Amazing Grace An Anthology of Poems About Slavery, 1660-1810

"I wish Basker had been clearer about just what he was claiming in the way of literary interest for his enormous collection. The historical interest, needless to say, is exceptional. Reading Basker's anthology made me, for the first time in my life, find lyric poetry inadequate as a genre. Again and again, the prose in this book...exceeded the poems with their stereotypical figures, reiterated stock situations, and insistent abstractions....Is it possible--I asked myself--that some human circumstances...are better suited to fiction than to lyric? The prose surrounding the institution of slavery can provide layers and layers of fact (or fiction), describing the long arc of slave abduction, the slave revolts, the types of slave labor....But only a small glimpse of this panorama can be included in a lyric.Basker, James G. is the author of 'Amazing Grace An Anthology of Poems About Slavery, 1660-1810' with ISBN 9780300091724 and ISBN 0300091729.