The Poet as Citizen

Two powerful poets read from their work and discuss how poetry can become an active tool for rethinking race in America. Robin Coste Lewis reads from her upcoming poetry collection, Voyage of the Sable Venus, which lyrically catalogs representations of the black figure in the fine arts, with Claudia Rankine—a poet whose incendiary new book, Citizen: An American Lyric—is a powerful testament to the individual and collective effects of racism in our often named “post-racial” society.