Poet Gwendolyn Brooks and others to celebrate African-American poetry on Oct. 28

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks, one of America's most revered cultural figures, will join a host of other notable guests for a special evening devoted to African-American poetry and jazz at U.Va. Oct. 28.

The 8 p.m. event, free and open to the public in Old Cabell Hall Auditorium, marks the publication of two books by the University Press of Virginia that focus on African-American poetry: "Harlem Gallery" and Other Poems of Melvin B. Tolson, edited by U.Va. English professor Raymond Nelson, and The Furious Flowering of African American Poetry, a major collection of interviews and essays edited by James Madison University English professor Joanne V. Gabbin.

Joining Brooks, Nelson and Gabbin will be Tolson's son, Melvin Tolson Jr. The Free Bridge Quintet, a U.Va. jazz faculty ensemble, and vocalist Kyra Gaunt, an assistant professor in the Music Department, will perform at the event.

The Free Bridge Quintet, whose members teach as performance faculty at the University, consists of Jeff Decker on tenor saxophone, John D'earth on trumpet, Bob Hallahan on piano, Pete Spaar on acoustic bass and drummer Robert Jospé.

Gwendolyn Brooks, who in 1949 became the first black poet to win the Pulitzer Prize, is the author of many popular poems that deal with everyday life of urban African Americans. Born in 1917, she has lived in Chicago most of her life.

Her poetry collections include A Street in Bronzeville, The Bean Eaters, Selected Poems, In the Mecca and Children Coming Home. She served as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1985-86.

The new collection of Tolson's poems brings together for the first time the full body of poetry of one of black America's most important modern voices. It includes an introduction by U.Va. English professor and former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove.

James Madison University English professor Joanne V. Gabbin edited The Furious Flowering of African American Poetry, a collection of interviews and essays about black poetry, with its wellsprings in jazz and vernacular culture and its inescapable political dimension. The volume grew out of a major conference at JMU in 1994.