The collection brings its readers to a city alive and bright and then out into the world with the city still burning in its heart. packed into class, kids passed like kidney stones.” Take “out south,” which asserts: “shake us. It’s thunderous and plaintive, sometimes managing to do the impossible and straddle both.
It is part love letter to Marshall’s neighborhood in Chicago, part exploration of the experience of a young black man in America, part indictment of the system that presides over it. Wild Hundreds announces its presence when it enters the room. And now his debut collection, Wild Hundreds–winner of the 2014 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize–will be released this month by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Just last week he was named a recipient of a 2015 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Poetry Fellowship. His rap group Daily Lyrical Product released an album, Grown, this summer. This spring, he co-edited The BreakBeat Poets, the first poetry anthology by and for the hip-hop generation.