First of a two-part critique of the published works of a major black poet by a professor of English at the University of Chicago. (JM)

Explores the thesis that the terror of militant poetry is mitigated by one step taken backward from the abyss of despair, a retreat into the saving grace of laughter, analyzing poetry by Mari Evans, Dudley Randall, Don L. Lee, Mikki Giovanni, and other young militant black poets. (Author/JM)

Discusses Hughes' poetry as it was shaped by three influences: the free verse--imagist--realist schools'' popular during the first third of this century; the African and Afro-American oral and literary folk traditions; and, the essential Hughes. (Author/JM)

Contends that Don L. Lee's work demands that the black poet, in a mutual alliance with black people, interchange, formulate, communicate, possess, and strengthen" his own (Lee's) values as opposed to white values. (RJ)

Discusses Jorge de Lima--born in Uniao dos Palmares, Brazil on April 23, 1893, died in Rio de Janeiro on November 15, 1953--who during the Twenties became an important member of the literary movement known as Modernism and wrote both religious and regional poetry constituting the beginnings of a Afro-Brazilian poetry. (Author/JM)

Discusses Nicolas Guillen who is, perhaps, the most famous of black Hispanic poets, and the most familiar to Afro-Americans who know his work through the translations of Langston Hughes. (Author/JM)