Praise for New Names for Stars
Len Lawson’s remarkable poetry collection New Names for Stars is a journey and a companion for that journey, exploring Afrofuturism, superheroes, mental health, social justice, and beyond, with narratives ranging from personal to universal. At one moment, we’re experiencing the daunting-yet-intimate vastness of the cosmos, as the poem “slush” instructs, “bury me in a slush of stars. if i transition from this life to the next, light scrubbed from my eyes, call me by this name. i’m rejoining the slush that birthed me.” Later we interface with important figures like Simone Biles, Guy Bluford, and Amanda Waller, and conclude with the poignant “Elegy for Chadwick Boseman.” Lawson’s talent for stunningly original diction is a constant in this volume of varied textures and themes. It’s impossible not to be awed by his turns of phrase, as in “what if the universe is flesh” when the speaker notes, “wasn’t the universe supposed / to be made by a voice, // the single most devastating / weapon to the body? // no one asked for light.” Every poem in this collection provides readers with the gift of wisdom, opening a conversation with history both distant and near, enlightening as it delights.
–Mary Biddinger, Author of The Girl with the Black Lipstick, Department of Elegy, and Partial Genuis
Len Lawson’s New Names for Stars is a daring, thoughtful book that superimposes the struggle and triumph of Black life onto the cosmos. Across a collection of experimental and inventive meditations emerges one of our most important chroniclers of Black America. Lawson is a master with a playful spirit and a master-elegist’s eye. This collection took me to a better world.
–Nate Marshall, author of Wild Hundreds
About the Author
Len Lawson is the author of three poetry collections and editor of two poetry anthologies. He has received fellowships from Tin House Summer Workshop, Palm Beach Poetry Festival, Callaloo Barbados, Vermont Studio Center, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, among others. His poetry appears in African American Review, Callaloo, Mississippi Review, Ninth Letter, Verse Daily, and has been translated internationally. Len earned a PhD in English Literature and Criticism at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and an MFA in Creative Writing at Queens University of Charlotte. Born and living in South Carolina, he is Director of African American Studies and Assistant Professor of English at Newberry College.
