The Essential June Jordan

June Jordan could renew any skeptic‘s faith in poetry. These poems gleam with jewel-like polish at the same time that they seem so effortlessly conversational one feels as if Jordan is in the room, expounding her endlessly complex and enlivening arc from outright outrage to generous love for herself, her partners, and all of us. June Jordan‘s poetry speaks pointedly to the present moment and fervent calls for social justice. Jordan spent half a century as one of the most admired, influential, and accessible public intellectuals in the United States. Her thinking still affects us to this day. Jordan‘s work was unflinchingly intersectional even before the call for activism to be intersectional because ubiquitous. Her work boldly explores the entanglements of her Blackness, femininity, bisexuality, etc and still provides an admirable model for such exploration. As well as being a poet, Jordan was an essayist, novelist, and even a librettist. Started the renowned arts and activism program Poetry for the People at UC Berkeley. Jordan‘s work, despite often speaking to particular instances of injustice or violence in the late twentieth century, echoes compellingly in the present day. As readers reach for Black voices to continue their learning about race and class in America, this volume will be waiting. Even as Jordan is frank and unequivocal about injustice in her poetry, she maintains a sure optimism, bringing hope to discouraged readers. Jordan also writes lush, honest love poems, attracting, potentially, a whole other audience to the volume. Jordan collaborated with architect R. Buckminster Fuller to create a radical concept for reing Harlem towards racial and environmental justice. The project, which never came to be, was called Skyrise for Harlem.