With The Jazz Poetry Anthology, this volume offers a comprehensiveexploration of the history of jazz poetry. The Second Set gathers many poets omittedfrom The Jazz Poetry Anthology, including Gwendolyn Brooks, Arthur Brown, Diane diPrima, Henry Dumas, Nikki Giovanni, David Henderson, Anselm Hollo, Haki Madhubuti, Michael McClure, Larry Neal, Dudley Randall, Eugene B. Redmond, Carolyn M. Rodgers, Ntozake Shange, A. B. Spellman, and Jay Wright. The Second Set fills out the historyof jazz poetry with poems written before World War II, as well as those from theBlack Arts Movement of the 1960s, and includes contemporary writers from a range ofcultural backgrounds, including Ai, Rita Dove, Yusef Komunyakaa, Mart n Espada, JoyHarjo, Keorapetse Kgositsile, Michael Longley, Mwatabu Okantah, Charles Simic, Lorenzo Thomas, Derek Walcott, Ron Welburn, and YevgenyYevtushenko.Embracing a wide variety of poems informed by jazz, The Second Set also includes statements of poetics by many of the poetsanthologized.