PositiveThe Boston ReviewThough not flawless—suffering from typos and a disappointing preface—[SOS is a big handsome book, over five hundred pages. I love holding it; I love the cover with Baraka, hands clasped, staring out at me; I love the weight. The collection surveys Baraka’s entire career from Beat bohemian to black and then red revolutionary, generously stretching chronologically from the first book, Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note (1961), to recent uncollected poems ... The chronological structure of SOS makes a narrative of Baraka’s aesthetic, personal, and political development ... SOS: Poems ends with these poems and others largely unpublished in book form and therefore new to most readers. The happy news is that Baraka continued to produce wonderful and lively poetry until the end.
