The latest installment of the yearly anthology of contemporary American poetry that has achieved brand-name status in the literary world.

Explores a variety of African-American themes in a selection that includes 'Elegy for Miss Brooks,' a tribute to the late Gwendolyn Brooks, as well as works on Lionel Hampton, Jim Crow, a lynching, and the legacy of the Confederacy.

A new collection of poetry by the author of the critically acclaimed Jelly Roll journeys into the world of film noir as he captures the adventures of a private eye called A.K.A. Jones and ingenue-turned-femme fatale Delilah Redbone and their encounters with The Killer, The Hack, The Director, The Gunsel, The Champ, and The Snitch, among others. Reprint.

A compelling treasury of poetry inspired by the aethetic principles of jazz music and its performers captures the rhythms and energy of jazz in the workds of Langston Hughes, William Carlos Williams, e. e. cummings, Frank O'Hara, Gwendolyn Brooks, Charles Simic, Rita Dove, Mark Doty, Yusef Komunyakaa, Ntozake Shange, and C. D. Wright. 12,500 first printing.

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A collection of poetry that integrates the rhythms of jazz chronicles the dynamic work and brief life of Jean-Michel Basquiat, revealing the artist's rise to success, his struggle with both fame and heroin, his untimely death, and his influential legacy. Original.

A new collection of poetry by the author of the critically acclaimed Jelly Roll journeys into the world of film noir as he captures the adventures of a private eye called A.K.A. Jones and ingenue-turned-femme fatale Delilah Redbone and their encounters with The Killer, The Hack, The Director, The Gunsel, The Champ, and The Snitch, among others.

In a playful, lyrical collection of poetry inspired by the rhythms of the blues, the poet blends traditional lyric diction with African-American idiom to create such lighthearted verses as 'Stride Piano,' 'Gutbucket,' and 'Can-Can.' 12,500 first printing. (view table of contents)

Explores the twentieth-century poet's emulation of the everyday protagonist's search for connection, discussing the accomplishments of such early works as Homage to Mistress Bradstreet, his evocative middle-career writings including the Dream Song, and his wrenching late religious poems.

1980s Painter Jean-Michel Basquiat led a brief, admittedly glamorous and tragic life, finally joining "that stupid club" of cultural figures who self-destructed at an early age. To Repel Ghosts is Kevin Young's ambitious cycle of poems about, inspired by, and in homage to Basquiat. In structure and theme it is a double album, a jazz symphony containing riffs about-and extended rhapsodies of-a pantheon of black genius. Here are ballplayers, boxers, jazz greats: a kaleidoscope of lives emerging from the prism of Basquiat's paintings, which themselves refer to many of these figures, tragic icons who provide a unique foil to Basquiat's own bout with fame. (view table of contents)

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Presents short stories, essays, and poems written by contemporary African-American authors and provides biographical information for each author. (view table of contents)

Encompassing America's African-American landscape and rich oral histories of the South, a poetry collection centers on the concept of 'home' and explores conflicts between Black and white, North and South, and ancestral and modern (view table of contents)