‘The Vernell Poems’ by Herman Beavers

What Would Vernell Say?

By Suzanne Cloud

Cover of ‘The Vernell Poems’ chapbook courtesy of Moonstone Press.

Poet Herman Beavers teaches African American literature and creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is a professor of English and Africana studies. His work has appeared in publications and anthologies including the American Arts Quarterly, Langston Hughes Colloquy, and Who Will Speak for America? So maybe neophyte poetry readers would assume that his latest work, The Vernell Poems (published by Philadelphia’s own Moonstone Press) just might be a tad too academic, lofty, or enigmatic. But oh, no, no. This book swings.

The Vernell Poems tells stories of Vernell Spraggins, a character defined by Guthrie Ramsey, author of The Amazing Bud Powell, as “the buddy you roll and sport with — the one you went to school with but wonder what classes he attended… the dude around the way, ageless but getting weary.”

So, after reading this percipient and very funny collection of poetry, I had to interview my former professor from Penn about this urban folk hero from Cleveland, who had been bouncing around in Beavers’s head since 1998.

Meet Vernell

“Vernell is a composite of people in my family, people that I grew up with and people I heard them talk about,” Beavers said. The poems got started…