Crushed & Crowned by Joseph Ross
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.”
Joseph Ross is the author of four books of poetry: Raising King (2020), Ache (2017), Gospel of Dust (2013) and Meeting Bone Man (2012). His poems appear in many publications including, The New York Times Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, Poet Lore, Drumvoices Revue and the 2022 anthology, WHERE WE STAND: Poems of Black Resilience. He has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations and won the 2012 Pratt Library / Little Patuxent Review Poetry Prize for his poem “If Mamie Till Was the Mother of God.” Recently, Ross served as judge for the 2021 Ken Ebert Poetry Prize from Iris G. Press. He currently serves on the poetry Board at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. where he teaches English and Creative Writing. Ross writes regularly at www.JosephRoss.net.