Customer Reviews

The Before Columbus Foundation Poetry Anthology

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This book is quite simply one of the best ways to see a complete picture of what America is by way of poetry. Even though the selected poetry is obviously limited to the Before Columbus Foundation Book Awards, the selections are wonderful. This fact only validitates the necessity and power of the book series and the extremely woderful editing of the anthology. What's more, the editors take turns in introducing the poets and their poetry.

As someone who grew up in rural Utah, I did not readily take the opportunity to read a varied set of voices. When I bought this book while I was in the Army, I felt that I truly began my education in reading multi-cultural voices in poetry. I had heard names like Allen Ginsberg and Amiri Baraka (both included in this anthology) but suddenly I was reading Larry Neal, Ai, Etheridge Knight, Tato Laviera, and Jayne Cortez.

My favorite selections from this book are from the poets Larry Neal, Etheridge Knight, Amiri Baraka, and Frank Stanford. Each poem from these selections (and really the whole book) is powerful and essential to the education of Americans. My copy of this book is dog eared and worn because even after eight years I still read from it at least once a week. If you can get a copy of this book, do it.