Source: the poet
Paperback, 65 pgs.
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***A portion of the purchase price of Hinton’s book ($15) will go to the Lancaster Cleft Palate Clinic.***

Elegies for an Empire by Le Hinton, is a gorgeous collection of poems paying homage to parents, ancestors, and others who came before, while realizing that the foundations and moments the poet leaves behind for children will be similarly in the past, even as they are present. In each step forward, there is an echo of the past, like his opening quote says from Ralph Ellison, “The end is the beginning and lies far ahead.” In the opening poem, “Asking for my Mother,” there’s the echo of a mother’s voice, urging the speaker to not only think on the past as a lesson, but to also employ it in a humble way. There’s a tension between doing something and praying about it, while at the same time, there is the urge to do something, move forward because one is praying about it.

Second Chance (pg. 18)

I carry my family's dreams
into this soil's darkness.

Inside this pod, I hold these hopes:

a fresh garden,
a tender lunar spring,
a faultless reputation.

No one here can sing my past

There is a sense of lament in each of these poems, but carried inside it is a hope that cannot be contained. Rise from the soil to build a garden anew, sit alongside the spirits of your ancestors to learn the past and how to navigate the future. These meditations signal to the reader that the hustle and bustle of our lives needn’t be the only driver of our action or inaction.

Hinton is tackling topics that we see on the news every day, and not all of us live in that reality but are mere observers. The question I come away with is: Why are you sitting idly on your hands and observing when you can take action to make change? Do all Black men have to have internal conversations about death when stopped by police? Is there a way to remedy this issue without more violence? How can we think our way out and take action?

The entire collection is not about darkness, death, and loss. There is love here. “Still Life with Desire,” shows us that even while masked and left with unspoken words, lovers can create something beautiful just as “Beethoven composing/his 9th within the enveloping silence.” (pg. 39) Elegiac song fills the air when so much is lost, but what about the things we’ve gained. “Consider your good fortune to have survived/a virus that has no conscience or taste buds/and disregards the pleasures of a lengthened life//Then peel the skin, slowly, intentionally,/noticing the tiny movement of flesh/beneath your fingers, the initial droplets//of the sweetest of juices.” (pg. 41, “How to Eat a Peach During a Pandemic”).

Elegies for an Empire by Le Hinton reminds everyone about the importance of connection to ourselves, to one another, to our ancestors, and yes, even to our enemies. In “Allies and Ancestors”, the poet says, “we’ll recycle these deaths/over again and again and over.” The energy of us never leaves. We are all still here, still connecting, still influencing.

RATING: Cinquain

About the Poet:

Poet, teacher, Le Hinton, is the author of seven collections including, most recently, Elegies for an Empire (Iris G. Press, 2023). His work has been widely published and can, or will be found in The Best American Poetry 2014, the Baltimore Review, The Skinny Poetry Journal, the Progressive Magazine, Little Patuxent Review, Pleiades, and elsewhere. His poem “Epidemic” won the Baltimore Review’s 2013 Winter Writers Contest and in 2014 it was honored by The Pennsylvania Center for the Book. His poem, “Our Ballpark,” can be found outside Clipper Magazine Stadium in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, incorporated into Derek Parker’s sculpture Common Thread.

He is the founder and co-editor of the poetry journal Fledgling Rag and the founder of Iris G. Press/I. Giraffe Press.