Sable and Selected Poems

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This collection by the award-winning writer Allan Johnston includes Sable, a lengthy discourse based on the life of Phillis Wheatley, a well-known poet of the eighteenth century and a slave in the household of John Wheatley, a prominent Boston businessman. Wheatley’s poems were published and distributed widely to affirm that Blacks could be both artistic and intellectual. The remainder of the book includes poems from previous books and chapbooks, including Tasks of Survival, Northport, Departures, Contingencies, and In a Window. Arranged as they are, the poems in the collection initially speak from an intimate stance but move to a more broadly reflective one while developing an increasing connectedness to the natural world. The collection ends with the sequence Return, and its poems reflect upon time spent in the Sierra Nevada in California, the author’s native state.