Asheville activist DeWayne Barton’s resume reads like a template of commitment to and advocacy for his community, so it’s not surprising that when his alter ego BLove collects his poetry together in the volume, Return to Burton Street, he produces a taut, jazzy, hard-knuckled drumbeat of personal and historical indignation. Consumerist society, colonialism, and still radically not post-racial America come in for some hard scrutiny. The street style is suited to the direct urgency of the matter, low on trope, high on grit, a known and necessary song sung to a familiar tune, all the better to dance to, as many of us will. -David Hopes Hopes is the author of Bird Songs of the Mesozoic.