"He writes poetry as it ought to be written." The title comes from the nine-part " Midland ," where, in a quasi-On the Road manner, Kwame Dawes recounts traveling through an area of -- presumably -- South Carolina . Reading the sensuous poetry of Dawes, one's first impression is of immersion in the atmosphere of the Caribbean , "the stench of wisteria crawling its pale purple/ path through a dying swamp." (Born in Ghana , Dawes grew up in Jamaica and now teaches at the University of South Carolina .) Ultimately, however, Midland takes the reader on an autobiographical journey to exile and self-discovery. Dawes is less concerned with reggae than with the need to speak the truth about "the generation that understood the smell/ of burning flesh." The 11-page title poem, " Midland ," a "dialect of ire" unfolding like "the hung man dangling/ from a live oak," addresses the burden of "ash and tar of a Sumter lynching" with fortitude. In graphic language, he insists that one look beneath "affinities of skin, sin, and suffering" to the roots of a brutal inheritance. Awarded Ohio University 's Hollis Summers Poetry Prize 2000, this book superimposes landscapes of Africa, Jamaica , and the United States , transforming the poetry of protest into a compassionate search for the "dusty graves" of his ancestors. These poems form "hieroglyphs of belonging" that help us come to terms with a complex heritage of intolerance and progress.