Gotta Go Gotta Flow: Life, Love, and Lust On Chicago's South Side From the Seventies

Gotta Go Gotta Flow: Life, Love, and Lust On Chicago's South Side From the Seventies poems by
Patricia Smith, photographs by Michael Abramson, 191 pages.
Michael Abramson a photographer whose work appeared in Time, Newsweek and other publications, started documenting the visitors, regulars, drinkers, dancers, and musicians at several Southside Chicago night clubs in 1974.
Patricia Smith, renowned poet from Chicago wrote the poems that accompany the photos in this book.
It's unclear to me whether the poems were written when Abramson was alive. The book jacket lists them separately and indicates that the photographer died five years before the book was published. A bio of Smith on the Poetry Foundation website indicates that the two "collaborated" on the project. The essays in the book don't really clear that up, but it's not that important. Both the photographs and the poems along side them bring the places and the people to life. Sometimes you look at the photo and the poem explains the man, the woman, or the mood in a straightforward but beautiful way.  Other times you think you see the photo and understand it, but the poem shifts your focus to a frown or a smile on the person behind the person, and your perception shifts. A wonderful book.
I picked up this book because it stood out; a large format, coffee-table book among the slim volumes in 811.6.