About
“Take Me to the Water is an impressive collection of poems that stage a dialogue between the personal and the collective history of African Americans. Like Rita Dove’s Thomas and Beulah, Take Me to the Water carries the reader across time—into the specific voice and history of a single speaker who understands their life to be both inherited and made. The manuscript argues that we are all products of the Atlantic crossing, even if not everyone can float. Our speaker holds this knowledge in every utterance in some way, even as each poem also holds joy, beauty, desire, refusal, and perseverance.”
— Claudia Rankine
"There is an intimacy in these poems that cannot be taught."
— Davidson Foundation Fellowship Selection Committee
— Claudia Rankine
"There is an intimacy in these poems that cannot be taught."
— Davidson Foundation Fellowship Selection Committee
