SOURCE: A review of Airs and Tributes, in Black American Literature Forum, Vol. 23, No. 3, Fall, 1989, pp. 621-26.

In the following review, Baraka faults the poetry in Airs and Tributes as being written to please academics and for failing to fully serve the international "revolutionary struggle."

This new volume of Dennis Brutus carries a multiple significance. Because Brutus is one of the best known of the South African poets in the U.S., we are interested not only in the poetry qua poetry and the life it carries and introduces us to, but because of the nature of the world itself, independent of poetry, Brutus's name carries another set of registrations, which expand the poetry's meaning and at the same time cause the poetry to be covered.

For instance, many readers will probably remember when Ronald Reagan tried to deport Mr. Brutus back to South Africa, even though the...