Load in Nine Times

For decades Frank X. Walker has reclaimed essential American lives through hiFor decades Frank X. Walker has reclaimed essential American lives through his pathbreaking historical poetry. Moving chronologically from antebellum Kentucky through Reconstruction, here he braids the voices of the United States Coloured Troops with their family members, as well as slave owners and prominent historical figures from Abraham Lincoln to Frederick Douglas and Margaret Garner.“How do you un-orphan a people?” Walker asks. “How do you pick up / shattered black porcelain and make / a new set of dishes fit to eat off?” While carefully attuned to the heartbreak and horrors of war, Walker’s poems pay equal care to the pride, perseverance and triumphs of their speakers. Evoking the formerly enslaved General Charles Young, Walker hums: “I am America’s promise, my mother’s song, / and the reason my father had every right to dream.” Expansive and intimate, Load in Nine Times is a resounding ode to the powerful ties of individual and cultural ancestry by an indelible voice in American poetry.Winner — PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, 2025