Fata Morgana

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.

Reginald Shepherd's splendid meditations on lyric song and its elusive, illusive mirages-its fata morgana-celebrate and interrogate the craving for permanence and coherence in a world of loss and flux. Shepherd's supreme fictions evoke Persephone, Ophelia, Eve, and Echo; a torn Osiris, an Orpheus who 'plays the Bronx,' and the dumped industrial wastes of the Chicago River. Fata Morgana is a stunning collection by one of our most fiercely intelligent lyricists of myth and imagination.