Blue Beat Syncopation

Book excerpt: "In his title poem Stan Banks makes reference to Langston Hughes. I like that. Hughes would be one hundred years old this year. Blue Beat Syncopation could be a tribute to him. It's obvious one will find a little Langston DNA in this book. This is not a crime but a link. Banks writes like someone just back from the Crossroads. Did he sell his soul to give us a collection of poems this good? This book is filled with survival music. The poems are like something Jacob Lawrence or Romare Bearden might have painted. Banks is a poet who has his face in the right window. I know many writers who have moved from the neighborhood and still try to call themselves blues people. If the year was 1926 Countee Cullen would be shaking his head about this collection too. Why is Banks so black and blue? The poems in Blue Beat Syncopation were written during the last twenty-five years. Banks has seen it all. Here is his montage of a poeple still not giving up on a dream." -- E. Ethelbert Miller, Foreword.