Kyle Dargan's new collection of poetry reflects his many passions as a poet, his deep engagament with what it means to work in the African American literary tradition, and his lively voice, infused with hip-hop sensibility and idiom. Skillfully blending vernacular and elegant diction, his clipped and reflective phrasings create animated poems that take on a myriad of concerns. Moving through such subjects as a midnight wait in the Washington, D.C., bus station, men on exhibit at the 1904 World's Fair, the sights and sounds of an Indiana karaoke bar, and an imagined escaped slave turned to...

Attempting to stitch a quilt of language for the new millennium, Kyle Dargan finds himself in his third collection propelled forward by a mElange of voices--individuals passed on the street, journalists, philosophers, movie and cartoon characters, hip-hop emcees, and fellow poets--all of which build to a self-diagnosed logorrhea dementia. Dargan's voice channels an America mentally fatigued from a decade of foreign conflict yet cautiously hopeful about the promise of the country's renewed introspection.

In these poems, rife with the anxieties of the aughts, Dargan seeks to destabilize...

Through the course of a historic year of civil unrest and the emergence of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement, thirty teen writers from Frank W. Ballou High School in Washington, DC came together to take part in this national conversation about race, inequality, violence, and justice. Through their powerful, personal stories these writers intend to Change the Narrative about youth of color. We are not thugs, they say. We are not victims. We are big sisters and sports stars, academic strivers and everyday heroes. We speak out for justice. We dream big dreams. These writers want more for...