The Headless Saints

“These spare, clear-eyed verses are remarkable for the ease with which they reveal a poet of ambitious intelligence and well-honed craft. Myronn Hardy has written a collection of quietly combustible poems that remind us of just what a gifted poet’s deftly judicious craft can produce in music and emotion.”

—Kwame Dawes

“Myronn Hardy’s The Headless Saints is a book comprised of lyrical epiphanies that embrace the everyday and the mythical, and there is no way to escape the full thrust of these marvelous poems. The tropical feel in The Headless Saints, in the pace and space of the crafted imagery, is tangible and believable.”

—Yusef Komunyakaa

 “‘To stare is to see nothing. / It’s in quiet observation where all becomes visible.’ These lines sum up the vigilant spirit of Myronn Hardy’s agile second book, The Headless Saints, which offers an apt vision of the black Diaspora in cogent, kaleidoscopic shards. With a meticulous eye, he sees ‘white chickens thin as vertebrae’ or contemplates the inedible ‘blood porridge’ of a violent, bigoted world. Hardy’s cosmopolitan poems can seem as delicate as a trellised vine or as strong as ironwork: he’s a quietly artful, wonderfully clear-sighted poet.”

—Cyrus Cassells

Sample Poems

"Dive"

"Lorca, 1930"