Every Shut Eye Ain't Asleep is a a rich collection of the work of post-World War II African-American poets. It brings together the voices of the most important African-American poets of our time, beginning with the highly influential Robert Hayden and Gwendolyn Brooks, and covers an astonishing range of styles and techniques. With more than 200 poems included, there are "conventional" masterpieces - virtuoso "color-blind" poems in the tradition of Wordsworth, Keats, and Stevens - as well as a spectrum of passionate and personal pieces rooted in African-American culture and experience. This extraordinary body of poetry is the flowering of an artistic tradition established earlier in this century by Paul Laurence Dunbar, Countee Cullen, and Langston Hughes. The newer work comprises many different visions, ranging from the chiseled and layered modernism of Jay Wright to the plain-spoken ferocity of Sonia Sanchez, from the dazzling witticisms of Ishmael Reed to the plangent lyricism of Rita Dove. What this poetry has in common is its origin in African-American life and culture, its soul-stirring power, and the fact that, to date, the best of it has never been collected in one volume.