That particular grace and craft are from a world outside the pool hall. The speech is first person, but the studied aesthetics of the type does not emerge from the aesthetic values of the pool-playing dropouts who are supposedly speaking. . . . The alternative aesthetic of pool hall cool in the language of the poem thus is reshaped to fit the Procrustean bed of book design. The broadside version appeared in 1966, when Brooks was becoming more radically engaged in racial politics. . . . The design inverts the most pervasive printing convention of all into white lettering on a black field. . . .
Language clears space in that field, exposing the white surface rather than concealing it.
By creating an unconventional relationship between ink and paper, this broadside makes that relationship legible. It raises the question of whether that more conventional book page works any differently, whether the familiar habits of book design are any less contingent in their composition or more innocent of meaning themselves. . . . It looks like either a chalkboard or graffiti. The refined transparencies of classical typography and the printed, bound pages of a well-produced hardcover book would not be available for these pool players to use to speak for themselves. As chalkboard writing, it appears in a setting familiar, if uncongenial, to the pool players.