In his prose as in his politics, a passion for radical expression

Baraka's repudiations of former dogmas have been vociferous, but so too are his commitments to his beliefs. Whether spearheading the Black Arts Movement in the 1960s, fighting to elect Newark's first black mayor in 1970, or weathering the hail of criticism that followed a post-9/11 poem regarded by some as anti-Semitic, Baraka has changed his mind plenty, but not his passion .

A popular position is that Baraka's increasing political concerns came at the expense of his craft, but the truth is that he's penned works of stark importance in every ideological iteration. As a Beat, Baraka gave us "Blues People ," a seminal book of music criticism; his Obie-winning play "The Dutchman" came in his transitional phase. Black nationalist poems like "It's Nation Time" sear with power, and the Marxist-era piece "AM/TRAK" is the single best tribute ever written to John Coltrane, a musician who inspired thousands of them. (In second place might be the liner notes to "Live at Birdland ," also Baraka's.)

Unsurprisingly, much of the critical attention paid to Baraka over the years has focused on his politics rather than his prose. "Tales of the Out and the Gone," a new collection of short fiction penned between the mid-'70s and the present , reminds the reader what a satisfying storyteller Baraka can be when he so desires -- and how playfully and purposefully abstract he can get away with being, too. Here, sci-fi conceits mesh with anti-capitalist critiques, and stories flip from hard-nosed pseudo-journalism to parable in the blink of an eye. Or, as Greg Tate once observed of Baraka, "The subjective wars with the sociological, the political with the personal, the existentialist with the engagé."