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The Penguin Poets
Golden Ax
Goodreads Choice Award
Nominee for Readers' Favorite Poetry (2022)From a visionary writer praised for her captivating work on Black history and experience, comes a poetry collection exploring personal, political, and artistic frontiers, journeying from her family's history as Afropioneers in the American West to shimmering glimpses of transcendent, liberated futures.
In poems that range from wry, tongue-in-cheek observations about contemporary life to more nuanced meditations on her ancestors--some of the earliest Black pioneers to settle in the western United States after Reconstruction--Golden Ax invites readers to re-imagine the West, Black womanhood, and the legacies that shape and sustain the pursuit of freedom.
In poems that range from wry, tongue-in-cheek observations about contemporary life to more nuanced meditations on her ancestors--some of the earliest Black pioneers to settle in the western United States after Reconstruction--Golden Ax invites readers to re-imagine the West, Black womanhood, and the legacies that shape and sustain the pursuit of freedom.
80 pages, Paperback
First published August 30, 2022
23 people are currently reading
4982 people want to read
About the author
Rio Cortez
12 books64 followersRio Cortez is the New York Times bestselling author of picture books The ABCs of Black History (Workman, 2020) and The River Is My Sea (S&S, 2024). Her debut poetry collection, Golden Ax, is forthcoming from Penguin Poets this August, 2022.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 110 reviews
May 5, 2022
Outstanding collection of poetry. I particularly liked the author’s note at the beginning, where she discusses afrofrontierism and afropioneerism. As a black person from
Nebraska I appreciated poetry from a black woman born and raised in Utah. My favorite poem was Black Lead in a Nancy Meyers Film which is charming and then subtly unfolds into a quietly devastating last line. As a whole, the poetry in these pages is intelligent, lyrical, as invested in the past as the present and future with witty nods to pop culture.
Nebraska I appreciated poetry from a black woman born and raised in Utah. My favorite poem was Black Lead in a Nancy Meyers Film which is charming and then subtly unfolds into a quietly devastating last line. As a whole, the poetry in these pages is intelligent, lyrical, as invested in the past as the present and future with witty nods to pop culture.
May 7, 2022
I am rather stunned with what Rio Cortez has done in this collection. I can count on my hands the number of times poetry has made me feel like I have stepped inside of a time warp. I found myself stumbling back into this time and space each time I put this collection down. This is an essential piece of work for the Black literary canon.
Most of the poems in this collection are about Cortez’s ancestry. She calls them Afro-pioneers as they are some of the first Black people in the West. A lot of the poems are rooted in artifacts, the things that have been left over from her ancestor’s lives. However, there is an imagined history here as well, a little magic added to these poems and I think that’s what makes this collection special. This magical realism creates vivid imagery of the land, the animals and people.
However, this collection does not neglect this time that we are living in. Cortez touches on some very timeless topics–motherhood/womanhood, love, ritual, mundanity. These poems felt so tender. I felt the need to sit with them or they would break or fall apart. These poems, these meditations force you to slow down.
I am so thankful to Penguin for the ARC.
Most of the poems in this collection are about Cortez’s ancestry. She calls them Afro-pioneers as they are some of the first Black people in the West. A lot of the poems are rooted in artifacts, the things that have been left over from her ancestor’s lives. However, there is an imagined history here as well, a little magic added to these poems and I think that’s what makes this collection special. This magical realism creates vivid imagery of the land, the animals and people.
However, this collection does not neglect this time that we are living in. Cortez touches on some very timeless topics–motherhood/womanhood, love, ritual, mundanity. These poems felt so tender. I felt the need to sit with them or they would break or fall apart. These poems, these meditations force you to slow down.
I am so thankful to Penguin for the ARC.
October 13, 2022
HOW DID WE GET HERE? // A fascinating poetry collection that coins the term "Afrofrontierism"
• GOLDEN AX by Rio Cortez
*Covered Wagon as Spaceship*
"Standing unseen in the little bluestem,
curious and not quite used to living,
I consider whether it’s aliens
that brought Black folks to the canyons, valley.
Standing in the great evaporation
of a lake, holy dandelion for
eyes, full and white and searching the landscape
for understanding: how do you come
to be where there are no others, except
science fiction?
I am a child feeling
extraterrestrial; whose history, untold,
is not enough.
Anyway, it begins with abduction."
A collection that quotes Sun Ra right next to Brigham Young, landscapes of Utah from red rocks to snowy peaks, memories of a Black girl on Pioneer Day celebrations in Salt Lake City, Indigenous inhabitants of the land where she was born, and imagining Black characters in some of her favorite 80s and 90s films and tv shows - just some tastes of this brilliant collection ☀️
Cortez calls this a work a Afrofrontierism and Afropioneerism, a riff on Afrofuturism, recalling her childhood in Utah and it's history of "pioneers", her family's history with the Latter Day Saints, and her family's own genealogy of Black people in this western US state.
This is a nominee for the National Book Award for Poetry 2022 - and the only one I've read of the list - but I'd be quite happy to see it take the top honor. ✨
• GOLDEN AX by Rio Cortez
*Covered Wagon as Spaceship*
"Standing unseen in the little bluestem,
curious and not quite used to living,
I consider whether it’s aliens
that brought Black folks to the canyons, valley.
Standing in the great evaporation
of a lake, holy dandelion for
eyes, full and white and searching the landscape
for understanding: how do you come
to be where there are no others, except
science fiction?
I am a child feeling
extraterrestrial; whose history, untold,
is not enough.
Anyway, it begins with abduction."
A collection that quotes Sun Ra right next to Brigham Young, landscapes of Utah from red rocks to snowy peaks, memories of a Black girl on Pioneer Day celebrations in Salt Lake City, Indigenous inhabitants of the land where she was born, and imagining Black characters in some of her favorite 80s and 90s films and tv shows - just some tastes of this brilliant collection ☀️
Cortez calls this a work a Afrofrontierism and Afropioneerism, a riff on Afrofuturism, recalling her childhood in Utah and it's history of "pioneers", her family's history with the Latter Day Saints, and her family's own genealogy of Black people in this western US state.
This is a nominee for the National Book Award for Poetry 2022 - and the only one I've read of the list - but I'd be quite happy to see it take the top honor. ✨
July 17, 2023
From the first look at the cover art, I was intrigued. Rio Cortez is the popular author of a children's book: THE ABCs OF BLACK HISTORY. I definitely wanted to check out her debut poetry collection as well.
The poet seeks to create space parallel to Afrofuturism, with what she identifies as Afropioneerism or Afrofrontierism.
Cortez further describes her debut poetry collection as both autopoetry (did I just create a genre name?) and a work of imagination.
The author is correct in observing that not enough is known about Black settlers in the Western frontier, most often because there was resistance to anyone telling that story.
Cortez focuses her work in a two-fold approach, by bringing forth the external story of how Black settlers came to and then stayed in the Frontier West, and also the interior story of their experiences as Afropioneers.
In the introduction, she beautifully states her conviction to this project: "My family were Afropioneers and they embodied the Afroftontier. Over a century later, I am claiming this name and this space for them. The land where Utah exists haunts our story, but we are even more vast. And we know that because we imagine ourselves into existence."
After reading the intro, go back and look at the cover art again. Does your perspective and understanding of details in the image change? It did for me, bringing more clarity.
The slim volume is divided up into three parts, like stages of a long journey.
It makes perfect sense that growing up Black in Utah meant coming up with some kind of origin story, an interrogation of self. Science fiction is a natural fit: an extension of feeling like a singular anomaly in an unusually homogeneous setting. Cortez reminds of the parallels, using science fiction as a lens. Don't both extraterrestrial experiences and chattel slavery begin with abduction?
Cortez demonstrates how the past is imprinted upon a place, and on its people. Even if the character of a place drastically changes, the ghost of what it once was, remains.
If a person is prevented from learning about their own origin story, they will have to invent one for themselves. We all need a foundation, a beginning.
The feeling I get from these poems is one of "What am I doing here/Do I belong here?" combined not with a sense of being totally invisible, but of feeling insubstantial, not really present, and always in two places at once, like a time-traveler. This is also the second poet I've read this year who sees time as a circle.
And as author Katie Williams has also related, Rio Cortez concurs that part of loving a child is that part of you is in them, and this becomes a way of loving yourself.
This poetry collection covers a wide expanse of feelings and subjects. The author invites a close reading of her poems.
The main takeaway? As she says at the end, you can't move through your own story, until it is told.
The poet seeks to create space parallel to Afrofuturism, with what she identifies as Afropioneerism or Afrofrontierism.
Cortez further describes her debut poetry collection as both autopoetry (did I just create a genre name?) and a work of imagination.
The author is correct in observing that not enough is known about Black settlers in the Western frontier, most often because there was resistance to anyone telling that story.
Cortez focuses her work in a two-fold approach, by bringing forth the external story of how Black settlers came to and then stayed in the Frontier West, and also the interior story of their experiences as Afropioneers.
In the introduction, she beautifully states her conviction to this project: "My family were Afropioneers and they embodied the Afroftontier. Over a century later, I am claiming this name and this space for them. The land where Utah exists haunts our story, but we are even more vast. And we know that because we imagine ourselves into existence."
After reading the intro, go back and look at the cover art again. Does your perspective and understanding of details in the image change? It did for me, bringing more clarity.
The slim volume is divided up into three parts, like stages of a long journey.
It makes perfect sense that growing up Black in Utah meant coming up with some kind of origin story, an interrogation of self. Science fiction is a natural fit: an extension of feeling like a singular anomaly in an unusually homogeneous setting. Cortez reminds of the parallels, using science fiction as a lens. Don't both extraterrestrial experiences and chattel slavery begin with abduction?
Cortez demonstrates how the past is imprinted upon a place, and on its people. Even if the character of a place drastically changes, the ghost of what it once was, remains.
If a person is prevented from learning about their own origin story, they will have to invent one for themselves. We all need a foundation, a beginning.
The feeling I get from these poems is one of "What am I doing here/Do I belong here?" combined not with a sense of being totally invisible, but of feeling insubstantial, not really present, and always in two places at once, like a time-traveler. This is also the second poet I've read this year who sees time as a circle.
And as author Katie Williams has also related, Rio Cortez concurs that part of loving a child is that part of you is in them, and this becomes a way of loving yourself.
This poetry collection covers a wide expanse of feelings and subjects. The author invites a close reading of her poems.
The main takeaway? As she says at the end, you can't move through your own story, until it is told.
September 3, 2022
The “best poetry I read this year” competition is already a fierce battle and then BAM in comes this piece of gloriousness. Even the author’s note is so beautiful I’ve continued to reread it along with the poems. As a whitey-white, I have to take others’ words as to how deeply they speak to the Black condition (look up Roxane Gay’s review), but I can certainly testify to how deeply they speak to the human condition—these poems are a well you will never touch the bottom of.
“…………………….What is it that they say God
is subject to? Continuous Revelation. It feels
like a loophole, but, it takes a lot to admit
when you’re wrong.”
There are definitely some poems here that are total brain twisters and there are others that so easily unravel things you’ve never really been able to put words to yourself.
I did write a list of faves but these aren’t even where most of my underlines are so… just read the book.
My faves are:
North Node
The Idea of Ancestry
Emancipation Queen (this one twists my brain so hard)
Black Lead in a Nancy Meyers Film (/swoon/)
Ars Poetica with Mother and Dogs
“…………………….What is it that they say God
is subject to? Continuous Revelation. It feels
like a loophole, but, it takes a lot to admit
when you’re wrong.”
There are definitely some poems here that are total brain twisters and there are others that so easily unravel things you’ve never really been able to put words to yourself.
I did write a list of faves but these aren’t even where most of my underlines are so… just read the book.
My faves are:
North Node
The Idea of Ancestry
Emancipation Queen (this one twists my brain so hard)
Black Lead in a Nancy Meyers Film (/swoon/)
Ars Poetica with Mother and Dogs
October 28, 2025
Sealey Challenge 2025: 24/31
This collection traces a fascinating and often overlooked lineage of Black pioneers. In this, we explore the poet’s family history from the Reconstruction era through their migration westward, culminating in their experience of becoming some of the first Black people in Utah. It’s a compelling premise, one that situates personal history within the broader currents of race, faith, and American expansion.
The opening section is the strongest, grounding the reader in this rich historical context and with some really emotional poems. Here, the poet’s voice feels rooted and assured, weaving together ancestry, place, and belief in a way that feels both intimate and expansive. However, as the collection progresses, that cohesion begins to fray. The later sections feel more fragmented, at times disorienting, and certain pop-cultural references clash with the historical framework established earlier. While I understand the poet intended to bridge past and present in this collection to form this familial history up to the present day, I felt that stylistically the poems reflecting on the past were much better crafted than the ones focusing on the present. There was an unevenness highlighted by these different sections that made the latter half of the collection not resonate as deeply for me personally.
Even so, there’s something ambitious and deeply human in the poet’s attempt to hold so many threads at once and this quest to connect inherited history with contemporary identity. While not always seamless, the collection opens an important window into a little-known facet of the Black American experience and invites readers to consider how migration, religion, and belonging continue to shape family legacies.
This collection traces a fascinating and often overlooked lineage of Black pioneers. In this, we explore the poet’s family history from the Reconstruction era through their migration westward, culminating in their experience of becoming some of the first Black people in Utah. It’s a compelling premise, one that situates personal history within the broader currents of race, faith, and American expansion.
The opening section is the strongest, grounding the reader in this rich historical context and with some really emotional poems. Here, the poet’s voice feels rooted and assured, weaving together ancestry, place, and belief in a way that feels both intimate and expansive. However, as the collection progresses, that cohesion begins to fray. The later sections feel more fragmented, at times disorienting, and certain pop-cultural references clash with the historical framework established earlier. While I understand the poet intended to bridge past and present in this collection to form this familial history up to the present day, I felt that stylistically the poems reflecting on the past were much better crafted than the ones focusing on the present. There was an unevenness highlighted by these different sections that made the latter half of the collection not resonate as deeply for me personally.
Even so, there’s something ambitious and deeply human in the poet’s attempt to hold so many threads at once and this quest to connect inherited history with contemporary identity. While not always seamless, the collection opens an important window into a little-known facet of the Black American experience and invites readers to consider how migration, religion, and belonging continue to shape family legacies.
February 28, 2025
Some clever moments in a few poems, but largely I didn't find any of these revelatory and none made me pause and re-read to savour.
December 12, 2023
My Beloved Finds Me Everywhere but Here
We are both poets
so I ask you
to write me into a poem
and you say: here, this one
is about shaping you
into a wave
or here
you are a horse
with lace reins
and I look
finding only music
or what could be
your mother so
I ask again where am I
and you say: who else
could I mean
when I write: sweet
witch, write: teeth you
say: can't you see it turn
like you do
We are both poets
so I ask you
to write me into a poem
and you say: here, this one
is about shaping you
into a wave
or here
you are a horse
with lace reins
and I look
finding only music
or what could be
your mother so
I ask again where am I
and you say: who else
could I mean
when I write: sweet
witch, write: teeth you
say: can't you see it turn
like you do
April 8, 2024
Read for National Poetry Month 2024.
Interesting group of poems. I found the ones about Utah very compelling. I enjoy learning about minorities living in rural areas, the history. I like how the author shared her family's move to Utah and their interaction with the Mormon institution. It made me want to research to increase my knowledge.
Interesting group of poems. I found the ones about Utah very compelling. I enjoy learning about minorities living in rural areas, the history. I like how the author shared her family's move to Utah and their interaction with the Mormon institution. It made me want to research to increase my knowledge.
October 13, 2024
Picked this up while browsing at the Smithsonian African American History Museum and so glad I did!!!
September 1, 2022
Outstanding! Ethereal, deep, luscious!
May 23, 2022
Thank you to NetGalley for sending me this ARC!!
Honestly this was an incredible poetry collection. There were various formats as how the poetry was told. The language is lyrical and I found myself often times rereading the same poem over and over again. This felt like an intimate collection of poetry that questions life on various levels of experience and identity we as readers may or may not understand and that is 100% okay because AGAIN this was an excellent collection.
One of my favorite poems was titled “I Have Learned to Define a Field as a Space between Mountains” which starts like this - “If I remember a field where I stroked the velvety hound’s-tongue and cracked its purple mouth from stem and it is not a memory, then what we’re the limits of the field?” oof that’s good.
Honestly this was an incredible poetry collection. There were various formats as how the poetry was told. The language is lyrical and I found myself often times rereading the same poem over and over again. This felt like an intimate collection of poetry that questions life on various levels of experience and identity we as readers may or may not understand and that is 100% okay because AGAIN this was an excellent collection.
One of my favorite poems was titled “I Have Learned to Define a Field as a Space between Mountains” which starts like this - “If I remember a field where I stroked the velvety hound’s-tongue and cracked its purple mouth from stem and it is not a memory, then what we’re the limits of the field?” oof that’s good.
May 23, 2022
Every time I come across a book that reminds me why I love language I have to give it five stars.
I've already read some of these poems a dozen times, and I cannot understate the empathy and complexity that Cortez has managed to get on the page here. Communicating immediacy while illustrating the past takes talent. If you've ever been one for poetry - modern, historical, or otherwise I want to see what you make of this collection.
I've already read some of these poems a dozen times, and I cannot understate the empathy and complexity that Cortez has managed to get on the page here. Communicating immediacy while illustrating the past takes talent. If you've ever been one for poetry - modern, historical, or otherwise I want to see what you make of this collection.
November 3, 2022
Beauty always strikes me when I consider it leaving and am hurt by it
how now light enters through the curtains at dusk and I find it beautiful
because it is about to change
(from “What Begets What Begets”)
I consider choosing
there are times
when it is a joy
to remember
I like to think about my people
drinking fresh buttermilk
from the chosen farms
of their other people
all of us gazing
back at the house
framed by our future knowing
filling up on fresh tomatoes
and after
maybe lying like the silk calf
in the deerwood and the aster
and never-ending
(from “The Idea of Ancestry”)
I’m here to learn a lesson. I spent my other lives in the Nevada desert, where I only did what felt good. What could that mean? I reconcile the pleasure in lying naked on the hot sand of the Mojave, watching the braided muscles in a horse’s hind legs with the ocean nowhere, a frying chest on the hood of an idle car. So comes a lesson, I’m here to cut the scorpion from my throat. Even though it has dragged me through sweet darkness and time. Even now, in the stillness of home, in love and full of wine, it wraps its eight legs around me. Even through the lilies, it sets its many eyes on me and, suddenly, longing
(from “North Node”)
how now light enters through the curtains at dusk and I find it beautiful
because it is about to change
(from “What Begets What Begets”)
I consider choosing
there are times
when it is a joy
to remember
I like to think about my people
drinking fresh buttermilk
from the chosen farms
of their other people
all of us gazing
back at the house
framed by our future knowing
filling up on fresh tomatoes
and after
maybe lying like the silk calf
in the deerwood and the aster
and never-ending
(from “The Idea of Ancestry”)
I’m here to learn a lesson. I spent my other lives in the Nevada desert, where I only did what felt good. What could that mean? I reconcile the pleasure in lying naked on the hot sand of the Mojave, watching the braided muscles in a horse’s hind legs with the ocean nowhere, a frying chest on the hood of an idle car. So comes a lesson, I’m here to cut the scorpion from my throat. Even though it has dragged me through sweet darkness and time. Even now, in the stillness of home, in love and full of wine, it wraps its eight legs around me. Even through the lilies, it sets its many eyes on me and, suddenly, longing
(from “North Node”)
Read
October 5, 2022There were a few poems in here I really liked, but I had a hard time connecting to most. I love the cover and the intro note at the beginning, and generally was really into the concept of what Rio Cortez was exploring here. Just didn’t hit like I was hoping. I may try to revisit this one another time.
November 14, 2022
I will now immediately reread this collection.
February 3, 2023
I really liked some. Other poems were just not for me.
April 1, 2024
Genius
Read
July 8, 2022What really stuck out to me was the way that the collection was divided into sections of past, present, and future, and how each was almost a nod to the next even though the styles and topics in each were vastly different. This one really kept me engaged, wanting to see where the next poem would lead, and I ended up finishing it quickly. I’m not sure that I have ever read another collection like this one, and I’m not complaining.
August 24, 2022
Beautiful writing that goes deep and made me pause to think and reread to let it sink in. Wonderful collection!
September 19, 2022
5 stars all around! I don’t normally read poetry books but I read an interview with Rio Cortez. (I’ve been following her since The ABC’s of Black History) and I decided to pick it up, and wow! She has made me a poetry book reader! It’s beautiful. I will also be picking up her other poetry collection “ I have learned to define a field as a space between mountains”.
Fantastic.
Fantastic.
October 24, 2022
Loveeeeeddd this!!
March 23, 2023
somewhere between tenderness and rapture
October 12, 2022
4.5 stars
June 24, 2023
SO good. Afrofuturism’s energy with the imagery and landscape of Jordan Peele’s “Nope.” The poet describes this persona piece as Afropioneerism or Afrofrontierism.
September 2, 2023
This was such a beautiful collection of poems. I’d say that this book is not exactly beginner friendly, I.e. not for those who are just starting to read poetry, but all in all I found it to be a wonderful book.
August 1, 2022
gorgeous and heartbreaking and a great introduction to afropioneerism for me. absolute favorite poem was “Black Lead in a Nancy Meyers Film”
October 25, 2023
“Golden Ax” is another collection from NYPL’s “Best New Poetry Books” list. Rio Cortez is an African-American poet from Utah. This poetry collection is about “Afropioneerism”/“Afrofrontierism” (essentially, stories of black people as explorers and settlers in the American frontier). She attempts to wrestle with how her family moved from Louisiana to Utah, where there are few black people.
The first section is filled with these “Afropioneerism” poems. These were great. She lost me a bit, however, in the subsequent sections on various topics.
Stand out poem for me:
Covered Wagon as Spaceship
Standing unseen in the little bluestem,
curious and not quite used to living,
I consider whether it’s aliens
that brought Black folks to the canyons, valley. Standing in the great evaporation
of a lake, holy dandelion for
eyes, full and white and searching the landscape for understanding: how do you come
to be where there are no others, except
science fiction? I am a child feeling extraterrestrial; whose history, untold,
is not enough. Anyway, it begins with abduction
The first section is filled with these “Afropioneerism” poems. These were great. She lost me a bit, however, in the subsequent sections on various topics.
Stand out poem for me:
Covered Wagon as Spaceship
Standing unseen in the little bluestem,
curious and not quite used to living,
I consider whether it’s aliens
that brought Black folks to the canyons, valley. Standing in the great evaporation
of a lake, holy dandelion for
eyes, full and white and searching the landscape for understanding: how do you come
to be where there are no others, except
science fiction? I am a child feeling extraterrestrial; whose history, untold,
is not enough. Anyway, it begins with abduction
March 1, 2023
Cortez's poems do many intriguing things. They uncover a lost history, a black mythology of sorts, as the speaker searches for both personal and collective legacies. They also shed light on the common viewpoint of black success, recasting Annie Hall and Frasier Crane as black but within their signature white-privileged roles. I'm not sure the lack of emotive or evocative language here works for some of the poems, though they lack not of lyricism or creative imagery; while I deeply appreciate that Cortez does not wax sentimentalism, there is some degree of distancing in the way she postures her speaker in polished images and meticulous phrases. An element of something genuine feels a bit missing.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 110 reviews