"William Carlos Williams once wrote that it was difficult to get the news from poetry, but we die from the lack of what is there, and to transpose music, especially African-American music and all it contains into something fresh and revelatory on the page is just as complicated, but makalani bandele proves, page by page, poem by stunning poem, to be up for the task. And what news! under the aegis of a winged mind isn't a book–it's a neighborhood, it's a nation. To quote this fine poet: 'Just listen.' makalani bandele is a poet who is just tuning up."–Cornelius Eady, author of "Brutal Imagination"