...This chapter observes that the post-World War II moment brought a mix of disillusion, uncertainty, anger, and cynicism resonating in the new mass-market venues for radical writers. It presents a brief profile of Aaron Kramer (1921–97), a Jewish American Communist for two decades and a prolific poet...

... of Alice Walker literary work political work poet The Color Purple Meridian southern writer How many maps, in the descriptive or geographical sense, might be needed to deal exhaustively with a given space, to code and decode all its meanings and contents? … It is not only the codes—the map's...

....” The major influences on his artistic and philosophical development during this period were Orientalism, French and American Symbolism, and Imagism. Jean Toomer Aesthetic period Imagism improvisation experimentation poet 1 The red-tiled ships you see reflected, Are nervous, And afraid of clouds...

...Faiz Ahmed Faiz was one of modern South Asia’s most renowned poets, his work a favorite not only of first Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, but of millions. Over the course of his later life, he had to navigate the complex realities of partition, a condition that refracted the larger bi-polar...

...This chapter focuses on young Langston Hughes, an avant-garde New Negro poet, a conduit for both white and black audiences to a racially authentic aesthetic emerging from Harlem's cobblestone streets. As a young crewman on the S.S. Malone, Hughes had left New York for Europe's...

... encountered Francis through the culturally significant channels of history, travel, art, and literature. It traces these encounters through landmark works and popular discussion. This chapter also traces the shifting images of Francis, as proto-Protestant, poet, artistic inspiration, image of Jesus, common...

...This chapter examines the spiritual potential of bodily contact. It investigates the lips, as invoked by this Qur'anic passage, and does so by exploring the body of Shah Hussayn, a Sufi of the Qadiri community and a Punjabi poet, (1539–99 c.e.). The chapter follows his bodily gestures...

...Thirteenth-century Sufi poet, mystic, and legal scholar Muhyi al-Din ibn al-Άrabī gave deep and sustained attention to gender as integral to questions of human existence and moral personhood. Reading his works through a critical feminist lens, this book opens fertile spaces in which new...

...This chapter discusses the concept of dry tears as explained by Ula Taylor—weeping without visible evidence. Taylor learned to weep dry tears when two of her senior colleagues, pioneering literary critic Barbara Christian and renowned poet and activist June Jordan passed away. The loss of these two...