You, Therefore Reginald Shepherd   “You, Therefore,” which was first published in APR in 2003, has been taped to my office door for nearly ten years. I want to write about this particular poem of Reginald’s because I have always been in awe of it. Because it continues to do the “top of my head taken off” kind of thing that Emily Dickinson says is the visceral mark of poetry. Because much of the poem’s core is compressed into its title, but the reader doesn’t initially know this. Because after the title’s two word face-off across a deceptively simple dividing line, the poem deftly blends the oratorical with the intimate, via the “but not today” negation at the end of the first line. Because…