This book was required reading for a graduate class that I had, and I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed it, it was simply great. I was introduced to many poets whom I'd never heard of and that was the best part, because I feel that many Blacks don't know about poets who were not mainstream, this leaves a lot of important writers to dangle in the wind without every being recognized by the very people for whom they wrote. This book was great in particular I liked the seculars they were hilarious, they reminded me of the epitaths we used to read in American Lit in high school. Great little book!!!!

I was introduced to this text as an black poetry starved undergraduate about 15 years ago. It simply mesmerized me...was literally a book that I carried around in my pocket for years. Now as a professor of Africana Studies and English, I almost feel priveleged to share this book with my students as some are mesmerized for the first time and I get mesmerized again and again. Dudley Randall remains one of the overlooked giants of black literature...not so much for his own work, but his commitment to building the canon, like his work at Broadside Press with then young poets like Sonia Sanchez and Don. L. Lee (Haki Madhubuti) and this volume of poetry.