February 1, 2014
National Book Awardwinning poet Nikky Finney introduces this collection of Baldwin's long unavailable poetry with radiant gratitude and appreciation, declaring him the most salient, sublime, and consequential American writer of the twentieth century. Black, gay, proud, and courageously direct, Baldwin wrote poetry throughout his life, and poetry was the current that powered his novels, essays, and plays. This volume reclaims his blazing, embracing collection, Jimmy's Blues (1983), as well as poems previously found only in a limited edition art book, and they are as potent and significant now as then. The opening poem, Staggerlee wonders, is a rolling, roiling indictment of American lies, racism, genocide, and mayhem. Baldwin writes perceptively and poignantly of time and history, homosexuality as a crime, longing and love, and poses riddles of conscience and spirit. His humor is lashing and sly, his sexiness bold and lithe. Baldwin is thunderous and crooning, rueful and cutting, prayerful and ferocious, questioning and questing. My light is darkness / and in my darkness moves, forever, / the dream or the hope or the fear of sight.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)