"The notion to begin this book, a collection of prose and poetry based solely on the work of visual artists, came to me in my dream sleep, where I see most pungently and richly. I'd moved from the Lower West Side of Manhattan to make my home in Houston, yet I wandered Texas as a blind woman. I saw, but could not make a connection. I touched, but felt unmoved. I dug soil, looking for roots, finding none. I said to myself, Maybe my spirits are telling me I'm still in New York skipping around Soho or 57th Street. This I rejected immediately. If i was anywhere besides Texas, I was roaming the paintings and installations of artists around the country whose work fed me the non-verbal ambrosia word-users hunger for. I was hankering for communion with a community I'd lost, for dreams and visions I couldn't just fly up to. I aksed a number of artists, some of whom were friends, others unkown to me, if they would allow me to create a verbal dialogue with their works, finding, seeking out what a poet might find in a tapestry or a sculpture, a watercolor. Paintings and poems are moments, capturing or seducing us, when we are so vulnerable. These images are metaphors. This is my life, how I see and, therefore, am able to speak. Praise the spirits and the stars that there are others among us who allow us visions that we may converse with one another. Ridin' the Moon in Texas allowed me this remarkable privilege." Ntozake Shange, Houston, Texas-- Using the classic call-and-response structure of black music--the visual art work as the call and language as the response--this book provides a unique interchange between contemporary visual arts and poetry.-- Poems based on paintings by Laura Caghan, Patricia Ollison Jerrols, Arturo Lindsay, Howardena Pindell, Anita Steckel, Houston Conwill, Linda Graetz, Ntozake Shange, Donna Henes, Candace Hill-Montgomery, Martin Puryear, Wopo Holup, Patrice Viles, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Jules T. Allen.