Evie Shockley on Ed Roberson ("Open / Back Up (breadth of field)")

Close Readings

What a gift this conversation was. I talked to Evie Shockley about a poem from Ed Roberson's book City Eclogue, "Open / Back Up (breadth of field)."

Evie is the Zora Neale Hurston Distinguished Professor of English at Rutgers University. She is the author of five books of poetry, including the just-released suddenly we (Wesleyan UP, 2023). She is also the author of Renegade Poetics: Black Aesthetics and Formal Innovation in African American Poetry (U of Iowa P, 2011). Her essays and articles have appeared in such journals as New Literary History, Los Angeles Review of Books, Jacket2, The Black Scholar, and Callaloo, where she published "On the Nature of Ed Roberson's Poetics."

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