Songs for the Cleveland Avenue Warriors

Description

Some poets spend their lives within the cloistered walls of colleges and universities. Gary E. Moore has spent his life dedicated to education—but not behind cloistered walls. In over five decades on Earth, he’s been educated by the streets of Chicago’s south side, by a system designed to deal out law and order disproportionately, and by a culture which rejects the idea of the nurturing, gentle black man. In his poetic debut, Moore draws on his experience as an inner city schoolteacher, as a father, and as a former child himself to paint an emotional landscape which is alternately poignant, shocking, witty, and furious.

In “Songs for the Cleveland Avenue Warriors,” Moore breaks the strangling troupe of the angry black man with the vulnerability of his message, the melody of his language, and the passion for nurturing which is woven throughout the work. Written in three sections, in honor of ancestral gemetric wisdom, “Songs” is a time machine, a critique on the present, and a piercing ray of hope which illuminates our collective humanity.