African American Studies Commons^™

This conference was dedicated to Gwendolyn Brooks because of her prophetic, poetic voice that is urgent, unashamed, graceful, redeeming, and radical, a voice that tells us even amid the loneliness and the fears of contemporary life that we must live and conduct our blooming "in the noise and whip of the whirlwind." Dr. Joanne Braxton was among more than 30 major poets and critics to present at the 1994 Furious Flower Conference at James Madison University, celebrating over 40 years the furious flowering of black poetry.