Around the void left by the murder of Medgar Evers in 1963, the poems in this collection speak, unleashing the strong emotions both before and after the moment of assassination. Poems take on the voices of Evers's widow, Myrlie; his brother, Charles; his assassin, Byron De La Beckwith; and each of De La Beckwith's two wives. Except for the book's title, "Turn me loose," which were his final words, Evers remains in this collection silent. Yet the poems accumulate facets of the love and hate with which others saw this man, unghosting him in a way that only imagination makes possible.
"Hathaway is attuned to the vast distances between people even as they share a bed, a conversation, or a drink. He takes exact measurements of the chasm between fancy and fact, fears and longings, the mundaneness of reality and the tempting illogic of fantasy . . . These are perceptive, enticing, and complexly structured stories that illuminate the gap between thought and communication, the void b
Haki R. Madhubuti, author of Honoring Genius
"Searing, brilliantly realized, these forty-nine poems exhume the history of a great American hero, Medgar Evers, whose 1963 death at the hands of white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith lit a powder keg of racial unrest in the nation and ushered in a decade of political assassinations. With their deep links to African American poetic traditions of social commentary and historical excavation, Walke
