Black Box
Poems

“The work of Frank X Walker is 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, and Hughes.”

Ricky L. Jones, author of Black Haze: Violence, Sacrifice, and Manhood in Black Greek-Letter Fraternities

“The spirit of a child runs through the poetry of Frank X Walker’s Black Box. A young, rural black boy recalls his parents, grandparents, and ancestors who originally settled the land, built the rock walls and dug in the coal mines. Close-to-the-bone poetry. A poet for all generations.”

Mary Popham, Louisville Courier-Journal

A powerful collection from Frank X Walker, winner of the 2005 Lannan Literary Fellowship for Poetry.

In this collection of sixty-eight poems, Kentucky writer Frank X Walker continues the personal poetic writing of his bestselling debut collection, Affrilachia. In Black Box, he expertly melds autobiography, political commentary, and literary allusions into a devastatingly beautiful journey through the real “Affrilachia”—a word Walker created to render visible the lives of the African Americans who call the rural and Appalachian South home. Written with passion, clarity, and emotional honesty, the poems in Black Box illuminate profound experiences at the intersection of race, love, social justice, family, identity and place.

Published in 2005 by Old Cove Press

Frank X Walker is a native of Danville, Kentucky, and professor of English at the University of Kentucky. A former Kentucky poet laureate, he is founding member of the Affrilachian Poets. Walker created the word Affrilachia to help make visible the Black experience in the Appalachian South. He is the author of many poetry volumes, including Affrilachia, Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York, Black Box: Poems, When Winter Come: The Ascension of York, and Isaac Murphy: I Dedicate This Ride.