Seminal African American poet Etheridge Knight did not begin writing poetry until a robbery conviction sent him to prison in 1960. A Korean War veteran who suffered a shrapnel wound that led to drug addiction, Knight published his first collection in 1968, <i>Poems from Prison</i>, which set him apart as an important new voice in the Black Arts Movement. His second collection, <i>Belly Songs and Other Poems</i> (1973), earned him Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award nominations, and his third collection, <i>Born of a Woman: New and Selected </i>(1980), was also critically acclaimed. <i>The Essential Etheridge Knight</i> is a selection of the best work by one of the country’s most prominent and still-relevant poets, decades after his death. It brings together poems from Knight’s three previously published books and a section of later poems available only in this collection, which features a striking new cover. <br>   Read Less