A Black Odyssey: Collected Poems

This diverse, vibrant book is modeled, like Joyce's Ulysses, on Homer's ancient epic, using it as an allegorical scaffolding for the poet's own experience as a Black man in contemporary America. The author's language runs the gamut from the vernacular to the Elizabethan; everything from pattern poems, free verse, prose poems, sonnets to parodies of Mother Goose. Remarkable in scope, every poem stands on its own while arranged in chapters that lead the reader through an epic journey of human trials-poverty, desire, injustice, racism-and ultimately to a transcendent awareness of beauty, joy, love and personal triumph.