Collected poems

A ballad of remembrance --

Words in the mourning time --

The night-blooming cereus --

Angle of ascent --

American journal.

Remembering Hayden / Reginald Dwayne Betts. --

A ballad of remembrance (1962), (1966): The diver -- Electrical storm -- Full moon -- Dawnbreaker -- The rabbi -- Belsen, day of liberation -- Approximations -- Snow -- The ballad of Sue Ellen Westerfield -- Night, death, Mississippi -- "An inference of Mexico": Day of the Dead ; Mountains ; Veracruz ; Idol ; Sub specie aeternitatis ; Market ; Kid ; La corrida -- A ballad of remembrance -- Tour -- Gulls -- A road in Kentucky -- Homage to the empress of the blues -- "The burly fading one" -- "Incense of the lucky virgin" -- Witch doctor -- Mourning poem for the queen of Sunday -- "Summertime and the living..." -- The whipping -- Those winter Sundays -- The web -- The wheel -- Perseus -- Theme and variation -- "From the corpse woodpiles, from the ashes" -- Baháu'lláh in the garden of Ridwan -- Middle passage -- O Daedalus, fly away home -- The ballad of Nat Turner -- Runagate runagate -- Frederick Douglass. --

Words in the mourning time (1970): Sphinx -- The dream -- "'Mystery boy' looks for kin in Nashville -- The broken dark -- The mirages -- Soledad -- Aunt Jemima of the ocean waves -- Locus -- On Lookout Mountain -- Kodachromes of the island -- Zeus over redeye -- Unidentified flying object -- El-Haji Malik El-Shabazz -- Words in the mourning time -- Monet's "Waterlillies" -- The lions -- October -- The return -- "Lear is gay" -- A plague of starlings. --

The night-blooming cereus (1972): Richard Hunt's "Arachne" -- The night-blooming cereus -- The performers -- The Peacock Room -- Smelt fishing -- "Dance the Orange" Traveling through fog. --

Angle of ascent (1975): Beginnings -- Free Fantasia : tiger flowers -- For a young artist -- Stars -- Two Egyptian portait masks: Nefert-iti ; Akhenaten -- Butterfly piece -- The moose wallow -- Crispus Attucks. --

American journal (1978), (1982): A letter from Phillis Wheatley -- John Brown -- Theory of evil -- Paul Laurence Dunbar -- Homage to Paul Robeson -- The rag man -- Elegies for Paradise Valley -- Names -- Double feature -- The dogwood trees -- Letter -- Ice storm -- "As my blood was drawn" -- Killing the calves -- The year of the child -- The point -- Zinnias -- The islands -- Bone-flower elegy --

from The snow lamp -- Astronauts -- [American journal]. --

Afterword / Arnold Rampersad --

Notes

Index of titles

Index of first lines.