Angel, Interrupted

Reginald Shepherd (1963–2008) was a Black, gay poet who grew up in the Bronx and went on to receive two MFAs, one from Brown University and one from the Iowa Writers Workshop. He authored two collections of poetry criticism and six poetry collections, all published by the University of Pittsburgh Press: Red Clay Weather, Fata Morgana, Otherhood, Wrong, Angel, Interrupted, and Some Are Drowning. His work has been widely awarded and anthologized and has appeared in four editions of The Best American Poetry and two Pushcart Prize anthologies. Shepherd received many awards and honors over his career, including grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, among others.

There is a hard and lucid quality in Shepherd's work. The words seem to be burned into the page with lasers, so precise and sharp-edged are they. . . . Shepherd's language is big and torqued with passion, and his images pile densely but are pulled through the text by a strong rope of narrative. . . . These poems are rich, wild, deep, and strong.