Testament IV: Probate

The fourth volume of The Testaments 1995–2025, Probate, examines brotherhood, inheritance, and the traditions of historically Black fraternities and sororities. Titled Probate to evoke the in-between status of someone who has completed a trial but has not yet reaped the reward, the collection explores the anticipation, uncertainty, and transformation that accompany life’s defining passages. Drawing on personal experience, Rashid Darden reflects on fraternity, tradition, and the bonds forged between Black men through shared ritual and experience.

Within The Testaments, this collection documents a cultural tradition that has received little sustained attention in contemporary poetry. Together, these poems offer both a personal record and a meditation on identity, memory, and legacy across generations.

One life. Eight books. Thirty years of poetry.