Editor’s Note

“What can a poem do?” This question is posed by poet and Art Prevails Project director Darius V. Daughtry, whose work is featured in this month’s issue. It’s a question I’ve asked myself many times, especially in a world where what seems most needed—vaccines, access, food equity, funding, a law to repeal all harmful laws—is far away from a poet’s page. Inevitably, like many artists, I fall into that cycle of self-doubt, questioning if my art is really enough in the world. Are we helping people by taking to verse?

My answer is always revealed by the work itself. Poetry can do a lot more than just show off a savvy use of metaphor or a clever new form. Poetry can remind us who we are—I remember, vividly, finding “what the mirror said” by Lucille Clifton as a curious college student, realizing Mrs. Clifton’s voice rode a wavelength much like mine. I could see myself more clearly as a woman in the world and as a Black poet with a voice that matters. I could imagine new ways to exist on the page and off it. Poetry can be that kind of blueprint. Sidney Clifton, Mrs. Clifton’s daughter and one of our June podcast features, talks about how poetry can be a spirit-conduit. It can connect us to ourselves and to those we love. In a time like this, that connection is sacred.

For Nyah Hardmon, whose poem “Cocoon” is part of the Art Prevails Project video feature in the online version of this month’s issue, poetry can trace a lineage of pain and power for a poet and her Black foremothers. Poetry can find itself in a tadpole’s pool or at the MoMA, all the while finding a love of humanity and of birthplace, like in Tina Mozelle Braziel’s poems. Poetry can spell out our experiences in this many-layered pandemic, and that acknowledgment is a beginning to healing.

In this issue, we are brought back to the body. We are taken to our country’s violent and oppressive borders. We speak with our grandmothers’ tongues. We watch death, always waiting, in the rearview mirror. But we also see the promise of new beauty—in our children, in the revolutions our words can start, and, as Xaire says in “Concrete,” in the “bouquet beneath.”