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The development of Jayne Cortez into a major talent has been as dazzling a rise as one might have hoped but not clearly anticipated from her first volume, Pissstained Stairs and the Monkeyman's Wares, in 1969. She came to poetry from acting and began writing in earnest in 1964. Her poems-banners and tributes-call to arms, to appreciation of political and artistic heroes and those of everyday Black life. Her fine ear for music, her dynamic imagery, and her disposition to orchestrate in a broad cultural span, both African and American, have led her social and political concerns into unique and risk-taking forms.By 1988, at her Poets' House lecture and reading honoring Nicolas Guillen, who died the following year, she had become a member of the organization's advisory board and was justifiably introduced as "a world class poet."Cortez was born in Arizona on May 10,1936, in Fort Huachuca, an army base where her father was stationed. Her siblings include an older sister and a younger brother. Cortez traces her father's family from Virginia and Carolina to Ohio and Arkansas, where they lived for several generations. Her maternal grandfather was born in Tennessee and served in the Philippines. There he met and married Julia Cortez, the poet's namesake, who bore him four children.

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