Read an Excerpt from Reginald Harris’s ‘Autogeography’

Author: Julie Levine

August 4, 2013

Lambda Literary Review is pleased to share an excerpt from Reginald Harris’s second and most recent collection of poetry, Autogeography (Northwestern University Press). Winner of the 2012 Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize, Reginald Harris explores the meaning of place–not just the physical landscapes that surround us day by day, but the worlds we carry inside ourselves. As John Keene writes in his blurb,

In Autogeography, a landmark in contemporary Black/LGBTIQ/American poetry, Reginald Harris guides us, via the vibrant map of these poems, through a multilayered world pulsing with lives, losses, and love. Just as the poems sing across and down these pages, we too crisscross a geography that includes Baltimore, American literature, the AIDS pandemic, military life, the leather world, photography, professional sports, gospel and R&B, the crystal-bright but still too often unseen worlds around us that Harris so evocatively reveals. ‘Flame in my palm,’ the collection’s final poem concludes, showing, as all these poems do, how a vital vision catches fire.

Harris’s first book, 10 Tongues, was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award as well as a ForeWord Book of the Year. He is also a recipient of Individual Artist Awards for both poetry and fiction from the Maryland State Art Council, a Pushcart Prize nominee, and a Cave Canem fellow. Currently, he is the information technology director and coordinator of Poetry in The Branches for the Poets House in New York City, as well as an Associate Editor for Lambda Literary Review. 

Read an excerpt of Autogeography here.