Cardinal

“Every road isn’t a way out,” writes Daye (River Hymns) in this striking second collection of poems and full-color photographs that span cities and small towns, focusing in particular on rural, Black communities. The book borrows one of its two epigraphs from the 1949 edition of Victor Hugo Green’s Green Book: “There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published.” Throughout, Daye investigates where Black people can find safety in a racist America, while memorably cataloguing each area’s complexities and rewards in quiet, nuanced meditations. But the poet’s work also shares a sensibility with Alice Walker’s In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens—poems like “To: All Poets/ From: Northeastern North Carolina” and “The Motorcycle Queen (for Bessie Stringfield)” track the making of and desire for art. Here, photographs, like the poems, offer a record of a long history of relationships, as one speaker (in a mother’s voice) observes: “I can’t hate a place/ where my grandmother is buried/ beside my other dead in rows.” This book provides a musical, meditative map and account of America. (Oct.)