"The poet Melvin B. Tolson (1898-1966) was once recognized as one of black America's most important modernist voices. Playful, fluent, and intellectually sophisticated, his poems stirred up significant praise, and some lively criticism, during his lifetime but have been out of print for decades and essentially left out of the literary canon. With the publication of this firs ..."
"Black Nature is the first anthology to focus on nature writing by African American poets, a genre that until now has not commonly been counted as one in which African American poets have participated.Black poets have a long tradition of incorporating treatments of the natural world into their work, but it is often read as political, historical, or protest poetry―anything but nature poetry. This is particularly true when the definition o ..."
"This book, enhanced by a moving introduction by Rita Dove and useful notes by editor Raymond Nelson, provides the text for a renewed appreciation of one of the great talents in AfricanAmerican poetry."
"Robert. M. Famsworth. The artist is a Zinnia no first frost blackens with a cloven
hoof; an eyeglass —in the eye of a dusty wind— to study the crosses and tangles
in warp and woof; an evergreen cherry parasitic upon a winter sun; a paltry thing
with varicose veins when the twelve fatigues are done. * Melvin B. Tolson's birth
date, February 6, 1898, is not far from the birth date of the twentieth century. As a
social activist, teach ..."