The Golden Shovel Anthology is a masterful celebration of Gwendolyn Brooks enduring legacy, featuring an impressive lineup of poets who skillfully weave her words into a powerful and innovative poetic form.

A marvelous tribute with poetry that touches the heart and injects it with nostalgia, happiness, sadness, and emotions unknown. Loved it! Great job done by the compilers.

This books brings pays homage to Gwendolyn Brooks whose poems became well-known during the Civil Rights Movement. It is a great addition to any poetry collection and useful for teachers who teach Brooks's work.

While I think the Golden Shovel would be great for students in the classroom, overall, this anthology underwhelmed me

What a spectacular tribute to the incomparable Gwendolyn Brooks! These poems captured vibrant emotions on an array of varied topics. Her legacy undeniably lives on with this.

Text from National Poetry Month feature on Bustle.com: "Published by the University of Arkansas Press in February and edited by Peter Kahn, Ravi Shankar, and Patricia Smith, The Golden Shovel Anthology: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks is a hybrid collection of the poetry (or poetic excerpts) of Gwendolyn Brooks accompanied by new works of contemporary poets — recognized writers like Rita Dove, Bonnie Jo Campbell, Julia Alvarez, Joy Harjo, Tracy K. Smith, and Nikki Giovanni as well as the emerging work of high school and university students. Celebrating the life, writing, and poetic style of Brooks, The Golden Shovel Anthology is a gorgeous and celebratory collection that both longtime fans of Brooks and newcomers to her work will love."

It breaks my heart to think that there is an entire generation (or two) of readers who haven't been blessed to know the brilliance of Gwendolyn Brooks. Despite her many accomplishments, I'm surprised by how few readers of contemporary poetry are familiar with her work. This is why the 'Golden Shovel Anthology' is so important; it honors Brooks's work by bringing together writers who admired and were inspired by her. Some of those who contributed are very well known; others are not. But each writer pays tribute to Brooks by using their own words to invoke her style and form. It's a delicately written collection that pays tribute to one of my favorite poets, and creates necessary generational bonds.