The back defend of Reginald Shephe...

The back defend of Reginald Shepherd's first collection announces that the "poem enact the strive of a young black gay man in his search for identity." Anyone familiar with the critical literature in succession minority writers will recognize the too-familiar figure of speech of the "search for identity" that shapes readings of these authors (I could adduce an exhaustive bibliographical footnote here, beginning with just about everything written about Jean Toomer). Shepherd's metrical compositions are indeed inflected by dint of his experience of race and sexuality. if it be not that in Shepherd's pages, his lyric