He wrote with the kind of clarity that was as comforting as it was chastising. Here’s where to start. Credit...Jean-Regis Rouston/Roger Viollet, via Getty Images Supported by By Robert Jones Jr.

In 1950, James Baldwin and his lover, the painter Lucien Happersberger, set out from Paris for the mountains of Switzerland, where Baldwin, then around 25, hoped to climb his way out of a creative ...

Poetry is not easy to compose, nor is it easy to write about. Like music, poetry requires a certain immersion into the composition one hears via their ...