S O S: Poems, 1961-2013

Fusing the personal and the political in high-voltage verse, Amiri Baraka—"whose long illumination of the black experience in America was called incandescent in some quarters and incendiary in others" (New York Times)—was one of the preeminent writers of the past century. This volume comprises the fullest spectrum of his rousing, revolutionary poems, including previously unpublished pieces composed before his death in 2014.

Controversial and polarizing, Baraka was vehemently outspoken against the oppression of African American citizens, and his activism radically altered the discourse surrounding racial inequality. His literary legacy is matched by his widespread influence as a cultural leader. The environments and social values that inspired his poetics changed throughout his life—a trajectory that can be traced in this career-spanning retrospective—from his bohemian youth in Greenwich Village to prominent involvement with the Civil Rights Movement, from his crucial role in the Black Arts movement to his embrace of Marxist philosophy. Praised for its lyricism and introspection, his early poetry emerged from the Beat generation, while his later writing is marked by more rebellious fervor and intensely subversive ideology. Selected and introduced by Paul Vangelisti, S O S: Poems, 1961-2013 is the essential edition of Baraka’s poetic work.