Joanne Gabbin's poetry projects keep blooming.

Gabbin, who teaches English at James Madison University, has finished editing an anthology, "Furious Flower: African American Poetry from the Black Arts Movement to the Present."

The book, which follows a collection of essays Gabbin edited, "The Furious Flowering of African American Poetry," will be published by the University of Virginia Press in 2003.

The anthology features about 45 poets, most involved with the Furious Flower black poetry conference Gabbin organized at JMU in 1994.

Poems in the book are from the 1960s to the '90s and include work by the late Pulitzer-Prize winning Gwendolyn Brooks, Lucille Clifton, Rita Dove, Cornelius Eady, Nikki Giovanni, Michael Harper, Eugene Redmond and Sonia Sanchez.

"Furious flower" comes from a line in a poem by Brooks.

Themes of poems include civil rights, and some reflect "the impact of the vernacular or folk thread" from spirituals, blues, stories and food, Gabbin says. "All of those things inspire the literature."

Amiri Baraka and some other poets featured were involved with the black arts movement of the '60s and '70s.

That movement "emphasized the arts as weapons to advance black people, black concerns, a movement that wanted to yield social change," says Gabbin, who directs the honors program at JMU.

Some of the collection's younger writers are involved with performance poetry, which features elements of drama when read live.

"I think many of these younger poets don't get a chance to publish in a book," says Penny Kaiserlian, director of the University of Virginia Press. "It will bring them to the attention of a different kind of audience."

The book, which may be used in classrooms, will appeal to a general readership, too, Kaiserlian says.

Kevin Young, Natasha Trethewey and other younger poets will be featured in the second Furious Flower poetry conference, to be at JMU in September 2004.

The Furious Flower Poetry Center that Gabbin started at JMU will raise money for the conference.

With social changes since the '60s, "Black poets don't always have to have a racial message. That's the good thing about this century," Gabbin says. "Now black poets have the opportunity to be poets in the fullest sense."

Contact Jessica Clarke at 574-6277 or jsclarke@dnronline.com

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