Here one of our best-loved poets gathers his most representative work from twelve collections and adds some new pieces as well. An American original, Miller Williams involves the readers emotions and imagination with an effective illusion of plain talk, continually rediscovering what is vital and musical in the language we speak and imagine by.

Poetry. African American Studies. HISTORY AND OTHER POEMS takes as its task nothing less than an examination and mapping of the never-ending evil of history of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the still-palpable effects of European and American colonialism some seven centuries after the making of the New World. Making, breaking and rebuilding language and languages to suit the needs of her characters and the worlds they struggle to survive in and against, Brenda Marie Osbey has created a compelling study of human will and the determination to wrest life and liberty from destinies long ago written out of history as we know it. Aided by an extensive glossary and notes, this volume takes the reader on a series of gruesome journeys across the Americas, from Columbus's first encounter with the Guanahani Indians to the author's native New Orleans, trailing violence, destruction and oppression with every step, marking the geography of evil on the map of this New World. HISTORY AND OTHER POEMS moves from present to past and back again to reveal the trauma of hearts and lives broken even as it underscores the heroic endurance, resilience and agency of the enslaved and their descendants.

This study is about how four representative African American poets in the 1960s, Langston Hughes, Umbra’s David Henderson, and the Black Arts Movement’s Sonia Sanchez, and Amiri Baraka engage, in the tradition of African griots, in poetic dialogues with aesthetics, music, politics, and Black History, and in so doing narrate, using jazz as meta-language, genealogies, etymologies, cultural legacies, and Black (hi)stories. In intersecting and complementary ways, Hughes, Henderson, Sanchez, and Baraka fashioned their griotism from theorizations of artistry as political engagement, and, in turn, formulated a Black aesthetic based on jazz performativity –a series of jazz-infused iterations that form a complex pattern of literary, musical, historical, and political moments in constant cross-fertilizing dialogues with one another. This form of poetic call-and-response is essential for it allows the possibility of intergenerational dialogues between poets and musicians as well as dialogical potential between song and politics, between Africa and Black America, within the poems. More importantly, these jazz dialogisms underline the construction of the Black Aesthetic as conceptualized respectively by the griotism of Hughes, of Henderson, and of Sanchez and Baraka.

An utterly delightful collection of responses to poems written across the centuries, these modern poems are not only engaging themselves but also capable of casting surprising new light on the poems that inspired them.

Profiles twenty-six of the jazz greats of all time, from Count Basie to Louis Armstrong, through a review of their work, their life stories, and their greatest hits by one of today's top jazz performers. A is for "almighty" Louis Armstrong, whose amazingartistry unfolds in an accumulative poem shaped like the letter he stands for. As for sax master Sonny Rollins, whose "robust style radiates roundness," could there be a better tribute than a poetic rondeau? In an extraordinary feat, Pulitzer Prize-winning jazz composer Wynton Marsalis harmonizes his love and knowledge of jazz's most celebrated artists with an astounding diversity of poetic forms-from simple blues (Count Basie) to a complex pantoum (Charlie Parker), from a tender sonnet (Sarah Vaughan) to a performance poem snapping the rhythms of Art Blakey to life.

The editors have collected the jazz-inspired works of close to sixty writers ranging from Julio Cortazar and Jessica Hagedorn to Langston Hughes and Ishmael Reed."Moment's Notice is the best anthology of jazz literature I've ever seen."--Bart Schneider,Hungry Mind Review ¶"The jazz anthology to end all jazz anthologies."--Booklist

Now in paperback Carruth's most recent, prize-winning book.

Coretta Scott King Author Honor Award The stunning voice and hard life of legendary jazz singer Billie Holiday is revealed through evocative, accessible poetry. In 1915, Sadie Fagan gave birth to a daughter she named Eleanora. The world, however, would know her as Billie Holiday, possibly the greatest jazz singer of all time. Eleanora's journey to become a legend took her through pain, poverty, and run-ins with the law. By the time she was fifteen, she knew she possessed something that could possibly change her life--a voice. Eleanora could sing. Her remarkable voice led her to a place in the spotlight with some of the era's hottest big bands. Through a sequence of raw and poignant poems, New York Times best-selling and award-winning poet Carole Boston Weatherford chronicles the singer's young life, her fight for survival, and the dream she pursued with passion.

"Jazz is my religion, and surrealism is my point of view." Ted Joans was one of the first Beat poets in the Greenwich Village arts scene, pioneering a movement that often overlooked his profound contributions. His poetry mixes the rhythms of jazz music with “hand grenades” of truth, and his live reading performance style anticipated the spoken word movement. Black Pow-Wow is a collection of the best of Joans’ early poetry, including such well-known poems as “Jazz Is My Religion,” “Passed On Blues: Homage to a Poet,” and “The Nice Colored Man.” Many of his poems speak to his friends and contemporaries--including Charlie Parker, Jack Kerouac, Allan Ginsberg, Bob Kaufman, Salvador Dali, Andre Breton, and particularly Langston Hughes--as well as his extensive travels across the African continent and around the world. His avante-garde poems also reflect his style as a painter and collage artist, call for social protest, and denounce racism, sexual repression, and injustice. This groundbreaking collection, one of only two mainstream publications Joans produced, perfectly captures the pulse of the Beat Generation and the rhythms of blues.

An introduction to jazz music by one of our finest writers. Langston Hughes, celebrated poet and longtime jazz enthusiast, wrote The First Book of Jazz as a homage to the music that inspired him. The roll of African drums, the dancing quadrilles of old New Orleans, the work songs of the river ports, the field shanties of the cotton plantations, the spirituals, the blues, the off-beats of ragtime -- in a history as exciting as jazz rhythms, Hughes describes how each of these played a part in the extraordinary history of jazz.