I felt like I wasn’t going to make it,” she said. “When I thought about my life in front of me, how I’m going to rise up to anything … it was so overwhelming.”

I have visited Graceland and you could see the man was overwhelmingly honest. He never professed any taste other than his own, that is, country boy made good. He never pretended to be anyone else.

I am completely indebted to Jimmy Baldwin's prose. It liberated me as a writer. These poems overwhelm without competing with his prose, and I am grateful to have this collection.