Joseph Ross
Joseph Ross is the author of five books of poetry: Crushed & Crowned (2023), Raising King (2020), Ache (2017), Gospel of Dust (2013), and Meeting Bone Man (2012). My poems have appeared in a wide variety of publications including The New York Times Sunday Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, The Southern Quarterly, Xavier Review, Poet Lore, Tidal Basin Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and Sojourners. My work appears in many anthologies including What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Age of Trump, edited by Martin Espada. Over the last several years, my poems also appear in anthologies including Collective Brightness, Poetic Voices without Borders 1 and 2, Full Moon on K Street, and Come Together; Imagine Peace.
Crushed & Crowned guides the reader through a “museum of bodies,” seeking to “illuminate the darkest corners of our history. From sanitation workers killed in Memphis, to elegies aimed at resurrection, these poems forbid sleeping. Murals of saints guard refugees, statues replace enslavers with confident Black teens, a high school teacher observes the joys and sorrows of his students. These poems also stop us at one of the world’s largest refugee camps, inviting us to see LGBTQ refugees and their plight. These poems center the lives of Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, considering their places in our history. These poems believe that if we read and live with the right spirit, the “crushed” of our world can end up “crowned.”
Paperback
5.5 x 8.5 inches
110 pages
ISBN: 978-1-953447-23-4