- Publisher: Old Gold Soul Press
- ISBN: 978-1-967664-14-6
The Collected Poetry of Rashid Darden
A bold, intimate, and unflinching collection, The Testaments: 1995–2025 gathers thirty years of poetry from acclaimed Black queer writer Rashid Darden into one definitive volume.
Spanning eight books and multiple eras of a life, these poems trace love and loss, faith and doubt, desire and devotion, grief and survival. From early work shaped by first love and raw vulnerability to later pieces marked by spiritual reckoning, aging, and hard-won clarity, Darden’s voice remains both deeply personal and culturally resonant.
Blending romance, rage, humor, erotic honesty, and prophetic insight, The Testaments stands as a record of Black interior life in all its beauty and complexity. Influenced by Baldwin, Giovanni, and Baraka, yet unmistakably his own, Darden writes with emotional precision and fearless truth-telling.
Moving between the personal and the political, the sacred and the sensual, the remembered and the imagined, this collection forms a sustained record of love, rupture, endurance, and becoming across three decades of a writer’s life.