Get your ass in the water and swim like me: African-American narrative poetry from the oral tradition, includes CD

This is a book of toasts-narrative poems from black American oral tradition. Along with black folk sermons and lyrics of work-songs, spirituals, and blues, the toasts comprise an extraordinary body of folk poetry matched hardly anywhere in the world. I've never met anyone who knows why these poems are called toasts. The best guess I've heard is, "They're poems and most drinking toasts are poems," which is not true at all. Though these may be recited while drinking, there is no connection between the recitation and the lifting of glasses, there is none of the toasting ritual involving cooperation of others. Recitation of these toasts is a performer-audience event, not a communal ritual. A drinking toast is directed toward a third party or idea, but these toasts are directed to nothing, at least not overtly; they are there to be acted, heard, and experienced.