Past Issue: Cyrus Cassells

Logo-Fight&Fiddle


Summer 2021 | Cyrus Cassells | Vol. 5, Iss. 1

Welcome to The Fight & The Fiddle, a publication of the Furious Flower Poetry Center at James Madison University. Each issue gives you a 360-degree view of a Black poet, including an interview, new poems, a critical essay, and a writing prompt inspired by our featured poet. 

&Cyrus Cassells is a lauded poet, translator and cultural critic. His poetry has been recognized with honors including a Guggenheim fellowship, the National Poetry Series Prize, a Lambda Literary Award, a Lannan Literary Award, two NEA grants, a Pushcart Prize, and the William Carlos Williams Award. His collection The Gospel according to Wild Indigo (2018), was a finalist for the NAACP Image Award, and his 1994 collection Soul Make A Path Through Shouting, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry. Cassells was also nominated for a Pulitzer for his work as a cultural critic for The Washington Spectator. His eighth book, The World That the Shooter Left Us, will be published by Four Way Books in March 2022. Cassells is a professor at Texas State, where he has taught for over 20 years, and he was recently appointed as the 2021 Texas State Artist-Poet Laureate.

Cyrus Cassells reads “The White Iris Beautifies Me”

Photo by Adreanna Hammond
Cover Design by Robert Mott