Black Pow-Wow: Jazz Poems

Kirkus Reviews reviewed the Hill & Wang edition of Black Pow-Wow:

“Ted Joans’ first big book for a major publisher is an exciting and energetic collection (136 pages) of black poetry. A remarkable person emerges from these pages, a man dealing with his identity and responsibility as a black man, as a traveller whose wanderings take him from Timbuktu to Harlem. Whether writing about topical concerns or more personal matters, his means of expressing himself are often blunt, but the honesty is always there, as are his own doubts and fears. The poems cover a broad range of subject matters, tapping the incidentals such as the poet’s favorite hat, but the strongest works are those in praise of his mentors and black brothers, notably Langston Hughes, Malcolm X, Le Roi Jones, Stokely Carmichael, Eldridge Cleaver. His poems attempt to capture the speech patterns and rhythms of black America, but his influences are as various as the places he writes about, and the strongest one is probably that of Andre Breton, the French Surrealist. Like Breton, he sees himself as a visionary and a revolutionary and the book Black Pow-Wow is definitely one of the most exhilarating collections to emerge in the last few years.”

Published September 1, 1969.