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.

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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)

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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)

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.