ABSTRACT
Ray Durem was expelled from the Communist Party because his ideas, especially about racial equality, did not conform to the prescribed ideology. Eugene B. Redmond cites Durem as representing a number of post-1945 African American poets who 'expressed a belief that white liberals were not really interested in mounting the final' chariots of fire on behalf of Blacks. Augmenting the politically-oriented poems selected for Take No Prisoners, Durem's uncollected poems reveal a softer and more personal side to the poet, especially in the autobiographical poems relating to his second family and the final stage of his life including his struggles with illness and mortality. Often discussed as a poet ahead of his time, Durem in hindsight is seen as a bellwether of the 1960s and 1970s endorsement of separatism, nationalism and art which calls for radical political action. But Durem's poetry offers a prescient vision of American culture, especially in relation to practices of oppression, racism and imperialism.
