SOURCE: A review of The Black Poets, in College English, Vol. 34, No. 7, April, 1973, p. 1006.

In the following excerpt, Ford praises The Black Poets for including in depth the work of forty–five poets, and describes Randall's introduction to the anthology as “illuminating.”

Dudley Randall, outstanding black poet, visiting professor of Black Poetry at the University of Michigan, and director of the Broadside Press, is the editor of The Black Poets (1971). This anthology “presents the full range of black American poetry, from the slave songs to the present day.” Furthermore, the editor's claim that it presents most of the forty-five poets in depth is substantiated by the facts. Thirty-two pages of Folk Poetry under the headings of Folk Seculars (non-religious) and Spirituals are followed by three hundred pages of Literary Poetry organized under the following subtitles: The Forerunners, Harlem Renaissance, Post-Renaissance, and The Nineteen Sixties. All of the most...