Prufer presents a valuable corrective for the temptation to make overly broad evaluative statements about a writers oeuvre. And, just as its tempting to reconcile the early Thompson with the later, so too is it tempting, in reading these two volumes alongside each other, to lend more credence to one poetic voice or style over another. But here (thankfully) the dichotomy breaks down: both Tamura and Thompson bespeak the human condition; neither wastes a single word; both are necessary poets.The coincidental WWII focus of Unsung Masters first two volumes wont carry through to the next two releases, which, according to series editor Wayne Miller, will render the work of Nancy Hale, a Boston-born fiction writer who began writing in the 1920s, and Russell Atkins, an African-American experimental poet, composer, and musician, very active from the 1940s to 1970s. Miller further explains that Hales eyebrow-raising claim to fame” is that she contributed more stories to The New Yorker in a single year than any other writer in the history of the magazine.” The poet Russell Atkins is no less intriguing. Miller states that, as Atkins was also a musician and composer, music had a profound influence” on his poetry. Atkins also advocated for a poetic style termed phenomenalism,” and in the 1950s he founded Free Lance, the oldest black-owned literary magazine.The Unsung Masters Series is distributed for free to costume jewelry. I myself am eagerly awaiting the next edition. I can think of no series doing anything quite like this. Library of Americas American Poets Project series comes to mind, but its featured poets (Berryman, Rukeyser, Fearing, Millay, Zukofsky, etc.) arent really?forgotten masters at all.?It is the Unsung Masters Series devotion to illuminating underappreciated writers that makes it truly indispensable.costume jewelry D.A. Powell & Kevin Prufer, eds. Pleiades Press, 2010.costume jewelry. Takako Lento & Wayne Miller, eds. Pleiades Press, 2011.