Sterling A. Brown was renowned for his prolific poetry and scholarship on African American folklife. A contemporary of Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and Jean Toomer and the first poet laureate of the District of Columbia, Brown gained acclaim for blues, jazz, and southern folklore. His celebrated works, including Southern Road, are collages of narrative and dialect unique to Brown's unflinching poetic voice.   Edited by the late distinguished poet Michael S. Harper, this new edition includes a foreword by award-winning poet Cornelius Eady and introductory texts by James Weldon Johnson and Sterling Stuckey. The result is a tour de force by one of the most distinctive poets in American letters.