I just published a poetry book on Amazon called Harlem Nights and Footstep Blues. The paperback version is available only on Amazon. The ebook version is on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple iBooks, Smashwords, Kobo, and Blio.

Link below:

http://www.amazon.com/Harlem-Nights-Footstep-Julius-Jamaal/dp/0997172606?ie=UTF8&qid=&ref_=tmm_pap_swatch_0&sr=

Harlem Nights and Footstep Blues is a poetry collection consisting of 65 poems. The poems are separated into 11 distinct sections that tell their own story while still fitting into the overall story of the collection. Although not limited to African American influences and content, the collection is very much inspired by the work of African American poets and writers like Langston Hughes, Paul Laurence Dunbar, James Baldwin, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Frederick Douglass and from the black cultural, social, and artistic revival that took place during the period known as the Harlem Renaissance.

Harlem Nights and Footstep Blues is about encapsulating the Harlem Renaissance state of mind and encouraging young black minds to express themselves and “catch a glimmer of their own beauty” as Langston Hughes urged his young black contemporaries to do in his essay "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" (1926), albeit with modern flair. The creative license that black artists had to express themselves and their art during the Harlem Renaissance is the blueprint for the poetry and artistic expression in the collection. Harlem Nights and Footstep Blues is rooted in a modern sense of black cultural, social, and artistic rebirth while paying homage to the artistic foundation laid by the great pioneers of the past.

 

Hi Julius,

Congratulations on your first book!  Also check out this article about linking to Amazon (point #3).  Do you have a website?

Here is Langston Hughes’s story essay “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain“ 

Hard to image it was written 90 years ago. It could have been written today

One of the most promising of the young Negro poets said to me once, “I want to be a poet—not a Negro poet,” meaning, I believe, “I want to write like a white poet;” meaning subconsciously, “I would like to be a white poet;” meaning behind that, “I would like to be white.”  

 

thanks Troy. That was great article and I'm going to follow some of the tips from there. Also I'm working on an author website now.