Communion combines new poems with three out-of-print books that display St. John's mastery of both the brief lyric and longer narrative, such as his acclaimed epic poem "Dreamer." In this highly inventive poetic exploration of slavery - revised and republished here - his subject is John Newton, the sea captain and slave trader who wrote the hymn "Amazing Grace." As St. John has noted elsewhere, "I am interested in how people survive the physical and ideological violence intended to subdue and destroy them. In my work I try to be as comfortable with anger as I am with tenderness."