First Light and Other Poems (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780984953684)

Born in 1960 in Newark, New Jersey, Roberts Counts grew up poor in the projects. Incarcerated at twenty, he began to read everything he could find from Shakespeare and Malcolm X to Einstein and Robert Frost. Gradually, he taught himself to write poetry. His poems, signed Ishmael Shamsid-din-as he was known for almost thirty years-deal with ghetto violence, the goodness and beauty of nature, and love as a source of redemption. With wit and lyric energy, Counts shows us what it takes to resist bitterness and nurture hope. "These are poems of struggle: with language, in the first instance; with the mechanisms that spin the universe; with the gods and goddesses of love; but most of all with a recalcitrant self which refuses worn and easy paths." -Paul Lauter, Editor, The Heath Anthology of American Literature

Author: Robert Counts
ISBN-10: 098495368X
ISBN-13: 9780984953684
Publisher: Full Court Press
Language: English
Published: 07/12/2012
Pages: 106
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.27lbs
Size: 8.00h x 5.00w x 0.25d