NEW NEGRO POETS: U.S.A.

A small (128 pages) introduction to 37 postwar Negro poets, among them, Samuel Allen, Oliver La Grone, Gloria Oden, James P. Vaughn, LeRoi Jones, to name a few. Gwondolyn Brooks contributes the introduction in which she still affirms what she wrote some fifteen years ago- ""Every Negro poet has 'something to say' simply because he is a Negro..."" Thus the poetry here, all of it intensely lyrical, may be personal polemical or metaphysical, but in almost all cases it cannot be divorced from the racial responsibility and implication. This is a point of view which some Negro writers today do not share.