I think I wrote three more poems afterwards. Can you tell me about the writing and reception of that first book? There are more than a dozen poems included from your first book, “Most Way Home,” written when you were still a student. Those have a different second life than a book like “Black Maria,” which has a theme but is a kind of film noir in verse, and it turns out that having 20 of those is really interesting, at least to me it tells a kind of story within a story. It’s pretty hard to show what those books are like because they’re kind of wild, long books on purpose. Some books, it’s harder than others because I have some long poems, like “To Repel Ghosts,” which is about Jean-Michel Basquiat, and “Ardency,” about the Amistad rebellion. But also I was pleased to see the ways in which there were continuities and things I recognized. It’s sort of looking through old photos you recognize yourself but sometimes you look different. But also I want to honor that blues tradition and blues through-line and how some of those uncollected poems and outtakes fill in between the books. I’ve been thinking about it for a while, to have something portable the different sides of my work. I talked with friends and my editor about what to leave in here or there, but I went through the selection.
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