Revolutionary poetics : the rhetoric of the Black Arts Movement In Revolutionary Poetics Sarah RudeWalker details the specific ways that the Black Arts Movement achieved its revolutionary goals through rhetorical poetics in what forms to what audiences and to what effect. BAM has had far reaching influence particularly in developments in positive conceptions of Blackness in the valorization of language and its subsequent effects on educational policy in establishing a legacy of populist dissemination of African American vernacular culture and in setting the groundwork for important considerations of the aesthetic intersections of race with gender and sexuality. These legacies stand as the movements primary and largely unacknowledged successes and they provide significant lessons for navigating our current political moment. RudeWalker presents rhetorical readings of the work of BAM poets (including among others Toni Cade Bambara Amiri Baraka Gwendolyn Brooks Margaret Burroughs Jayne Cortez Sarah Fabio Nikki Giovanni Ted Joans Maulana Karenga Etheridge Knight Haki Madhubuti Clarence Major Larry Neal Carolyn Rodgers and Sonia Sanchez) in order to demonstrate the various strands of rhetorical influence the Black Arts project and the significant legacies these writers left behind. Her investigation of the rhetorical contributions of these writers allows her to deal realistically with the movements problematic aspects while still devoting thoughtful scholarly attention to the successful legacy of BAM writers and the ways their work can continue to shape contemporary rhetorical activism