An incantation of strength and solace for persisting in twenty-first-century America

“History doesn’t repeat, it rhymes.” In his sweeping third collection, Charleston brings a poet’s ear for echo and rhythm to bear on American history and life after 2016. For Charleston, these rhymes cut two ways: the long tradition of American racism and fascism, and the steady pulse of Black persistence. The collection’s titular invocation frames each poem, at times an oratory to rally a crowd, in other moments a private prayer whispered as the speaker gathers himself to face another day. Charleston insists that should we cede memory of our national biography—whether to repression or indifference—we will witness the country’s dissolution into something unrecognizable to most, yet all too familiar to its most marginalized people. But with each reiteration and riff, he also invokes a tenuous hope—that if we summon an American history of Black resistance, we might still make a more perfect union.