SOURCE: “Poetry as Preface to Fiction,” in Alice Walker: Critical Perspectives, Past and Present, edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and K. A. Appiah, Amistad Press, 1993, pp. 275-83.

In the following essay, originally published in 1991, Davis concludes that Walker's volumes of poetry serve as a subtext of “resurgence and resurrection” to her novels and short stories.

The recent popularity of fiction by African-American women authors has almost obscured the remarkable work in poetry since the 1960s. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, poets, such as June Jordan, Sonia Sanchez, Jayne Cortez, and Audre Lorde, have engendered a distinctly female world while empowering a distinctly African-American vision of life. Several of these women writers are multi-talented, working in poetry and in fiction. For example, Sherley Anne Williams has created the Peacock Poems and Dessa Rose, a feminist historical novel, and Rita Dove has produced award-winning poetry and short fiction. The...