ABSTRACT
In the 1960's and 1970's one of the most important publishing outlets for African American poetry was an unlikely venture run by a Dutchman in London. Breman speculated that the emotion, imagery, and discipline evident in the blues inevitably would have led to the production of other art forms by "American Negroes" including "formal poetry". He started searching for African American poetry. Breman's search for African American poetry initially led him to Rosey Pool, a Dutch Jewish woman who was lecturing on black poetry in Amsterdam at the end of World War II. The canon of African American poetry, especially as it has evolved since World War II, has historically suggested a trajectory that is stylistically conservative and unrelated to the boldest developments of poetic experimentation. Yet formally innovative African American poetry has been produced in sufficient quantity in the last fifty years to justify a wholesale re-examination of the content and character of the genre.
