Prominent African-American poets Amiri Baraka and Sonia Sanchez filled Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium with their words April 1 in a joint reading infused with passion and the rhythms and nonverbal sounds of chants and jazz music.

Baraka, 75, read from most of his 2004 chapbook of humorous, pointed and political haikus, "Un Poco Low Coup," and from his new book, "Digging: The Afro-American Soul of American Classical Music," a collection of music criticism.

He explained the book's title by saying "even with a song by Irving Berlin, if you get Billie Holiday to sing it, it's American classical music. That's the way this country rolls."

"Funk Lore (Blue Monk)" began with Baraka singing Thelonious Monk's melody, repeating it between verses ("We are the blues/ourselves/our favorite color … so dark and tragic/so old and/Magic … in tribes of 12/bars/like the stripes/of slavery") and pounding a beat on the lectern.

He read a moving portion of "Wise, Why's, Y'z" -- with the lines "At the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean there's a/railroad made of human bones/Black ivory/Black ivory"; singing "Wade in the Water" and concluding with a chant: "Africa … Africa … Africa."

He delivered a new poem on current events to conclude his reading, to a standing ovation.

Sanchez has known Baraka since the 1960s, when he was known as LeRoi Jones. She prefaced her reading by recalling the time Jones, sitting casually in front of New York's Five Spot jazz club, had to ask her twice before she realized he really wanted her work included in an anthology he was editing.

Sanchez read in meter a long litany of names of cultural heroes, including Zora Neale Hurston, Thurgood Marshall, Cornel West, Marcus Garvey, Tupac, Mos Def, Bob Marley, Leonard Peltier, Sen. Edward Kennedy, Sitting Bull, Walt Whitman and Malcolm X.

"That is a poem I wrote for some people we knew along the way, or worked with, or pulled from obscurity," she said.

Sanchez's expressive readings were punctuated by vocal clicks, ululation, echoes, murmurs, dramatic inflections and other effects. From her new book, "Morning Haiku," she read the poems "Peace" and "Don't Never Give Up On Love," the latter from a lesson she learned from an elderly woman bothering her in a public park.

"Sometimes we don't think we need to listen to anybody," Sanchez said. "You young students will learn you have to listen. … It will inform your future."

In introducing the readers, poet and professor of English and Africana studies Ken McClane related the significance of the event to the Africana Center's 40th anniversary this year.

"These two artists … have never failed to honor us, to cajole us, to push us with the truth, no matter how indelicate," he said.

Baraka's poems written during the Black Arts Movement (1965-76) "remain prime manifestos," said Margot Crawford, associate professor of English. "His work is an example of collective action and precision and form."

Poet and creative writing assistant professor Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon noted Sanchez's transformative role in her life and writing. Commenting that it was National Poetry Month, she said, "if you don't know who Sonia Sanchez is, don't tell me."

The public reading was co-sponsored by the Africana Studies and Research Center and the Creative Writing Program.