The Testaments 1995-2025: The First Collected Poems of Rashid Darden

For three decades, Rashid Darden has written poetry that traces the ordinary and extraordinary moments of a life. The Testaments 1995–2025 gathers that work into a single volume, bringing together eight collections that chart his evolution as a poet and as a man.

Spanning thirty years, these poems explore love, friendship, family, faith, race, sexuality, memory, and community with honesty, curiosity, and compassion. They move between the deeply personal and the broadly cultural, drawing on lived experience while remaining attentive to the people and traditions that shape a life. Read together, they form a literary autobiography told through verse.

Collected here for the first time, The Testaments 1995–2025 offers a rare opportunity to follow a single poetic voice across three decades of growth, reflection, and artistic discovery. Whether read from beginning to end or returned to one volume at a time, these poems invite readers into an enduring conversation about identity, belonging, and the continuing work of becoming.

One life. One omnibus. Thirty years of poetry.

Available only in paperback.