Critics generally focus on Shepherd’s “forays
into the classical world” (Henry, 59). Title after
title confirms this journey: “Eros in His Striped
Blue Shirt,” “Narcissus at the Adonis Theater,”
“Tantalus in May,” and “A Man Name Troy”; how-
ever, Shepherd is not merely interested in simplis-
tic allusions but instead wishes to explore the deep,
complex signification of language. “Narcissus
Loved Rivers Best,” in which the speaker is the title
mythological figure, suggests the complexity of
Shepherd’s allusion and invocations—his engage-
ment with language’s multifaceted signification:
“Those foaming horses never change, their manes
/ white billows in the current, pillows to rest / my
head” (Some Are Drowning, 59). Similarly, he uses
language in “Bacchus” as paintbrush strokes on
his word-dominated personal canvas: “Like some-
thing out of Carravaggio: / the young god leans
over the banquet board / to offer up the grapes like
small red flames, yellow apples / piled like summer
waves” (Some Are Drowning, 28).
Shepherd seems well aware that, despite his
mastery of language and form within the confines
of “Western tradition,” he lives in a world that
stands poised at all time to marginalize him, label
him black, and even erase his significance as poet.
His speaker says in “Art and illusion”:
You wanted the classic white on white,
unbounded
expanse of snow or sand....
I scribbled my name
in charcoal and you erased it. My fingers
tried to leave prints on your world.” (Angel
Interrupted, 58–59)
Despite his desire for whiteness, Shepherd
seems to say, through his speaker in “Desire and
the Slave Trade,” that by no means should this per-
sonal quest indicate either ignorance or denial on
his part. He is well aware of his history and legacy
as a black American male which, if only through
textual excursions, he knows well.
I dreamed a walk with docents, gusts, damp
dead leaves of sepia dioramas. We walked past
depots... Wandered the hold ofThe first American slave ship, the Desire.
(Angel Interrupted, 9–10)Through his speaker, Shepherd correlates this
legacy of oppression with events in today’s world:
“In Florida / they doused a black man from De-
troit / with gasoline, kindling to put out the dark”
(Angel Interrupted 10). His speaker calls attention
to a similar event that took place in New York in
1723, when the leader of a slave revolt “was slow
roasted for eight hours as / a warning beacon.”
Shepherd has received a Discovery/The Nation
award (1993), a Paumanok Poetry Award (1993),
the 1994 George Kent Prize from Poetry maga-
zine, the Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholarship
(1994–1995), and grants from the NEA, the Illi-
nois Arts Council, and the Constance Saltonstall
Foundation, among other awards and honors. His
second collection, Angel Interrupted, was a final-
ist for the 1997 Lambda Literary Award. He has
taught at Northern Illinois University and Cornell
University and currently lives and writes in Pen-
sacola, Florida.BIBLIOGRAPHY
Boxwell, David A. “Reginald Shepherd.” In Contem-
porary Gay American Poets and Playwrights: An A–
Z Guide, edited by Emmanuel S. Nelson, 398–406.
Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2003.
Henry, Brian. Review of Wrong. Boston Review 25, no.
3 (Summer 2000): 59–60.
Rowell, Charles H. “An Interview with Reginald Shep-
herd.” Callaloo 21, no. 2 (1998): 290–307.
Shepherd, Reginald. Angel Interrupted. Pittsburgh:
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996.
———. “Notes Toward Beauty.” Available online.
URL: http://www.poetrysociety.org/journal/ar-
ticles/beauty.html. Accessed October 26, 2006.
———. “On Not Being White.” In In the Life: A Black
Gay Anthology, edited by Joseph Beam. Boston:
Alyson Publications, 1986: 46–57.
———. Some Are Drowning. Pittsburgh: University
of Pittsburgh Press, 1994.
———. “This Place/Displaced.” In The Place of the
Self, edited by Mark Doty, St. Paul, Minn.: Gray-
wolf Press, 2002.Wilfred D. Samuels462 Shepherd, Reginald