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| Preface | |
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| Introduction | |
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| The Second Sermon on the Warpland | |
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| Winnie | |
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| A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi. Meanwhile, a Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon | |
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| We Real Cool | |
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| The Near-Johannesburg Boy | |
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| Uncle Seagram | |
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| The Apple Trees in Sussex | |
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| A Moment, Please | |
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| The Lingering Doubt | |
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| To Satch | |
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| My Trip | |
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| Forever Afternoon | |
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| Song of the Wheel | |
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| Girl at the Window | |
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| Lyric: I Am Looking at Music | |
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| Children | |
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| Reluctant Light | |
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| The Last Happy Day | |
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| Packrat | |
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| For Gwendolyn Brooks: As I Civilize a Space | |
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| Where the Grieved Ones Sat | |
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| The Drowned River | |
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| Harlem Suite | |
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| Forerunner | |
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| Baobab | |
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| Nat Turner in the Clearing | |
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| James Baldwin, 1924-1987 | |
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| December 1982/Detroit | |
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| I Am | |
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| In the Funk World | |
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| John Coltrane (1926-1967) | |
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| Ballad | |
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| Letter to Ezekiel Mphahlele | |
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| Under a Soprano Sky | |
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| For Sweet Honey in the Rock | |
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| Philadelphia: Spring, 1985 | |
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| For Sister Gwen Brooks | |
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| Dialysis | |
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| Donor | |
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| 1994 | |
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| There It Is | |
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| The Guitars I Used to Know | |
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| The Heavy Headed Dance | |
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| New York Seizures | |
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| 11-haiku-poem for a magnificent million | |
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| Dear John, Dear Coltrane | |
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| Last Affair: Bessie's Blues Song | |
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| High Modes: Vision as Ritual: Confirmation | |
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| Summer Worlds: A Mythic Landscape | |
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| Aboriginal Elegy: The Once and Future Queen | |
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| O Lord of Light! A Mystic Sage Returns to Realms of Eternity | |
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| Be-Bop | |
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| History, Hollers, and Horn | |
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| Ornate with Smoke | |
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| from Mary | |
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| The Minks | |
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| After a Reading at a Black College | |
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| For Black Women Who Are Afraid | |
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| From Ground Zero | |
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| How Could All That Have Happened Here? | |
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| Time Break | |
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| Books as Answer | |
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| The B Network | |
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| Mothers | |
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| Greed | |
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| They Are All Falling around Me | |
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| The Wrong Kitchen | |
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| Legacies | |
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| Nikki-Rosa | |
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| I Have Felt the Gulf: Mississippi | |
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| Journey 55 | |
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| After the Report from Iron Mountain | |
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| Dangerous Doubts | |
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| L'Argent | |
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| Back in the Day | |
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| Songs for My Father | |
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| Sharing is hereditary | |
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| The Call of the Wild | |
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| Directions for Understanding Modern Jazz Criticism | |
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| Taproots | |
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| Ambrosia | |
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| Remains | |
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| Spookism | |
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| Contraband | |
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| Coming Ashore | |
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| Jazz Rain | |
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| Padded Steps/Sister Song (a litany) | |
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| Wisdom Is | |
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| Memory Waves | |
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| Roy Campanella: January, 1958 | |
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| Bringing Back the Draft | |
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| Whispers, Secrets, and Promises | |
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| The "N" Word | |
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| This Poem Is for You, My Sister | |
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| We've Come This Far | |
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| Thelonius | |
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| The Poets | |
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| Freedom Ride | |
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| Claudette Colvin Goes to Work | |
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| Rosa | |
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| The Enactment | |
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| Eulogy for Sister | |
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| The Taste of Life Going On | |
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| How I Got Born | |
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| Composite | |
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| Birthing | |
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| The Tan Chanteuse | |
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| From Birmingham to Bristol in a Boxcar | |
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| Queen Ijo's Blues | |
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| Airport | |
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| Black Girl Tap Dancing | |
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| Offering | |
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| Night Work | |
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| Hunger | |
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| Distance | |
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| Memorization | |
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| Geography | |
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| The Josephine Baker Museum | |
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| At the Beach | |
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| Passage | |
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| 1st Lt. Vernon J. Baker: Hero on the Hill (Company C, 370th Infantry Regiment, 92nd Division) | |
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| Let's Just Tell It | |
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| Baby's Breath | |
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| Fireflies in a Jar | |
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| Thursday Poem | |
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| Subterranean Night-Colored Magus | |
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| Sir Nose D'VoidofFunk | |
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| View of the Library of Congress from Paul Laurence Dunbar High School | |
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| After C (3): Tayloriana | |
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| The Haymarket | |
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| Limen | |
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| Bellocq's Ophelia | |
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| Drapery Factory, Gulfport, Mississippi, 1956 | |
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| Indian Song | |
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| Block Party | |
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| To Afaa Michael S. Weaver | |
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| Some Kind of Crazy | |
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| Quivira City Limits | |
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| Everywhere Is out of Town | |
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| East Jesus | |
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| Poetic Retrospective: A Blooming in the Valley Garrett McDowell | |
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| Notes on the Poets | |
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| Acknowledgments | |