LeRoi Jones New York: Totem Press, 1961. Marvin Tatum Collection of Contemporary Literature.

LeRoi Jones, today known as Amiri Baraka, played a pivotal role in nurturing the fledgling Beat community, first as a prolific and respected writer of verse and plays, then as the cofounder of two of the most important journals of the period. With his wife, Hettie Jones, he founded Yugen, after soliciting material from Allen Ginsberg (Jones was also inspired by Howl), and their apartment became a regular hangout for the Beat crowd. Ginsberg supplied poets from San Francisco, New York, and from Black Mountain College in North Carolina. Though Yugen ran only eight issues, it was one of the first serial publications to bring the various poets together. With Diane Di Prima, Jones founded The Floating Bear, a poetry newsletter that published the poetry and prose of most Beat writers on the scene.

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