Includes bibliographical references and index.

"This volume appraises distinguished black poets whose careers began to flower between the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, a period of militant integration, and the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s, a decade of militant separatism. Most of these writers were children of the Renaissance, then young adults during World War II, and finally middle-aged artists during the Korean conflict. The poets examined include Melvin Tolson, Robert Hayden, Dudley Randall, Margaret Esse Danner, Margaret Walker, and Gwendolyn Brooks. The interpretive focus shifts from characterization and stylistic evolution to dialectic voices, prophecy, attitude toward the opposite sex, and the theme of recreation. As editor Miller notes, the poets balance mimetic and apocalyptic theories of literature. In Freudian terms they play id against superego; in Derridean terms they reconstruct ethical and phenomenological values aesthetically. Through ballad, sonnet, and free verse, they are the poets of memory, protest, tradition, and cultural celebration"--Book jacket.

SACFinal081324