SOURCE: A review of The Essential Etheridge Knight, in The American Book Review, Vol. 9, No. 4, September-October, 1987, p. 1.

Patterson is an American critic. In the following review of The Essential Etheridge Knight, he explores the defining characteristics of Knight's poetry.

Whose idea was it to call this collection The Essential Etheridge Knight, the word Essential laying the poet to rest while at the same time granting him eternal life? A paradox? Certainly a provocation (the essence of Etheridge Knight, the indispensable Etheridge Knight), but also an interesting idea—to have captured the poet's essence and to have found him indispensable.

A photograph on the back cover of The Essential Etheridge Knight shows the mature author looking into the smiling face of a child. Recall the 1968 Broadside Press chapbook Poems from Prison, Knight's first collection. The back cover shows the author seated on a cot in an attitude of willed...