Cover -- Contents -- Introduction -- Melba Joyce Boyd -- Roses and Revolutions -- IMAGES FROM BLACK BOTTOM -- Essays -- The Black Aesthetic in the Thirties, Forties, and Fifties -- Poems -- Old Witherington -- For Pharish Pinckney, Bindle-Stiff during the Depression -- Vacant Lot -- Ghetto Girls -- Laughter in the Slums -- George -- Short Stories -- A Cup for the Loser -- Victoria -- WARS: AT HOME AND ABROAD -- Poems -- Memorial Wreath -- The Southern Road -- Legacy: My South -- Games -- Rx -- Jailhouse Blues -- The Apparition -- Spring before a War -- Helmeted Boy -- Football Season -- Pacific Epitaphs -- The Ascent -- Coral Atoll -- Wait for Me (Zhdi Myenya) -- My Native Land (Rodina) -- THE CIVIL RIGHTS ERA -- Essays -- Toward Mount Olympus: Ubi Sunt and Hic Sum -- White Poet, Black Critic -- Short Stories -- The Cut Throat -- Shoe Shine Boy -- Incident on a Bus -- Poems -- Booker T. and W. E. B. -- Ballad of Birmingham -- Dressed All in Pink -- Hymn -- Frederick Douglass and the Slave Breaker -- Interview -- The Dilemma -- Poet -- Aphorisms -- The Intellectuals -- Straight Talk from a Patriot -- Daily News Report -- Blood Precious Blood -- A Leader of the People -- Essay -- Melvin B. Tolson: Portrait of a Poet as Raconteur -- POEMS ON MISCELLANEOUS SUBJECTS -- Hail, Dionysos -- Analysands -- Winter Campus: Ann Arbor -- Shape of the Invisible -- Nocturne -- Augury for an Infant -- Belle Isle -- Verse Forms -- Poem, on a Nude, from the Ballet, to Debussy's Prelude L'Après-Midi D'un Faune, after Mallarme's L'Après-Midi D'un Faune -- Killing a Bug -- LOVE POEMS -- I Loved You Once (Ya Vas Lyubil) -- The Profile on the Pillow -- Good to Be in You -- Thunderstorm -- Black Magic -- The Brightness Moved Us Softly -- Love Poem -- Sanctuary -- Love Song -- April Mood -- Loss -- Green Apples -- Anniversary Words -- DIALECTICS OF THE BLACK AESTHETIC.

Essays -- Black Power -- Black Publisher, Black Writer: An Answer -- Poems -- Black Poet, White Critic -- The Rite -- Primitives -- The Melting Pot -- Justice -- Langston Blues -- Seeds of Revolution -- An Answer to Lerone Bennett's Questionnaire On a Name for Black Americans -- Put Your Muzzle Where Your Mouth Is (Or Shut Up) -- The Idiot -- Informer -- F.B.I. Memo -- Abu -- The Militant Black Poet -- Sniper -- Tell It Like It Is -- Beasts -- After the Killing -- To the Mercy Killers -- Ancestors -- A Different Image -- In Africa -- African Suite -- Essay -- Black Emotion and Experience: The Literature for Understanding -- THE LAST LEAP OF THE MUSE -- A Poet Is Not a Jukebox -- My Muse -- Translation from Chopin -- Detroit Renaissance -- Bag Woman -- The Aging Whore -- Poor Dumb Butch -- To an Old Man -- Afterword: Happiness -- Appendix 1: Poetry Books by Dudley Randall, with Contents -- Appendix 2: A Capsule Course in Black Poetry Writing -- Selected Bibliography.