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Psalms for Mother Emanuel is a brief chapbook commissioned by the Pittsburgh Foundation on the first anniversary of the 2015 shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston. It includes nine poems and one visual piece, and they are beautiful and impactful. Beyond that I hardly know what to say about this collection; it feels almost holy, and many poems do maintain the reverence of the title, so that to comment sort of feels inappropriate.

The whole thing is… wrenching and also lovely.

Here is the title and first line of Cameron Barnett’s contribution:

If a bag of silver coins and a bag of bullets sound the same
then take my ears, I do not need them

You can actually view the book here, and I recommend you just do so.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: poetry |