An Apron Full of Beans is an African-American sequel to Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, written in the voices and with the lyrics of the blues, the spiritual and the language of writers such as Langston Hughes and Margaret Walker. It grows out of the historical and personal reminiscences of these artists and their traditions. The setting is neither chronological nor historical as it moves backwards and forwards in the memory of the poet. The poems are thus autobiographical and biographical, expressed through popular art forms such as film noir, science fiction, blues, jazz and other aspects of American popular culture.