Abstract: The poetry collections, leadbelly and Olio, written by Tyehimba Jess, an African American poet and a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, contain some characteristics of radical experiments, such as hybridity of genres, multi-dimensional text, and innovation in poetic form, all of which have revolutionary significance on the construction of meaning in and the reading experience of poetry. This paper argues that Jess’s radical poetic experiment is driven by his fully-charged sense of historic responsibility and explored as his strategy to represent the complexity of the history of African American culture. Jess emulates and writes about the African American tradition of cultural innovation that has been consistently focused on dialog and rebellion, while demonstrating his open view of history.

Key words: Tyehimba Jess, African American poetry, poetic experiment, historic responsibility, tradition of innovation