Mongane Wally Serote was born four years prior to the coming to power of the National Party and the establishment of apartheid in South Africa. Always conscious of himself in relation to his society, Serote in his life and writing provides a chronicle of and commentary on the apartheid era. A paraphrase of a section from an early poem, "Ofay-Watcher, Throbs-Phase" (1972)--"blacks must learn to talk; whites must learn to listen"--has attained the status of a local proverb. As one of the most prominent South African poets, he is primarily known for the passionate intensity of his work, his uncompromising commitment to political liberation, the breadth of his sympathies, and the tension he maintains between the clichéd image or expression and the startlingly original one. Apart from his volumes of poetry he has also written one novel, various short stories, and many essays dealing...