Whoever looks to a new book by James Dickey for further work in an established mode, or for mere novelty, is going to be disappointed. But those who seek instead a true widening of the horizons of meaning, coupled with a sure-handed mastery of the craft of poetry, will find this latest collection satisfying indeed.Here is a man who matches superb gifts with a truly subtle imagination, into whose depths he is courageously traveling-pioneering-in exploratory penetrations into areas of life that are too often evaded or denied. "The Firebombing," "Slave Quarters," "The Fiend"-these poems, with the others that comprise the present volume, show a mature and original poet at his finest.

Historian Joel Augustus Rogers provides his evidence that there have been nineteenth- and twentieth-century presidents of the United States who had partial black ancestry, including Harding, Jefferson, Jackson and Lincoln.

These new poems by the author of Saint Judas and The Green Wall embody a sharp break with his earlier work. Their impact is well described by the British critic Michael Hamburger: "He has absorbed the work of modern Spanish and other continental poets and evolved a medium of his own. This medium dispenses with argument and rhetoric, and presents the pure substance of poetry, images which are 'the objective correlatives' of emotion and feeling. It is only in the new collection that Wright has found this wholly distinctive voice."Mr. Wright is well known for his previous books and his contributions to virtually every literary journal of importance. His numerous honors include a Fullbright fellowship, a Kenyon Review fellowship, and many other prizes and awards.

The poems of Robert Bly are rooted deep in the earth. Snow and sunshine, barns and cornfields and cars on the empty nighttime roads, abandoned Minnesota lakes and the mood of America now-these are his materials. He sees and talks clearly: he uses no rhetoric nor mannered striving for effect, but instead the simple statement that in nine lines can embody a mood, reveal a profound truth, illuminate in an important way the inward and hidden life. This is a poet of the modern world, thoroughly aware of the complexities of the moment but equally mindful of the great stream of life-all life-of which mankind is only a part.

Joel Augustus Roger's seminal work, this novel first published in 1917 is a polemic against the ignorance that fuels racism. The central plot revolves around a debate between a Pullman porter and a white racist Southern politician.