This image is the cover for the book In the Language of My Captor, Wesleyan Poetry Series

In the Language of My Captor, Wesleyan Poetry Series

Winner of the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry (2017)

Acclaimed poet Shane McCrae's latest collection is a book about freedom told through stories of captivity. Historical persona poems and a prose memoir at the center of the book address the illusory freedom of both black and white Americans. In the book's three sequences, McCrae explores the role mass entertainment plays in oppression, he confronts the myth that freedom can be based upon the power to dominate others, and, in poems about the mixed-race child adopted by Jefferson Davis in the last year of the Civil War, he interrogates the infrequently examined connections between racism and love. A reader's companion is available at wesleyan.edu/wespress/readerscompanions.

Shane McCrae

Shane McCrae is the author of several books of poetry, including In the Language of My Captor a finalist for the National Book Award, The Animal Too Big to Kill, Mule, Forgiveness Forgiveness and Blood. His work has been featured in The Best American Poetry 2010 edited by Amy Gerstler, The American Poetry Review and Poetry Daily. His honors include winner of the 2014 Lexi Rudnitsky/Editor's Choice Award, finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, a PEN Center USA Literary Award, a Whiting Writer's Award, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Oberlin, Ohio.

Wesleyan University Press