Amazon Vaughn's Website Category:  Poetry Publisher: BookSurge Publishing ISBN-10:  1419601350 Type: Non-Fiction Pages: 42 Copyright: March 7, 2005 My Soul is not for Sale, Various Poems of Love, Inspiration, and Revolution

Ellen Tanner Marsh
To the ever-growing art form that is African-American poetry we must now add the strong new voice of Brooklyn-born Vaughn T. Aiken. At times angry and disillusioned, wistful and sweet, Aiken's poems explore the themes of family, politics, racial inequality, love-and the baffling need of those among us to amass untold wealth and go to war. all of these disparate tales are told from the point of view of a man who remains true to himself and what he believes in; indeed, a man whose "soul is not for sale."
"Vaughn is not defined by his race," the poet emphatically declares in affirming who he is in the haunting poem, Misunderstood, "his race is defined by Vaughn." The examples he sets through impassioned, intelligent thetoric should speak to anyone who has ever raged against injustice and intolerance.
While Aiken's anger is justified-you'll nod your head at the unvarnished truth of Domestic Volience and wish more politician would open their eyes to the wisdom of What If...?-it is the dual message of hope and compassion that resonates most strongly: "I planted [a] seed in me," he writes, "and wonderful things happened. I gained knowledge of self/I knew about my people/so I planted this seed in others" until "everyone started to grow."
It's a shame that more of us don't nurture the seed that Aiken has so obviously brought to fruition in his own life. Perhaps if they did, people would talk on the day we die "about the good [we] have done and what [we] meant to each person." And only that, says Aiken, is the honest measure of our worth: the fact that we have "made a difference in this world."