with longtime MICA instructor James Hennessey
As a decades-long painting instructor at Maryland Institute College of Art, James Hennessey influenced the work of thousands of Baltimore artists. His retrospective exhibit at the Creative Alliance, Enduring Concerns, celebrates him with a survey of his paintings done over the years that he’s worked in the city. Through Jan. 13, with an artist talk at 7 p.m. Jan. 6, Creative Alliance, 3134 Eastern Ave.

Dance

King of What: Bboy/Bgirl Jam
Motor House will play host to breakers from across the U.S. and Canada during its five-hour King of What, which kicks off with a cypher that will allow hundreds of dancers to showcase their skills before a selected few move into one-on-one competition—i.e., before things get real. One lucky break-boy or -girl will be named the best and take home $1,000 (and someone else will win a $100 prize for having the flyest getup). And if five hours isn’t enough, there’s an after party. 5 to 10 p.m. Jan. 20 at Motor House, 120 W. North Ave.

Music

Hirsute live
The only thing better than an album listening party is an album performed live in its entirety. Amy Reid will provide us with this gift at the performance of her 2017 release Hirsute at the Motor House. She’ll be joined by a band to combine electronica, vocals, and live instrumentation. Plus, guest artists  Infinity Knives & Randi will perform, and Hanna Olivegren (of Zomes) and Noelle Tolbert will explore movement and sound. 9 p.m. Jan. 6 at the Motor House, 120 W. North Ave.

Off The Cuff: Impressionist Masterworks
For a tasty music and art pairing, try the January installment of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s Off the Cuff series, where the music of Debussy and Ravel will be performed alongside projected images of Impressionist art by Monet, Degas, Cézanne, and others, and you’ll learn how Impressionism influenced composers of the day. In collaboration with the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Impressionist Masterworks short-format concert includes commentary from BSO music director Marin Alsop and BMA senior curator of European painting and sculpture Katy Rothkopf, who will provide context to enrich the experience. An after party, Ravel on the Rocks, will extend the night with live gypsy jazz by Orchester Prazevica and food from Dooby’s. 7 p.m. Jan. 13, Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, 1212 Cathedral St.

Literary Arts

Red Emma’s Mother Earth Poetry Vibe
The gift of poetry is its ability to inspire us. With that idea in mind, Red Emma’s Mother Earth Poetry Vibe is an open mic that focuses on work that engages conscious thought, spirituality, justice, equality, and, in short, raises the vibration of our collective consciousness. All are welcome to share, while Philadelphia-based lyricist, author, educator, and voiceover artist Lyrispect will be the featured guest of the evening. 6:30 to 9 p.m. Feb. 3 at Red Emma’s Bookstore Coffeehouse, 30 W. North Ave.

Miscellanea

Edgar Allan Poe: Evermore
Raise your glass for a toast to the macabre poet Baltimore claims as its own, Edgar Allan Poe, who would have been 209 on Jan. 19, had he not died of . . . well, either alcohol, brain congestion, cholera, drugs, heart disease, rabies, tuberculosis, or suicide (don’t worry, folks, you’ll just be drinking nonalcoholic apple cider, courtesy of Poe Baltimore). 6 to 6:30 p.m. Jan. 19 at Westminster Hall and Burying Ground, 519 W. Fayette St.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Parade
“We’ve got some difficult days ahead,” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said to a crowd in Memphis, Tennessee, less than 24 hours before he was assassinated. “But it really doesn’t matter with me now because I’ve been to the mountaintop. . . . I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.” Baltimore will celebrate the legendary Civil Rights activist on his birthday with a parade down Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Noon to 2 p.m. Jan. 15.

Moonifestations of Ancestor Earth closing
What do you get when you combine meditation with January’s waxing moon? One guess is Moonifestations. Xander Dumas and Elliot Moonstone, better known as The Dandy Vagabonds, will close out their fiber-art installation Moonifestations of Ancestor Earth: a voyage of expansion at the Bromo Seltzer Arts Tower with a guided meditation. Through the use of astrology and gemstones, they’ll help the group to “moonifest” individual and collective intentions. Come dressed in the likeness of your favorite element, stone, or planet, and bring a journal. Noon to 2 p.m. Jan. 27, Bromo Seltzer Arts Tower Galleries, 21 S. Eutaw St.

News

Resort, a new contemporary art gallery
Resort, a new gallery in Baltimore exhibiting contemporary art, will hold its inaugural show this month. A Big Toe Touches a Green Tomato will showcase the work of former artistic director of The Contemporary Ginevra Shay and Philadelphia-based artist and self-described “plant person” Roxana Azar. Jan. 20 through March 3; opening reception from 5 to 8 p.m. Jan. 20, Resort, 235 Park Ave.

Behind the Moon

Madison Smartt Bell (City Lights Books) 

From the start of this novel, Madison Smartt Bell magically plays with your perception of reality. He weaves together narratives that read at times like honest declarations of facts and, at others, like hallucinations, challenging you to decide for yourself what you believe to be the truth. The central story involves Julie, a teenager who has skipped school and set off on a camping trip in the Badlands with her best friend and a group of boys. While fending off a drug-fueled assault, she falls down the shaft of an enormous cave, and as she hovers between life and death, she has encounters with the spirit world. At the same time, Marissa, Julie’s mother who placed her for adoption years before, feels mystically called to be at her daughter’s side, to help her back to consciousness. Bell—who co-founded the creative writing program at Goucher College, and is best known for his trilogy of novels based on the life of the Haitian revolutionary Toussaint Louverture—has an engrossing, seductive style that keeps you urgently turning the pages. When you’re finished reading, it feels like you’re waking from a dream.

See the full interview with writer Madison Smartt Bell.

Not Without
Our Laughter

Black Ladies Brunch Collective, edited by Celeste Doaks (Mason Jar Press) 

For three years, a group of black female poets has been meeting monthly over brunch to talk writing and life. Now, we get to see what those literary conversations have inspired. These six belletrists run the gamut of poetic style, which they unite by organizing their works into distinct categories. They ruminate on body politics, aging (“I have snored so loud I made friends weep for my next breath,” confesses Saida Agostini), misbehavior, music, food, and, of course, men (“He is hot fudge topping / dripping over shiny silver piping / of the Harley,” writes Celeste Doaks). There are more serious words, too, like in “#NotYourModelSurvivor” by Tafisha Edwards: “This morning I drank wine for breakfast / So / what I’m saying is / I have no encouraging words / to give you.” What makes the collection shine is the writers’ honesty as they enlighten the reader to the black female experience. Through their words, the reader gets the sense that they, too, are sitting and listening in at the brunch table. 

Mecca Verdell stands in the doorway, wearing a long black dress, her bare toes gripping the red patterned carpet. Her brain whirs as she desperately tries to order the words that are buzzing through her head. “This is it,” she tells herself. “This is my chance.” She gazes unflinchingly at the crowd that’s sitting on chairs in the city council chambers at Baltimore’s City Hall. The storied building, with its ornate trim and marble accents, lends extra gravitas to what is about to occur. This is a colossal moment in Verdell’s young life—if she were named the city’s third youth poet laureate, she would become a voice that speaks for Baltimore, and perhaps most importantly, have a personal platform on which to be heard.  

But first, she has to perform two of her poems and impress 10 judges enough that they will give her a higher rating than 11 of her peers—most of whom she knows well enough to swap writing advice with. Her eyes scan the crowd to find her friends and her teammates and coaches from the poetry team at Western High School, her alma mater. Still, she remains focused. “You look like you’re about to cast a spell,” one friend whispers as she squeezes Verdell’s hand. “You’re beautiful—you’re amazing.”

“We have one poet left in the first round,” the emcee says. “Show some love for Mecca!” 

Verdell steps to the microphone. The silence hangs heavy in the air. Then, she opens her mouth to speak.

This time last year, a group of Baltimore poets stood on a similar precipice as Verdell. But their stage was much larger—it was the National Poetry Slam in Atlanta, where hundreds of North American poets competed in teams for the championship title. And Baltimore’s five-person team surprised everyone, winning the title for the first time ever. 

“We were the underdog,” says Lady Brion, a member of the team. “No one knew much about Baltimore—before 2014, we hadn’t been to the national poetry slam in 10 years—and we had a style no one was ready for. We have a gritty, in-your-face kind of poetry. We aren’t afraid to touch issues that people skirt around, like racism, police brutality, human rights, or the lack thereof. It was a shock to some, who were like, ‘Wow, you just said that.’”

As if that weren’t enough, Baltimore made an even bigger impression when the five young poets who made up the city’s youth team won their own international championship, a competition called Brave New Voices—the first time in anyone’s memory that both the adult and youth teams from the same city won these titles in the same year. 

“Baltimore made a splash,” says Porsha Olayiwola, a Boston-based poet who won the 2014 Individual World Poetry Slam and coaches Massachusetts’s youth team. “Everything we hear about Baltimore is Freddie Gray, the riots, and the protests, so it’s good to see a different kind of fire. It’s probably fueled by the same injustice, but it comes out in poetry, which forces the national community to look.”

On the national poetry circuit, there’s a notion that teams are a microcosm of the cities they represent. That is particularly true of Baltimore, says adult team member Victor Rodgers, better known as his poetry persona Slangston Hughes. “Walk through Baltimore, and the substance and soul is anything but lacking. People said that we are a living manifestation of the city, and I would call it very unapologetically black, very truth-based, very in-your-face, and not sugar-coated at all.”

Take, for instance, the poem performed at the national championship by poets Kenneth Morrison and Black Chakra, called “F&*! Robert Frost,” which decries white supremacy in the literary world. One line that drew enthusiastic applause is, “White privilege be like, ‘Write a poem about trees, but never reference the black bodies that hung from them.’” 

The team’s personification of Baltimore is recognized nationally, says Olayiwola, who called the city a poetry “mecca.” “I think a lot of what defines Baltimore is raw emotion and heart,” she says. “It’s not something you can express in words, but that’s what makes it most compelling.”

The poets returned home from the national slam to much fanfare. A buzz of excitement persisted at readings, open mics, and slams (essentially high-energy poetry competitions), particularly when one of the members brought along the championship trophy—a sword piercing a pile of books. But as spring rolled around, and a new fold of poets prepared for competitions that would determine the adult and youth teams and recognize the city’s youth poet laureate, a question persisted—could Baltimore take the crowns again this year?

It’s a beautiful April day—the sun is beaming, a slight breeze ruffles the trees, and car stereos provide a background beat to the residents strolling down North Avenue.

Verdell is immune to all of this. She sits at the Ynot Lot, a gathering place at the corner of North Avenue and Charles Street that today has become her writing space—today, she is working on becoming MeccaMorphosis, her poetry persona. Her laptop is open, but her eyes are closed. It’s one week until the youth poet laureate competition, and the Community College of Baltimore County student has started a new poem, one that she hopes will encapsulate social outrage, racial disparity, and her world view into one perfect piece of poetic commentary. In the past, she wrote about love and relationships, but now she also likes to write about political issues that anger her. Her chosen subject is the outrage over disappearances of black girls. 

The poem was born on scraps of notebook paper, which Verdell scrounges for in her purse when an idea comes to her. As it takes shape on her computer, what she’s jotted down on those scraps become lines and snatches of verse. She pauses to read the beginning aloud. “If a penny saved were a black girl returned / would it be easier for you to pay attention? / To our gaps in evidence and aggravation / so black lives don’t hold precedence / unless it involves dead presidents.”

Sometimes, it strikes Verdell as crazy that she’s only been writing poetry for two years. “In every group, I feel like there’s always that one person that came out the blue. And that person was me,” she says. A friend took Verdell to Western High School’s poetry team practice when she was a senior, and the bug bit her hard. She helped the team reach second place in the city’s high school poetry competition and was part of the team that won the 2016 Brave New Voices competition. For her, the youth poet laureate title would be the peacock plume in her cap covered in feathers. It would give her a platform to help young, black artists like her—“that’s something I really want really badly,” she says. The disappointment of her fourth-place finish last year sticks with her still, moreover, now that she’s 19, this is her last year to compete.

Verdell is stuck on her ending. She taps a green painted fingernail filed to a point on her computer keys, her lips moving soundlessly. She can’t stop thinking about what will happen when she faces City Hall. 

In the beginning there were just poets. These versifiers emulated the style of Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, and others in the Black Arts Movement, and birthed a vibrant scene during the late 1990s with readings and open mic nights throughout the city. Eventually, they started competitions called slams, where poets deliver impassioned, visceral versions of their poems, with the emotion mattering almost as much as the verse. The poets need to impress not just the crowd, but a panel of judges, who declare a slam champion.

 Slangston Hughes arrived in Baltimore from Pittsburgh to attend Coppin State University in the early 2000s and found himself exposed to an art form that recalled the hip-hop rhymes he spit. “I thought, this is what I do when there’s no beat,” Hughes recalls. “There was so much going on, and I was caught up in it. At times, I was like, man, I got to get financial aid so I can come back next semester and go to all these open mics!”

Back then, there was an organization that had started a citywide youth poetry team, coached by poets like Hughes. There was also an adult team that traveled to national tournaments, opening up the scene to poetry from across the country.

Then, as sometimes happens with the passing of time, the energy faded and the stars of the scene moved on to other things. But a few years later, just as organically as it had begun, slam poetry popped up once again. In 2009, HBO premiered the series Brave New Voices, which covered an international youth poetry competition in Washington, D.C., and that got the attention of poetry instructor Kenneth Morrison. 

Morrison has been hooked on poetry since he performed a poem as an eigth grader in Baltimore and got a standing ovation—“the first time that I can recall that my community acknowledged that I did something great,” he says. After watching Brave New Voices, he became frustrated that Baltimore wasn’t part of the national scene. “Teams were participating from Richmond, D.C., P.G. County,” he says. “I was teaching creative writing at a high school, and I decided I was going to start a youth poetry program, to make sure our students had an opportunity to participate.” He joined forces with the more established poet Olu Butterfly Woods, and he eventually founded DewMore Baltimore, an organization that, among its many programs, runs the citywide youth slam championship called Louder Than a Bomb, and the youth poet laureate competition.

For his part, Hughes started a monthly competition, Slammageddon, in 2012 and it has moved from art galleries and spaces like Station North’s Impact Hub. “A lot of our students from last five years have become the scene,” Hughes says. “It’s interesting to see that, wow, they’re picking up the torch themselves.” One of the students he’s speaking of is Grim Jackson, who was on both the adult and youth slam champion teams. Another such student is Mecca Verdell.

The day before the youth poet laureate competition, Verdell has gathered a few friends to serve as an emotional backbone in the basement Mount Vernon coffee shop NuBohemia. In this spot, where she holds open mics for young poets, she has set her sights on memorization. Nervousness has set in.    She recites her new poem, now called “Penny Dreadfuls,” letting her body move to the rhythm of her voice. When she masters the first stanza, she’s onto the second. “These pretty pennies getting lost, in couches in mattresses / In the streets of D.C. in / Baltimore in Nigeria, 60 years ago 200 years / ago, and 1000 more years to come.” She trips up a few lines later. “Blah,” she says, then starts over. 

Verdell is worried she’ll speed through the verses, and knows she has to slow down to emphasize certain ideas—such as her point that black girls have been forgotten throughout history. She also thinks about the mood she’ll set, her stage presence, and the emotion she has to display—along with how far to push herself. “Poets have super powers, and some of them can really trigger emotion,” she says. She knows this firsthand as she has found herself tearful and shaking after delivering a particularly raw verse.

Most importantly, Verdell doesn’t want to forget a line. “If I do lose tomorrow, I just don’t want to say it was because I messed up,” she says. “But if I do lose and I still did my best, I’ll be fine.” She stops, and a slight smile plays on her lips. “Kind of,” she adds. 

It was probably a given that competing at the national level and winning championships would change Baltimore’s poets. Lady Brion used to refer to the Baltimore poetry scene as “burgeoning,” but, she says, “I think it might be past that now. It’s at a pivotal moment, and slams and open mics are popping up all over the city. But there’s still such a small sect of people who are connected, and I wish that it was more well-known in Baltimore.”

After years of watching the poetry movement’s ebb and flow, Slangston Hughes sees the pros and cons of Baltimore’s scene. “In places like Los Angeles and New York, there’s an infrastructure that can be plugged into. In Baltimore, there’s no such thing,” he says. “In some regard, when you don’t have industries trying to modify and commercialize your art, it’s a good thing because you can make it what you want it to be. But on the flip side, there’s a lack of resources, and exposure isn’t easy to come by. You really have to push the cart and the horse on your own.”

Lady Brion is hoping to bring more attention to the scene. She put in a bid for Baltimore to host a national, all-women’s slam in 2020. Kenneth Morrison wants DewMore Baltimore to continue to breed new generations of poets and poetry lovers who will support the scene. “Our young people deserve an audience and they deserve to be surrounded by excellence,” Morrison says. “And our students are after us. They plot and scheme to take our crowns. And we give them everything they have because one day, we know our mentees will replace us.”

But what has perhaps been the most surprising is how Baltimore has influenced poets nationally. The team’s brazen style went from being unorthodox to standard, and the 2017 team is figuring out how that will affect them at the National Poetry Slam this month. “We changed the criteria for what is cutting edge and envelope-pushing,” says Slangston Hughes. “Now, it’s like the floodgates have been opened and people are more free to talk about racism and not offend someone.”

 “Some of the work blows me away, and I’m glad to see that,” says Morrison. But at the same time, he notes, “we have to turn up our volume. It doesn’t mean get more aggressive—it’s kind of the opposite. We have to figure out what’s the next level, what separates us.”

No one knows how this year’s competition will go. Hughes is sticking to what he knows. “Maybe the content will be more relevant to what’s happening now, but the spirit and energy will be the same,” he says. “You never know what will happen at a slam.”

A lottery determines that Mecca Verdell will be the last to perform at the youth poetry laureate competition. This is a curse because she has to battle her nerves while watching her peers perform, and a blessing because hers will be the last voice the judges hear. 

Though the competition started with 12 poets, the judges trimmed the group to nine after the first round. Verdell went last then, too, performing a poem about infidelity’s affect on her childhood. When she finished, people ran up to congratulate her—friends and fellow poets gave her hugs, and one of her high school teachers kissed her cheek.

In round two, Verdell is conscious of the competition. Though stage fright hit a few poets, most of them deliver verses in strong, direct tones. Their poems are both timely and personal—dismantling capitalism, facing hunger, and battling depression. The day before, Verdell was prepared to perform the new poem, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she should stick to what she knew best. At the last minute, she switches to one she’s more confident in that’s less political, but packs a more personal punch. 

“When my grandma died,” she begins, “my uncle stopped smoking the grass she was buried beneath / and became a scientist.” From there unfolds a poem about the complicated world of addiction and family, her voice a near scream at some points and breathless at others. It’s clear that she’s giving this everything she has. She’s met by thunderous applause, and then takes her spot at the front of the room with the other young poets. The emcee reads the results.

Verdell hears her name—but too early. She has come in second.

She’s the epitome of graciousness though, hiding her disappointment, rushing up to the winner, Mohamed Tall, who tearfully tells the crowd what the honor means, especially given that his mother was recently diagnosed with cancer. “I got second place!” she posts later on social media. “That’s an honor because there was some crazy dope poets in this slam.”

Verdell sets her sights on what is to come. She graduated from Baltimore’s youth team to join the adult team—and her heroes Morrison, Hughes, and Lady Brion—for a regional tournament in Louisville, Kentucky, in June. They emerged the champions. She also runs an internet radio show, SoapBox Poetry, and she’s been working what is now called “Pennies for the Thoughtless,” keeping it on hand for perhaps another performance. Next year, she’ll be waiting in the wings to go to her Super Bowl, as she calls the National Poetry Slam. She feels privileged to be a part of the pipeline laid down by her  mentors.

“Kenneth [Morrison] told me he was proud because I didn’t follow anybody else’s straight path to what poetry means,” Verdell says. Like the city whose story she is honored to tell, “I made my own lane.”

Andrew Motion’s lauded career precedes him. From 1999 to 2009, he was poet laureate of the United Kingdom, he won the coveted Ted Hughes Award in 2015, and was knighted for his contributions to poetry. But Motion left his home country two years ago to take a teaching position at The Johns Hopkins University, and now has released a new collection of poems, Coming In To Land, that spans his four-decade career. He joined us to talk about how he’s settling in, how Baltimore has affected his writing, and why salt-sprinkling lorries just appeared in a new poem.

You’ve lived here for two years now. How are you settling in to life in Baltimore?
I came here quite determinedly wanting to use the opportunity to write. It gives me a way to think about things in a more developed way than I did back in England, where I was much busier with other things. And if I were to live in New York, I think I would find it more difficult to get work done because there’s more going on, there are more distractions. So it suits me quite well to live a quieter life. I’m surprised by how pleased I am to be able to walk in a more or less straight line down the pavement. You can’t do that in New York because you’re constantly weaving in and out of other people, and that’s sort of true in London as well. It’s the right time to live more quietly and get more done.

What are your impressions of Johns Hopkins and the Writing Seminars?
The main thing is that I have very, very, very nice colleagues. I might say that, mightn’t I, but I really mean it. And I’ve worked in quite a lot of universities in my time, and I’ve never been in a department that’s as harmonious as this one. They’re usually a rat’s nest, but this one really isn’t. We all like each other, respect each other, and work well together. My students are very nice and clever and, as a whole, quite committed.

They haven’t read much, and I say this not dismissively of them at all—in fact I say this as sympathetically as I can. Because if they’re interested in reading, then, poor lambs, they ought to have been given the chance. I do feel critical of the system they came through that allowed them to read as little as they have. Which means that I sometimes find it quite difficult to know how to pitch what I’m saying. If it means that I can’t trust that everybody in the room has read “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” then that makes life more difficult than I’m used to it being. But what I can assume is if I tell them to go read it, they will, and they will say interesting things about it.

This is the first time you’ve taught poetry in the United States. How does your students’ work here differ from your students’ writing in the U.K.?
Their poems are not unlike the poems I’m used to seeing by my students back in the U.K., with the very interesting difference that American poetry in general is much more involved in identity politics as a sort of default setting than U.K. poetry is. And of course, it’s always interesting who someone thinks they are, but simply stating it isn’t enough. I spend a lot of time trying to get them to create a symbolic or metaphorical alternative, or a narrative at least that is not purely one that goes, “I did, I did, I did.” Because although that can be interesting, that can also be a bit narrow, I think, too finger wagging as well, too expository, not imaginatively seized enough. Not just to allow themselves to see what they are as part of a larger picture, but also to make it more like imaginative literature and less like true confessions.

Why do you think that is?
I think it has a lot to do with the race story here and the lack of harmonious integration between two or three major ethnic blocks. Which makes this a sad story fundamentally—people have to keep saying, “I’m this kind of person, and I matter. Think about my story.” There is a value in announcing yourself in that kind of way. But I’m a very dyed-in-the-wool Keatsian about these kinds of things, and this remark that Keats makes in one of his letters states, “We hate poetry that has a palpable design on us because it makes us put our minds in our books and walk away.” That’s something I’ve always believed very firmly. Of course, we need to announce our presence, but we need to do it in a way that it doesn’t make the reader feel as if they’re being read a lecture.

Do you have examples of American poets that you feel excel at that type of work?
I think the people who are doing it well find an interesting solution to this. Claudia Rankine, for instance, is an extremely interesting writer. I knew her before I came to the U.S. because she made a big splash [in the U.K.] as well. I’ve been reading her work quite closely and I find it extremely fascinating. Because she takes individual cases and her own individual case and connects it in very complicated ways to other things, and because she’s very good at saying what she means. Her thinking is sensuous, and that’s the kind of poetry that I like best.

How has being in Baltimore affected your work?
Two things happened when I got here. One is that I found myself writing a lot of things about my early days, about childhood and my parents. I’ve just finished writing a long poem about my brother, whom I’ve never written about before. It’s as though a plant of myself has been torn out of the ground and its roots are scrambling around, trying to grab on to something, and what they’re grabbing on to is past stuff.

It’s interesting that it took you coming here to do that.
It is. I’ve written a bit about childhood, but it’s gotten much more intense since I’ve come here. Now it’s about where do I come from? Who am I? And of course, I’m also focused on the here and now. But I think almost in principal I found that it would be presumptuous to think, “Right, I’m a poet and I’m going to write about Baltimore and I’m really going to tell what it’s like.” [Laughs] So I was a bit shy about it. It’s taken me a year or so to write about it in a direct way. I’ve just finished writing something about looking at things in Baltimore, it’s called “Surveillance.” It starts with a helicopter hovering over, looking at us. I thought how strange it must look to them, the light connecting the parts of the city. So it begins and ends with the helicopter and dots around places in the city.

How do you see your work evolving while you are here?
I expect I will write more about Baltimore in a recognizable way, but I don’t expect that I will make a fetish of it. Partly because I still feel that there would be some presumption in that, but also because I’ve never really wanted to write poems that were so precisely anchored in one place that they couldn’t be moved to another. I’m sure my next book of short poems will be full of references to Baltimore and Maryland. This morning, I wrote a poem thinking about the salt-sprinkling lorries. It’s set here, but what interested me is thinking about where the salt comes from, and it actually comes from under the Great Lakes. Four hundred million years ago, North America was about where Uganda is now, so the salt under the Great Lakes was laid down where Africa now is. And the idea of that salt being sprinkled on the streets of Baltimore, that’s an interesting thought. I feel a bit uncanny here. I feel very committed to the city and very committed to my teaching. There are people here with whom I’ve become very good friends and I feel loyal and invested. But I also feel a bit spectral. It’s not my place, it’s not my country, and there are millions of things I don’t understand. Like every writer, but perhaps like every transplanted writer, I feel at a sharp angle to everything.

This is such an interesting time in our country’s history for you to be here.
I thought Brexit was bad enough. Brexit is very bad, I think Brexit is actually worse because it’s forever and passionately keen to remain. I think it says something very vile about the majority of people in Britain, or in England, that they want to turn their back on the rest of Europe in this way. And as for the presidential election here, I think both it and Brexit are motivated by fear of the “other” and poor education. To think things are acceptable that have apparently been made acceptable by the election of Trump is only possible with people whose education has not been sufficiently developed. They are victims in that way.

The good news about Baltimore and its problems is that it knows it has got them. A lot of the difficult and/or repellant stuff in the U.K. it was in denial about it. Here, the city does know that there’s a problem, and only when you admit it can you then start to do something about it. And the good news about Trump is that in the worst case, provided that the world is still turning, he’s only president for eight years. American politics seems to vary precisely between one opposite to another opposite, so we might elect someone really cool next time.

Why did you decide to come out with this collection now?
To put it bluntly, I thought I’d ideally come to America and get a good publisher, and what should come first is a collection of poems. And that’s what happened, so I’m very pleased about it. I’m hoping what my British publisher publishes will be available in the U.S. as well. I’ve just given them a short something.

Sounds like you’ve been fairly prolific.
In England I used to get up and fight for time to write, which was hard to do because I’d committed myself to many different things. And when I was laureate there, especially, that seemed to me like the job—to do lots of talking and reading. And if it was the one morning a week when I got to write poems and didn’t work, I knew it would be a long time before I had another morning. Now, I have five mornings a week when I’m just writing, and if I have a bad day, it doesn’t matter because there’s tomorrow. That’s not only good for me in a practical way, but I think that’s allowed me to relax a bit and take some risks. And if my experiment doesn’t work, then what the hell, there’s always tomorrow. I’m very pleased about that, and I have written more than I expected.

This is the first year of my life when I can afford just to write poems. So God bless America.

Pill City

By Kevin Deutsch (St. Martin’s Press)

The narcotics trade has been a decades-long scourge on Baltimore’s streets, with overdose deaths and turf wars maintaining a continual presence. But, as Kevin Deutsch details, the epidemic reached new levels following the violence that erupted after the death of Freddie Gray, when two honor-roll teenagers from West Baltimore—in conjunction with a local gang—looted more than a million narcotic pills from pharmacies. Instead of selling on street corners, they built an Uber-like system, using location-based technology and encryption software to distribute along the East Coast. As the teens created scores of new addicts and left law enforcement scrambling, Deutsch—a veteran Newsday crime reporter—got to know the pair. His information is based on 300 interviews with the likes of gang members, social workers, and law enforcement officials, and, since some characters are still at large, he’s changed names and altered locations. It will be interesting to see Baltimore’s reaction to this deep dive into our drug culture, but his book is a reminder of just how serious, and often ignored, this problem is—and how tragic that bright, young people are caught in its web.

Chaos Theories

By Elizabeth Hazen (Alan Squire Publishing)

In her debut collection of poetry, Elizabeth Hazen takes us on a journey through life’s baffling, frustrating, unexplainable moments. As she searches for an understanding of how our best-laid plans can go astray and life can spiral out of control, she turns to scientific theories as a basis for dialogue and explanation. As she writes in “Final Theory,” “Scientists claim universal symmetry,/say a ‘theory of everything’ exists,/order, in spite of evidence, persists:/ . . . Prayer has symmetry, and funeral processions,/blood spatter, scattered ashes, a child’s weeping/ . . . his infinite silence, my unanswered questions.” Hazen—a graduate of The Writing Seminars at The Johns Hopkins University, whose work appeared in the anthology Best American Poetry 2013—has a way of uncovering universal feelings that resonate, even if we haven’t experienced her particular grief or confusion. Each dark, explorative verse seems to prove that science does not always provide consolation, and in the end, sometimes the beauty in life lies in the unknowing.

How was it, being inducted by Michelle Obama?
It was surreal. I still haven’t entirely processed it yet. Being in the White House was like a walking dream. Everything seems strangely familiar from TV but also so exciting and surreal. I highly doubt anything in my life will be as nerve-wracking and cool as reading a poem there. Were were also lucky enough to have a conversation about writing with Michelle Obama’s speechwriters and that was very fun. Michelle Obama is so nice and wonderful. Knowing that the First Lady is passionate about poetry and this program is so rewarding as a writer.

What do your future plans look like?
This is really long-term, but I’ve always wanted to be an English teacher. I love seeing people get excited in English class. I’ve been lucky enough to have good English teachers in high school—pretty great ones—and just seeing my classmates come to life discussing old and new works of literature makes me so happy.

Would you ever consider being a poet as a career?
I’m always going to want to write poetry—I’m always going to find downtime to write, just because I feel nervous when I don’t. I have so many things to say. So I’ll always write, but teaching is really what I think I want to do with my future.

Has living in Maryland inspired or influenced any of your writing?
I’ve written some Baltimore-based poems. I’m really inspired by John Waters and Divine and that whole counterculture of Baltimore. This city has a unique spirit and lots of poetic potential. There are small groups working hard to create poetry communities, but I don’t see any poetry readings comparable to what you could find in D.C., for example. While I don’t have any set ideas in mind just yet, I know I would love to work with Baltimore residents in creating a poetry workshop or something of the sort.

Do you have any advice for young poets or writers?
Yes. Make friends with English teachers. Make friends with teachers that love words. I promise they’ll be great guides and inspirations for you. Also, keep yourself open to wonder and amazement. Don’t close yourself off to what’s going on around you. Sometimes I like to just sit and observe. When I’m waiting for the bus, I’ll just look at the way the light is hitting a building.

And this is another piece of advice: Carry an notebook so you can write down all the little things that come to you in the day, because I think being a poet means being receptive to the world around you and knowing how to translate that into words. Be receptive to the world around you.

Believe Me

Officer, I’m begging you to believe

That never ever have I smoked weed

And please do not tell me that I have to leave

I need to stay in school and continue to read

Picture if you were me

Where everyone believes that you have a baby

By the time you reach the age of a teen

And the only question they ask is if you crip or bleed

But what if that’s not the case

Up my sleeve, I think I have an ace

That can answer the problems that all people face

No matter the skin color, no matter the race

It doesn’t involve mixing baking soda

Or shooting a brother just cause somebody told ya

Or shooting a ball because that’s how they coached ya

Or rapping like Chief Keef, King Sosa.

It’s called education

No matter what you do that should be the foundation
You won’t need a welfare donation

You can live your life and even vacation

I now see some police

Some start riots instead of keeping the peace

That’s the difference between them and me

I see a few bad apples not a whole tree

Some will cause my parents grief

By killing me, by killing me

Like Eric Garner

I cannot breath

But I promise I will garner my responsibilities

I want to succeed

No, I have to succeed

My life will not end at 23

I will beat that expectancy

And have children to carry my legacy
But, Officer, it’s not my weed.

Officer it’s not my weed.

Derick Ebert dreamed of being many things, like an athlete at Baltimore City College, maybe a football or basketball star, rushing for 100 yards or hitting a winning three-pointer at the buzzer.

He wound up on the debate team.

“It was probably the best thing that could have happened to me,” says Ebert, who became the city’s first Youth Poet Laureate last year. “Being on the debate team was about becoming fearless and getting up in front of a crowd of people, my peers.”

The 20-year-old Ebert, now an English major at the University of Baltimore, is taking a break in the UB Student Center between exams. Sitting in an upstairs lounge overlooking Mount Royal Avenue, he wears a gray sweater with blue Beats headphones draped around his neck and exudes a casual self-assurance that’s compelling. He speaks with a balance of passion and poise, though his widening eyes and gesturing hands often tip the scale in the direction of the former. It doesn’t take long to glean that he’s as much a performer as he is a poet.

Over the course of one year, Ebert performed at The John Hopkins and Towson universities, the Baltimore Book Festival, and Teach for America’s inaugural gala at the American Visionary Art Museum. He visited the White House for discussions about the school-to-prison pipeline and was summoned to City Hall during the Freddie Gray unrest to talk about youth-related issues with Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake. American Short Fiction and the Poetry Society of America featured his poems online, his photo appeared on the front page of The Sun, and his debut book, Black Boy Archaeologist, was published last month.

Ebert impressed Kenneth Morrison, director of Dew More, the community-based arts group behind the Youth Poet Laureate initiative, which, according to the group’s website, “[gives] young people the opportunity to express themselves creatively and have a political impact on our city.”

“Baltimore,” says Morrison, “could not have had a better young person than Derick as its first ever Youth Poet Laureate.”

It certainly has been a whirlwind for him. “Two years ago, I never imagined any of this could happen to me,” says Ebert, with a look of mild disbelief. “I’m definitely not the same person I was back in high school, before all this started. And it’s all because of poetry.”

Asked if he has always liked poetry, Ebert shakes his head. “No, I’ve always liked attention,” he says, smiling. “Poetry came out of nowhere.”

Ebert grew up in Northeast Baltimore and can tick off a list of his old neighborhoods that would make a 3rd District councilman smile proudly: “north of Montebello,” “Woodlea,” “closer to Hamilton,” and “around the Moravia area.”

He has an older brother, Michael, and an identical twin, Trevor, who attends UB as a public policy major. Derick and Trevor are first-generation college students.

He’s as much a performer as he is a poet.

They are the product of a mixed-race marriage. Ebert’s mother, an educator at Moravia Park Elementary, is black; his father, a driver for UPS, is white. Ebert thinks his parents’ relationship is extraordinary, especially considering that his mom was one of two black students at her middle school, where she was called racial slurs, and got chased home after school. “Chased and harassed by white people,” notes Ebert, “and she ended up marrying my father. It’s amazing she didn’t have some sort of trauma that would prevent her from marrying a white man.”

He finds it surprising that his parents rarely talk about race. “If something happens to come up, we might talk about it,” he says, “but race is never at the forefront. I’ve always wondered what other family members thought about their relationship. Did they support it? I love my dad, aunts, uncles, and cousins, and they love me, but there’s a distance that’s created by the things we don’t talk about.”

But race was definitely an issue outside his household. Because he is light-skinned, Ebert experienced a great deal of colorism within his own community. A middle school teacher, for instance, chided him for self-identifying as African-American on standardized test forms, saying, “You’re not black. You are white.”

Another teacher called him to the front to demonstrate the “brown paper bag test,” which has historically been used to evaluate skin tone with an eye toward denying privileges to darker-skinned people. In Ebert’s case, the teacher held the bag up to his face and declared, “See class, Derick is lighter than a brown paper bag, so he could pass for being white.”

The demonstration distanced Ebert from his fellow sixth-graders, who labeled him “white” despite his claims to the contrary. They also chastised him for “talking white,” which, he says, grew out of being educated and watching Cartoon Network. “Ever since I can remember, it was about race for me,” he says.

At City, Ebert found teachers that nudged him toward a deeper sense of self, teachers he later celebrated in his poem, “Pieces.” In it, he likened Sedrick Smith, a history teacher, to “an instruction manual from Ikea/he could never make things easy” and recalled him urging students to see the world and return as teachers. He praised Mark Miazga, an English instructor, for introducing him to the work of James Baldwin, and Patrick Daniels, the debate coach, for being his “brick wall” and counseling him to “not flinch when things fall apart.”

He compared Tameka Taylor, another English teacher, to “a wrecking ball,” because she “knocked down borders for children.” She spoke frankly with her students and laid out the challenges ahead: “People like you don’t often make it out of the city,” she told Ebert, “and that’s why it’s especially important to pursue education. You can do anything you want, but there’s a lot of distance between where you are and where you dream of going.” Ebert appreciated her candor. “It was like the kitchen table talk that your mom, your uncle, or anyone who really cared about you would have,” he says.

Taylor remembers her former student as being reserved, even a little timid, as a freshman. “I had the opportunity to watch Derick blossom,” she says. “His personality and confidence seemed to emerge when he found his stride with the debate team.”

Still, she never pegged him as a poet. Ebert’s father didn’t envision him as a poet, either, and encouraged him to study history, or maybe work as an archaeologist (hence the poem of the same name and title of his book).

But like many scribes before him, Ebert found poetry after having his heart broken.

Ebert was in a long-term relationship when he started at UB. During freshman year, he and his girlfriend split up, leaving him “shattered and lost.” That is, until a teacher, once again, showed a way forward.

“Derick ensured his platform included conversations not captured on CNN.”

His writing professor, Anthony Moll, was fond of playing spoken word and poetry slam videos at the beginning of class, and they caught Ebert’s ear, and eye. In the age of Def Poetry and YouTube, popular poets are akin to hip-hop stars and have the page views and Twitter followings to prove it. Ebert was immediately taken with Rudy Francisco’s love poems, wordplay, and circuitous route to “a-ha” moments. The first time he watched Javon Johnson perform “cuz he’s black,” where the poet looks at police brutality through the eyes of his 4-year-old nephew, Ebert cried. He watched it a second time, connected profoundly with the storytelling, cried again, and thought, “I would like to try that.”

So he did, shutting himself in his bedroom to write poems between homework assignments and PlayStation sessions. Like many of his peers in contemporary poetry, Ebert envisioned himself “spitting” poems, not publishing them. His early performances, often documented on video, coupled the debate skills he gleaned at City with his experiences as a young black male coming to terms with race, masculinity, and expectations for the future. His poetry is captivatingly visceral, combining strong emotion with everyday metaphors.

“Initially, I was doing it mostly for the videos,” he says. “I wanted to become YouTube famous.”

His goals evolved considerably, especially after winning the Youth Poet Laureate competition and witnessing the Freddie Gray unrest erupt about a week after he was officially appointed to the position at City Hall. Ebert took his responsibilities seriously as an arts and culture ambassador, striving to give voice to city youth, especially with regards to deep-rooted concerns and often-overlooked accomplishments. Some of his work entailed teaching foster kids to write poetry and embarking on a mini-tour of appearances at various Enoch Pratt Free Library branches.

“I became more geared toward children and my peers,” he says. “I saw that I had an impact, and I wanted them to lead an impactful life as well.”

Dew More’s Kenneth Morrison witnessed those encounters firsthand.

“During a time when the city had no choice but to hear the concerns of its youth, Derick was essential in taking that voice to corners of the city that needed it most,” says Morrison. “It became easy this year to allow campaigns and media to limit the conversation, but Derick ensured his platform included conversations not captured on CNN. I watched him grow into his voice and, more importantly, grow his understanding of the responsibility that comes with his voice.”

That voice will change this month, as the next Youth Poet Laureate will be decided by a competition held at City Hall on February 1. It will be a two-round poetry slam, with each poem judged on a scale of zero to 10. Ebert is one of the judges.

Beyond that, Ebert looks forward to graduating from UB and, hopefully, going through Teach for America to become a Baltimore City public school teacher. “To some extent, I am already a teaching artist,” says Ebert. “I definitely know how to lead an urban classroom and get everyone’s attention.”

Checking his watch, Ebert sees it’s almost time for his English Literature final. He stands and reaches for the headphones around his neck, as he prepares to walk toward the elevator for his next test.

“I’m still discovering and questioning things about myself,” he says. “I’m always changing and growing.”

It brings to mind the closing lines of “Archaeologist”:

I’m not going to pretend to be a poet.
I told you,
I’m an archaeologist.
I’m just trying to find the pieces
that’ll make me feel whole.

Showdown
Wil Haygood (Alfred A. Knopf)

You could argue that Martin Luther King Jr. may have been the civil-rights movement’s spiritual compass, but Thurgood Marshall was its driving force. As the attorney behind the epic Brown vs. Board of Education case, which desegregated public schools, and countless other legal victories, Marshall, a Baltimore native, paved the way for more equal standing between blacks and whites. But it was his 1967 Supreme Court nomination, Haygood writes, that shook the country to its core. The ensuing five days of confirmation hearings—the longest of any nominee at that point—forced Congress, and the Americans watching, to admit painful truths about race’s role in our history. Haygood—a Washington, D.C.-based writer who wrote the article that was the basis for the 2013 film The Butler—expertly weaves narrative from the hearings with background details on those influencing the proceedings. Particularly eye-opening—and infuriating—is a chapter that delves into the lynching carried out by then-Senate Judiciary Committee chairman James Eastland’s father. Showdown leaves you with a deeper understanding of this titan of American history, and all it took for him to succeed.

See our interview with writer Wil Haygood.

It Shouldn’t Have Been Beautiful
Lia Purpura (Penguin Poets)

Each of Lia Purpura’s verses reads like a spontaneous gem, almost as if she has been struck with a moment of inspiration during everyday life and has paused to scribble down her thoughts. But don’t think that makes her poems any less profound. In short stanzas that are absent of flowery language and dramatic metaphors, Purpura—writer in residence at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, whose work has appeared in The New Yorker and The Paris Review—provides poignant insight into our existence, and all its mysteries and uncontrollable circumstances. Take “Regret,” where she envisions the feeling as a place. “It was expensive there / once, very costly, / but not / until now.” In “Desire,” she writes, “It’s not enough, / but it is, because / too much / would topple / all I could hold.” This collection feels as if each verse should be savored, then contemplated, and her words will have you musing on their greater meanings long after reading.

Alpha Docs: The Making of a Cardiologist
Daniel Muñoz, M.D., and James M. Dale (Random House)

We’ve all wondered about the high-stakes environment of The Johns Hopkins Hospital, where talented, young physicians are put through their paces, determining what area of medicine they will pursue—and if they are qualified, talented, and persistent enough to stay the course. We get an intriguing inside view of the pressure, sleepless nights, and beeping pagers through the story of Daniel Muñoz, once a resident in internal medicine and later a cardiology fellow at Hopkins, who is now an attending cardiologist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, TN. We journey with him through his rotations and watch him grow, both as a doctor and as a person who is determined, he writes, not to develop an “elitist pride” that can come with the stress of the environment. One of the book’s most compelling passages shows how Muñoz learns to tell a woman that her husband should be taken off life support. This is where his story is most effective—showing the human impact of this challenging work.