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    We (the People of the United States)

    Part of Penguin Poets

    Author Joshua Bennett
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    Ebook
    Penguin Adult HC/TR | Penguin Books
    On sale Mar 17, 2026 | 112 Pages | 9780593512753
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    “An essential addition to the American poetic canon.” —Booklist

    From an award-winning poet praised for his “rhapsodic, rigorous” work (The New Yorker) comes an immersive meditation on kindship, collectivity, and environmental thought

    We (The People of The United States) is a book-length poem made to the measure of the modern world. Composed of 55 sections, it features a breathtaking range of characters and concerns: The Beach Boys, Gwendolyn Brooks, the invention of the typewriter, Zora Neale Hurston, Sun Ra, life on Mars, Robert Frost, experimental physics, The Jackson 5. Throughout the collection, Bennett summons Virgil’s Georgics as a lens through which to not only tell the story of his family, but a much larger one about the “form of the American mind,” our relationship to the natural world, and the pursuit of a dignified, abundant life. Published the year of the nation’s 250th anniversary, it is a collection that is right on time. One that calls us, as Langston Hughes once did, toward a future America that is not yet here, “and yet must be.”
    © Rog Walker
    Dr. Joshua Bennett is the author of The Sobbing School (Penguin, 2016), which was a National Poetry Series selection and a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. He is also the author of Being Property Once Myself (Harvard University Press, 2020), Owed (Penguin, 2020), The Study of Human Life (Penguin, 2022), and Spoken Word: A Cultural History (Knopf, 2023). He has received fellowships and awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Society of Fellows at Harvard University. He is a Professor of Literature and Distinguished Chair of the Humanities at MIT. View titles by Joshua Bennett
    “Bennett is showing out in the positive Black vernacular sense: demonstrating his erudition for shared delight with the reader . . . Bennett’s poetry combines structural elegance with taut rhythms harking back to his undergraduate days in the New York slam poetry scene . . . In layered metaphor, the text calls to mind the shifting hues of water, the colors of Civil War uniforms and the nation itself, with all its wrath and love and reaching. God bless America, indeed.” —The New York Times

    “An ode to the America that was, is, and will be.” —The Boston Globe

    “A dazzling, expansive exploration of personal experience and the touchstones that informed it in poems that examine national identity, parenthood, masculinity, popular culture, and the natural world. . . .Bennett’s clever wordplay, wit, and gift for setting the scene permeate the collection and immerse the reader in the journey with vivid clarity. . . .An essential addition to the American poetic canon.” —Booklist, starred review

    “As much as it’s a triple-album-sized poetic performance of the word, Bennett’s book is also a history and theory of the American ‘we,’ across its myriad inflections—familial, romantic, local, congregational, coalitional, racial, transhistorical, even universal.” —Christopher Spaide, LitHub

    Praise for Joshua Bennett

    “Don’t miss this superb laying bare of Black joy and genius!” —Cornel West

    “At a moment in American culture punctuated to a heartbreaking degree by acts of hatred, violence and disregard, I can think of nothing we need to ponder and to sing of more than our shared grief and our capacity not just for empathy but genuine love. Poetry is critical to such an endeavor—and Joshua Bennett’s astounding, dolorous, rejoicing voice is indispensable.” —Tracy K. Smith

    “Here, a single moment shimmers with a million resonances of attention. So the world is loved this much. And what has been taken has been taken this much. Bennett insists on repair even as he mourns what is utterly irreparable. This book is part of a breathful, bodied fight for Black life. I am emboldened and sharpened by Bennett's genius and by his love made plain across each of these shimmering pages.” —Aracelis Girmay, author of The Black Maria

    “With a singularly expansive and compassionate view of history, Bennett sweeps across generations of joy, suffering, and connection.” —Lit Hub

    “A tender celebration of vulnerability and the strength that blooms quietly in its presence.” —The Atlantic

    About

    “An essential addition to the American poetic canon.” —Booklist

    From an award-winning poet praised for his “rhapsodic, rigorous” work (The New Yorker) comes an immersive meditation on kindship, collectivity, and environmental thought

    We (The People of The United States) is a book-length poem made to the measure of the modern world. Composed of 55 sections, it features a breathtaking range of characters and concerns: The Beach Boys, Gwendolyn Brooks, the invention of the typewriter, Zora Neale Hurston, Sun Ra, life on Mars, Robert Frost, experimental physics, The Jackson 5. Throughout the collection, Bennett summons Virgil’s Georgics as a lens through which to not only tell the story of his family, but a much larger one about the “form of the American mind,” our relationship to the natural world, and the pursuit of a dignified, abundant life. Published the year of the nation’s 250th anniversary, it is a collection that is right on time. One that calls us, as Langston Hughes once did, toward a future America that is not yet here, “and yet must be.”

    Author

    © Rog Walker
    Dr. Joshua Bennett is the author of The Sobbing School (Penguin, 2016), which was a National Poetry Series selection and a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. He is also the author of Being Property Once Myself (Harvard University Press, 2020), Owed (Penguin, 2020), The Study of Human Life (Penguin, 2022), and Spoken Word: A Cultural History (Knopf, 2023). He has received fellowships and awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Society of Fellows at Harvard University. He is a Professor of Literature and Distinguished Chair of the Humanities at MIT. View titles by Joshua Bennett

    Praise

    “Bennett is showing out in the positive Black vernacular sense: demonstrating his erudition for shared delight with the reader . . . Bennett’s poetry combines structural elegance with taut rhythms harking back to his undergraduate days in the New York slam poetry scene . . . In layered metaphor, the text calls to mind the shifting hues of water, the colors of Civil War uniforms and the nation itself, with all its wrath and love and reaching. God bless America, indeed.” —The New York Times

    “An ode to the America that was, is, and will be.” —The Boston Globe

    “A dazzling, expansive exploration of personal experience and the touchstones that informed it in poems that examine national identity, parenthood, masculinity, popular culture, and the natural world. . . .Bennett’s clever wordplay, wit, and gift for setting the scene permeate the collection and immerse the reader in the journey with vivid clarity. . . .An essential addition to the American poetic canon.” —Booklist, starred review

    “As much as it’s a triple-album-sized poetic performance of the word, Bennett’s book is also a history and theory of the American ‘we,’ across its myriad inflections—familial, romantic, local, congregational, coalitional, racial, transhistorical, even universal.” —Christopher Spaide, LitHub

    Praise for Joshua Bennett

    “Don’t miss this superb laying bare of Black joy and genius!” —Cornel West

    “At a moment in American culture punctuated to a heartbreaking degree by acts of hatred, violence and disregard, I can think of nothing we need to ponder and to sing of more than our shared grief and our capacity not just for empathy but genuine love. Poetry is critical to such an endeavor—and Joshua Bennett’s astounding, dolorous, rejoicing voice is indispensable.” —Tracy K. Smith

    “Here, a single moment shimmers with a million resonances of attention. So the world is loved this much. And what has been taken has been taken this much. Bennett insists on repair even as he mourns what is utterly irreparable. This book is part of a breathful, bodied fight for Black life. I am emboldened and sharpened by Bennett's genius and by his love made plain across each of these shimmering pages.” —Aracelis Girmay, author of The Black Maria

    “With a singularly expansive and compassionate view of history, Bennett sweeps across generations of joy, suffering, and connection.” —Lit Hub

    “A tender celebration of vulnerability and the strength that blooms quietly in its presence.” —The Atlantic

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