It’s Important I Remember

An incantation of strength and solace for persisting in twenty-first-century America

"History doesn't repeat, it rhymes." In his sweeping third collection, Charleston brings a poet's ear for echo and rhythm to bear on American history and life after 2016. For Charleston, these rhymes cut two ways: the long tradition of American racism and fascism, and the steady pulse of Black persistence. The collection's titular invocation frames each poem, at times an oratory to rally a crowd, in other moments a private prayer whispered as the speaker gathers himself to face another day. Charleston insists that should we cede memory of our national biography-whether to repression or indifference-we will witness the country's dissolution into something unrecognizable to most, yet all too familiar to its most marginalized people. But with each reiteration and riff, he also invokes a tenuous hope-that if we summon an American history of Black resistance, we might still make a more perfect union.