Slave Cargo, poems.
Publisher: Decker Press
Published: 1948
Place of publication: Prairie City [Ill.]
Language: eng
Number of pages: 59
First sentence: Vast white form of morning mist
Sleeping gently upon the still Gulf of Guantanamo,
Mingling its moisture with the fragrance of tropical morning,
While beyond and above, the sharp combat of gull-voices
Circles the graceful indistinct pattern of spars.
Description: Jacket copy:

Slave Cargo is the first book of verse by a writer whose work in prose and poetry has appeared in a number of anthologies and such publications as Story Magazine, Action, Rob Wagner's Script, Evening Incense, and Tomorrow.

The sea and the life of men on the sea are the threads which bind together poems full of the sights, scents and colors of the tropics in which the author delights to travel, with other poems gray with mist and twilight.

The image-packed title poem with its arresting technical innovations and hard-hitting narrative is an oblique but determined shout for freedom in a world which is surrendering its liberties one by one.  It is based on an eye-witness account of slave-running activities in Cuba in the exciting days before the Civil War.

Besides the title poem and several shorter pieces, a one-act play, "Fog", is included in the book.  "Fog" was first staged in Boston in 1931 and has had several subsequent productions.