Frank Marshall Davis nearly faded from the pages of American literary history when he left the United States mainland in 1948. Once hailed as a "Newer Negro," Davis wrote poetry that demonstrated a talent for "realistic portraiture," irony, and knowledge of black life and seemed to fulfill the unfinished promise of the New Negro Renaissance poets. Then Davis abandoned a promising career as journalist and poet for the comparative quiescence of Hawaii. Except for a few poems published in 1950, he was virtually silent until 1973, when he was "rediscovered" by literary critic Stephen Henderson and poet-publisher Dudley Randall, who dubbed Davis the "mystery poet," since little had been heard of him for twenty-five years. Mystery or not, on a 1973 tour of black colleges arranged by Henderson, Davis was enthusiastically greeted by students as "the long lost father of modern Black poetry" who had been "twenty years ahead of his time...