Letters to America: Contemporary American Poetry on Race. Edited by Jim Daniels. Detroit. Wayne State University Press, 1995. 230 pages $19.95. This useful anthology of poetry on race is a dialogue among many voices about subject of race in America. The editor compiles collection of voices, some well known, other less familiar writers, to reflect many perspectives--Black, White, Native American, Asian, Arabic, Indian, and Hispanic among them. The editor includes a helpful introduction which outlines some of themes in texts, makes observations about perspectives of white writers and those of color, and offers suggestions about how this text might be used in cultural studies courses, literature courses, and writing classes. In introduction, editor outlines several themes in text in a helpful discussion of some of poems in volume. Daniels discusses at some length difficulties white writers encounter writing about race because they can always return to safe neighborhoods of other subjects. Themes such as the tension surrounding visibility ... at heart of assimilation are discussed by editor using examples from poems in text. Other themes editor discusses include to heroes of civil rights movements as well as debts to family members who paid price. The editor comments on strong emotional force of poems but says less about style or use of language in volume. The poems, on other hand, do share, it seems to this reader, certain interesting stylistic resonances and similarities, such as humor and irony, for instance. Examining such stylistic issues might help readers gain a better understanding of linguistic threads found in this literature, poems about and by those writing against grain of dominant culture. The poems themselves are arranged alphabetically by author in text. There is also a subject index which helps reader cluster poems by topic, although editor warns, I hope, however, that grouping poems together in index will help begin discussion rather than limit it. Poems resonate. The opportunity to listen for harmonies and dissonance is experience offered by this kind of anthology. The anthology was inspired, editor tells us, by conversations with late James Baldwin when editor was a student of his in a class in graduate school. The editor acknowledges difficulty he and other white classmates had confronting their own racism. Included in anthology is a long poem by editor Time, Temperature, dedicated to James Baldwin, which confronts racism editor learned and experienced coming of age in Detroit. There are many wonderful poems in this anthology including works by Langston Hughes, Joy Harjo, James Wright, Etheridge Knight, Andre Lorde, Gwendolyn Brooks, Linda Hogan, David Mura, Sharon Olds, Simon Ortiz and Dudley Randall, among others. There are many women writers represented in this volume and voices from many perspectives and cultures. There are also represented newer voices and less well established writers. …