In the second half [read part one] of “Visionary Literature,” literature scholar Keith Leonard and poet/literary activist Ethelbert Miller conclude by bringing the conversation home (literally D.C.) concerning the increasingly slippery nature of “black” identity and the need for fostering more apprenticeship and speaking of truth to power among contemporary writers.

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Hairston, Alena. The Logan Topographies. New York, NY: Persea, 2007. 57 pp. $13.95 (paper). [View Title on Goodreads.com] About three-fourths of the way through Alena Hairston’s ambitious first book, The Logan Topographies, a poem concludes: “Without the telling there is no record / without the record a question will form yet never sing” (47). A [...]

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