Volume 18, Issue 4

FRONT COVER: Romare Bearden
The Sea Nymph
COLLAGE

Table of Contents

CHANT OF SAINTS: A Gathering of Afro-American Literature Art and Scholarship

Frontispiece: Montage, by Romare Bearden

Packwood’s Sermon by Firelight, Fiction by Leon Forrest

“If He Changed My Name”: an Interview with Leon Forrest, Non-Fiction by Maria Mootry

Names; Astronauts; Zinnias; A Letter from Phillis Wheatley; from The Snow Lamp, Poetry by Robert Hayden

In My Father’s House, Fiction by Ernest J. Gaines

Uplift From a Dark Tower and Other Poems, Poetry by Michael S. Harper

The Art of Romare Bearden, Non-Fiction by Ralph Ellison

Odysseus, collages by Romare Bearden; six illustrations and a portrait photograph of the artist by Niki Ekstrom, with a foreword by Calvin Tomkins

from Almeyda, Fiction by Gayl Jones

Gayle Jones: An Interview, by Michael S. Harper

Love’s Dozen, Poetry by Jay Wright

Covenant of Timelessness & Time: Robert Hayden’s Angle of Ascent, Non-Fiction by Wilburn Williams

Toward a World Black Literature Community, Non-Fiction by Melvin Dixon

Late Coltrane , Fiction by Kimberly W. Benston

An Image of Africa, Non-Fiction by Chinua Achebe

from Schooner, Flight, Poetry by Derek Walcott


The Singer in the Song: Autobiography & Time in The OdysseyNon-Fiction by Roger J. Porter

Ballad of the Moon, The Moon; The Unfaithful Wife, Poetry by Federico García Lorca, Translated by Meg Bogin

The Special Relationship: Britain Through American Eyes, Non-Fiction by A.S. Eisenstadt

Contributors

Chinua Achebe is the author of A Man of the People and Things Fall Apart.

Major collections of the work of Romare Bearden are at the Metropolitan and Whitney museums in New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Author of Baraka: The Renegade and the Mask, Kimberly W. Benston is a graduate student at Yale.

Melvin Dixon teaches English and American studies at Williams.

Ralph Ellison is the author of Invisible Man, and Shadow and Act.

A former editor of Muhammed Speaks, Leon Forrest has written two novels, There Is a Tree More Ancient than Eden and The Bloodworth Orphans.

Novelist and story writer Ernest J. Gaines‘s books include Bloodline and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.

Robert Hayden is currently Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress.

Gayl Jones, author of two novels, Corregidora and Eva’s Man, teaches at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

Maria K. Mootry is at Northwestern.

Calvin Tomkins is the author of a Nov. 28, 1977 New Yorker profile of Romare Bearden.

Derek Walcott is the distinguished poet and playwright from St. Lucia, West Indies; a collection of his best-known plays, Dream on Monkey Mountain and Other Plays, is published by Noonday.

Wilburn Williams, Jr. teaches English and Afro-American studies at Wesleyan.

Jay Wright has published four books of verse and teaches at Yale.