The latest addition to Norton's estimable series of literary anthologies is long overdue. Angles of Ascent collects poems from 86 African American poets, all but three of whom hit their strides after 1960--luminaries of American verse like Nikki Giovanni, Ntozake Shange, Carl Phillips, Tracy K. Smith and Kevin Young.
In his introduction, Charles Henry Rowell (founder of Callaloo, The Journal of African Diaspora) characterizes modern African American poets as artists who have already assimilated the struggles of their predecessors--represented here by Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Hayden and Melvin B. Tolson--and, therefore, "do not place at the center of their poetry traditions associated with race and racial politics." The black experience is always somewhere in these more recent works from the "second and third wave" of African American poetry, but seldom overtly expressed in political terms--instead, we find Terrence Hayes's playful references to Fred Sanford in "What I Am," or the basketball metaphors of John Murillo's "Practicing Fade-Aways." And while many poems include cadences of blues and hip-hop rumbling beneath there colloquial narratives, Angles of Ascent also has room for Camille T. Dungy's astounding improvised sonnet sequence: "What to Eat, and What to Drink, and What to Leave for Poison." Arriving as it does at the midpoint of the first black presidency, this anthology is a timely overview of contemporary African American poetry. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.