Includes indexes.

Resurrection of the errand girl: an introduction -- The hard * headed -- Red velvet -- Left -- My time up with you -- Plunder -- The Condoleezza suite -- Concerto no. 5: Condoleezza & intransigence -- Concerto no. 7: Condoleezza (working out) at ...

"Had she been worth the blood?" : the lynching of Emmett Till, 1955 -- "Godfearing citizens / with Bibles, taunts and stones" : The Little Rock Crisis, 1957-1958 -- "The FBI knows who lynched you" : the abduction and murder of Mack Charles ...

Includes index. To make a poet Black -- What is Africa to me? -- The rocking loom of history -- Like walking out of shadow -- If we must die -- This man shall be remembered -- A rock against the wind -- Is she our sister? -- Don't it make you ...

Riff, remembrance, and revision -- Listening to what the ear demands : Langston Hughes on the (jazz) record -- Jazz prosody : the gendered contours of the post-soul Coltrane poem -- New traditions, new translations -- Opening the canary's cage : ...

A collection of poems in which Tracy K. Smith examines the discoveries, failures, and oddities of humans.

Poems.