RESPECT: The Poetry of Detroit Music

While there have been countless books written about Detroit, none have captured its incredible musical history like this one. This collection of poems and lyrics covers numerous genres including jazz, blues, doo-wop, Motown, classic rock, punk, hip-hop, and techno. Detroit artists have forged the paths in many of these genres, producing waves of creative energy that continue to reverberate across the country and around the world. While documenting and celebrating this part of Detroit’s history, this book captures the emotions that the music inspired in its creators and in its listeners. The range of contributors speaks to the global impact of Detroit’s music scene—Grammy winners, Pulitzer Prize winners, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees, and poet laureates all come together in this rich and varied anthology, including such icons as Eminem, June Jordan, Fred “Sonic” Smith, Rita Dove, Jack White, Robbie Robertson, Paul Simon, Nikki Giovanni, Philip Levine, Sasha Frere-Jones, Patricia Smith, Billy Bragg, Andrei Codrescu, Toi Derricotte, and Cornelius Eady.

Jim Daniels is the author of six fiction collections, seventeen poetry collections, and four produced screenplays, and has edited five anthologies, including Challenges to the Dream: The Best of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Writing Awards. Honors and awards he has received include the Tillie Olsen Award for Creative Writing, the Brittingham Prize in Poetry, the Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award, and two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. A native of Detroit, Daniels is the Thomas Stockham Baker University Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
M. L. Liebler is the author of fifteen books and has been on faculty in the English department at Wayne State University since 1980. He is an internationally known and widely published Detroit poet, university professor, literary arts activist, and arts organizer. He received the 2017–2018 Murray E. Jackson Scholar in the Arts Award at Wayne State University, the Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award in 2010, and the 2018 PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award. He is currently the President of the Detroit Writers’ Guild.