For more than forty years, the poetry of Marilyn Nelson has ushered readers into the presence of complex and compelling lives, rendered in intricate form. Her collections of poems—Mama’s Promises, The Fields of Praise, Carver: A Life in Poems, A Wreath for Emmett Till, and many others—reinvigorate the art of spiritual biography, celebrating God’s image incarnated and fragmented across disparate lives. For poetry that shows that “the chosen really are / the cornerstones the builders toss aside,” we thank Marilyn Nelson.