Black Dues! Black Blues! Black News! Ted Joans trumpets in his tribute to Langston Hughes. What Library Journal wrote in 1969 holds true today: This collection of his work clearly reveals the influence of Langston Hughes, his mentor and friend. Joans, however, has the harsher and more strident tone necessary to accurately reflect today's society. As he says in one poem: "We must fall in love and glorify our beautiful black nation / We must create black images / give the world / a black education."

One of the first black poets to become involved in surrealism and a first generation Beat, Joans is an expatriate poet whose work is enjoying renewed interest. This major collection of poems written during the past forty years is a significant contribution to American letters. Teducation is the first single-volume collection representing the life's work of Joans, a one-time roommate of Charlie Parker and a contemporary of Allen Ginsberg and Bob Kaufman.