Poetry. African American Studies. Probably the real story of race in the United States (like all real stories) can only be written by a poet. And Shane McCrae has done it. BLOOD is an epic that spans three centuries. BLOOD is so formally innovative that you don’t quite understand how it achieves its effects. BLOOD is so utterly clear it makes you cry. BLOOD is almost impossibly empathetic. Moving from sequences based on slave narratives and Federal Writers Project oral histories to monologues by white racists to autobiography and the poet’s family history, BLOOD is beautiful and significant, subtle and blunt. It asks to be read and reread. We need this book.–Kathleen Ossip