Best known for his anthologies on Black literature and his scholarship on Black life and culture, Richard A. Long’s own creative writing would have remained obscure and under represented had it not been for Eleanor Traylor, Sterling Brown Professor and Graduate Professor of English at Howard University, who asked Third World Press to produce a commemorative edition of Ascending and Other Poems.  As a tribute to Long and to his legacy, this slim volume of verse introduces this poet to an entirely new audience.  Ascending and Other Poems originally produced through the DuSable Museum of African American History under the guidance of Margaret Burroughs engaged his followers in the mid 1970s. Today almost thirty years later, it still engages and challenges readers with profound revelations and alluring language.