American Sublime: Poems

In her fourth remarkable collection, Elizabeth Alexander voices the outcries, dreams and histories of an African American tradition that goes back to the slave rebellion on the Amistad and to artists' canvases of 19th century America. In persona poems, historical narratives, jazz riffs, sonnets, elegies and a sequence of arts poetica, Alexander vividly affirms her place as one of America's most lively and gifted writers.