Poetry. African American Studies. “Claudia Rankine is a fiercely gifted young poet. Intelligence, a curiosity and hunger for understanding like some worrying, interior, physical pain, a gift for being alert in the world. She knows when to bless and to curse, to wonder and to judge, and she doesn’t flinch. NOTHING IN NATURE IS PRIVATE is an arrival. It’s the kind of book that makes you hopeful for American poetry.”—Robert Hass
“I am excited by Claudia Rankine’s poems, their elegance, their emotional force, their scrupulous intimation of multiple identities. Representing brilliantly the prismatic vision of a Jamaican, middle class, intellectual black woman living in America, they address the widest constituency of readers. This is a richly rewarding collection.”—Mervyn Morris