Dr. John Zheng, professor and chair of the Department of English and Foreign Languages at MVSU, has published a book, Conversations with Sterling Plumpp, with the University Press of Mississippi (UPM). He has also published with UPM this month a chapter on Richard Wright’s poetic spirit through the influence of Zen in Richard Wright Writing America at Home and from Abroad edited by Virginia Whatley Smith, a noted Richard Wright scholar.
Conversations with Sterling Plumpp is the first collection of interviews with the renowned poet of Home/Bass and other much-admired works. Spanning thirty years and drawn from literary and scholarly journals and other media, these interviews offer insights into his poetic innovation of blues and jazz and his mastery of black vernacular in poetry. This collection seems fundamental to an understanding of the life and work of an African American poet who has been innovative in fusing blues and jazz rhythms with poetic insight and in vivifying the vernacular landscape of African American poetry.
William Ferris, Joel R. Williamson Eminent Professor of History at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and former Chairman of National Endowment for the Humanities, says, “This beautiful book of interviews will be an invaluable resource when we discuss Sterling Plumpp’s poetry and the blues... This is the book we have all been waiting for, and I am deeply grateful to John Zheng for sharing it with Sterling’s many admirers.”