Two poets—an African-American woman and a white man—begin performing poems together in a racially charged year in Philadelphia. Their success becomes a symbol of how races and sexes can get along better. All seems smooth until love and violence intervene, compelling one of the poets to abandon his art. Years later in Canada, the poets are reunited and the one who continued a commitment to poetry challenges the other and wounds him. An American diplomat visits her in prison and transmits a message about the nature of Art.