Includes bibliographical references (p. 331-391) and index.

Machine generated contents note: Chapter 1. American Jeremiad 9 -- Recording Angel 9 -- Shakespeare in Overalls 15 -- Poems forWorkers 18 -- "Write It Plain" 28 -- Revolutionary Romanticsm 33 --Chapter 2. Inventing Mike Gold 39 -- "A Kind of Cheeky Krazy Kat" 39 -- "By Street Life and Thunder" 42 -- Poverty Is a Trap 45 -- Meyerhold in Harlem 5o -- The Van Gogh of a Darker Time 55 -- The Gold Standard 61 --Chapter 3. The Great Promise 71 -- Living in a "State of Emergency" 71 -- "Waiting for Trachty" 76 -- The Black Cultural Front 80 -- African Americans and the John Reed Clubs 84 -- Gender and Party Commitment 95 --Chapter 4. The New Masses and the Social Muse 103 -- "Bloody Anarchists" 103 -- Becoming a Weekly 108 -- Portrait of a New Masses Literary Editor 112 -- Poetry and the Popular Front 119 -- The Last Refuge 127 -- Chapter 5. Yogis and Commissars 163 -- Love and Revolution 163 -- A Pen Dripped in Vitriol 166 -- The St. Augustine of Communism 171 -- The Red Valentino 178 -- A Divided Life 185 -- The Dream with the Changing Name 190 --Chapter 6. Three Moderns in Search of an Answer 193 -- The Modernist Temptation 193 -- Bastard in the Ragged Suit 198 -- Apollinaire of the Proletariat 204 -- Byron of the Poolhalls 214 --Chapter 7. Sappho in Red 229 -- Loyalties 229 -- The Rational Ecologist 234 -- Waltzing Mouse 238 -- And God Came In 244 -- The Apostate 247 -- The Premature Socialist-Feminists 252 --Chapter 8. Black Marxists in White America 263 -- Transcending Narrow Nationalisms 263 -- New Challenges 267 -- "New" and "Newer" Negroes 276 -- Between Class and Nationality 279 -- From Banjo to Melody 291 --Conclusion: The Antinomies of a Proletarian Avant-garde 299 -- Flights and Moorings 299 -- A Social Poet's Progress 306 -- Poets and Criminals 316.