""The Garden" by A. F. Moritz is a passionate denunciation of injustice, especially as seen in the violent injustice directed to the African diaspora in North America, both from many individual members of the general citizenry, and through the legislative, police, and judicial institutions that express the citizenry. The book is epic, lyrical, and analytical. It is uniquely comprised of a long poem, "The Garden in the Midst", and an in-depth essay, "The Poet's Garden". Each centers on the South Central Los Angeles "riot" of 1992 in response to the not guilty verdict on police officers video-ed badly beating Rodney King in 1991. From this central point, the poem and essay reach out to embrace the May 2020 police murder of George Floyd, and the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King, and the long history of legalized criminal repression these two deaths belong to."--
