spent much of his time at juke joints, pool halls, and underground poker games, which furthered his interest in language. It was during this time that Knight became exposed to "toasts," which are narrative-style oral poetry which relates a story. In 1947, Knight enlisted in the army and served as a medical technician in the Korean War until November 1950, during which time he sustained serious wound as well as psychological trauma, which led him to begin using morphine. By the time Knight was discharged from the army and returned to Indianapolis, Indiana, where his family had moved, he had become addicted to opiates. He spent much of the next several years dealing drugs and stealing to support his drug addiction. In 1960, after a few previous run-ins with the police, Knight and two of his associates were arrested for armed robbery. Knight was initially so furious about his sentence that he was later unable to recall much of what happened during his first few months of his sentence. But after realizing that such anger was counterproductive, he turned his attention to reading as much as he could and dedicated himself to poetry. During the following years, Knight became increasingly well known for his poetry writings. After working as a journalist for prison publications, he began submitting poetry to the Negro Digest in 1965. He also started establishing contacts with significant figures in the African-American literary community, including well-known poets like Gwendolyn Brooks, Dudley Randall, Sonia Sanchez and Haki Madhubuti, many of whom came to visit him in prison. The poems he had written during his time in prison were so effective that Dudley Randall, a poet and owner of Broadside Press, published Knight’s first volume of verse, Poems from Prison, and hailed Knight as one of the major poets of the Black Arts Movement. The book’s publication coincided with his release from prison. Upon his release from prison in 1968, Knight married poet Sonia Sanchez. Over the next few years, he held the position of writer-in-residence at several universities, including two years, 1968 and 1969, spent at the University of Pittsburgh. While living in Pittsburgh with his wife and their family, Knight spent time as poetry editor for Motive magazine. Because of his ongoing drug addiction, his marriage to Sanchez did not last long, and they were divorced in 1970 while still in Pittsburgh. He continued writing his third