Daniel B. Summerhill

The assemblage of poems in Daniel Summerhill’s Mausoleum of Flowers creates an umbrella of memory through which language becomes the salve, the armor that allows these words to resurrect into something beautiful by living and reliving history. These poems are aware and cognizant of a social condition where silence is not an option, and yet, the poems are tender and loving—aesthetic beauty on the poet’s terms.

—Randall Horton, author of #289–128: Poems

A writer, who, indeed, “must have God’s attention.” What a blessing it is to see Daniel B. Summerhill render his memory in grace, in ugliness, and most importantly, in hue. These poems, though new to us, have simmered in season and in sun. What an amazing Black writer, unafraid to wrap himself in his own language. Summerhill asks questions in his work that, today, I cannot answer, so I must return.

—Jasmine Mans, author of Black Girl, Call Home

Summerhill’s name precedes him in the world of these poems where Black folks are “basking in the sun around lake merritt,” where the speakers “bleed & flowers bloom . . . american fruit.” This is a voice speaking from, not a voice speaking for. A voice declaring “i, too, am perennial.” It is the poet’s eye that redeems, making lists of what is blooming around him: an old Buick’s exhaust cloud, a collarbone forming “in a mother’s round belly,” a Frank Ocean chord progression. Nothing is left out here, not even fear, and everything that remains flowers. Reading these poems—I remember who we are, I notice redemption more. Summerhill muses on the specter of death called America, but in a place called Oakland his verse is “very much alive.”

—Joy Priest, author of Horsepower