Ink Stains & Watermarks: New and Uncollected Poems

"In every stanza of this evocative and revelatory gospel, the inimitable X teaches us "Something important about holding on, something more about letting go." He leans hard into the fierce, achingly familiar and sometimes fractured realities of the black-lived life, and under his deft touch they unreel as stark cinema-character-driven, rich with sensory, imbibed with their own selfish music and utterly, utterly memorable." -Patricia Smith, author of Incendiary Art, Northwestern University Press "...An eclectic, powerful mixture of liberating style, profound insight, and unwavering organic connection to the intellectual, political, and cultural struggles of a people. He stands in the tradition of DuBois, McKay, Robeson, Hughes, and other great writers, poets, and performers whose contributions have transcended time and space to give generation after generation pause and hope." ----Ricky L. Jones, author of "Black Haze", Chair, Pan African Studies, University of Louisville Frank X Walker is the author of eight collections of poetry, including "Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers", winner of the 2014 NAACP Image Award for Poetry and "BuffaloDance: The Journey of York" winner of the 2004 Lillian Smith Book Award. The recipient of a 2005 Lannan Literary Fellowship, Walker is professor of English and African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky.