A review by booksrockcal
Dark Testament: And Other Poems by Pauli Murray

challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

I picked up this book in the American Writers Museum in Chicago. I’d recently learned about the amazing life of Pauli Murray- civil rights activist and lawyer who helped Thurgood Marshall form the arguments for Brown and worked with RBG on making gender a 14th amendment equal protection argument. I learned about her in the context of the renaming of Calhoun College at Yale to Pauli Murray College. The Writer’s Museum had an exhibit on Murray- writer, poet, and the first black female Episcopal priest. This book will knock your socks off. The first poem - Dark Testament- is a searing and unforgettable depiction of slavery. My favorites were Song of the Highway, the Passing of FDR and the ones that interweave passages from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer with images of bondage, slavery, and lynching (collect for Poplarville and For Mack C. Parker.