Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets' Cafe

From New York to Nashville, Boston to L.A., a bohemian rhapsody of rap swagger is spreading across the land. As the New York Observer writes: "the poetry corpse is stirring," its beating heart is "'a big, dark, brick-walled loft on Third Street and Avenue C called the Nuyorican Poets Café. It's democratic, multicultural....sometimes funny, sometimes ribald. It has the vitality of vulgarity." So here they are -everyone from founding poets Miguel Pinero, Ntozake Shange, and Piri Thomas to Maggie Estep, Nicole Breedlove, Mike Tyler, Reg. E. Gaines, Edwin Torres, Paul Beatty, Jimmy Santiago Baca, and a hundred others. SC, 514 pages.