Black poets of the Harlem Renaissance (1920-1929) relied heavily upon traditional rhetorical
devices specifically irony and paradox. In contrast their counterparts of the sixties adopted
a more radical approach employing instead street idiom and other modes of Black discourse.
While the poets' strategies of the two periods differ one element remained constant - the
theme of protest. It is this similarity in purpose that marks the poetry of the Harlem
Renaissance as a precursor of the revolutionary poetry of the sixties.
