This chapter introduces the terms and parameters of the study of the ethics of innovative, postmodern poetry by black writers who were born between 1945 and 1961: Nathaniel Mackey, Will Alexander, Erica Hunt, Harryette Mullen, and Mark McMorris. The introduction addresses the following questions critical to establishing the “other-conscious” ethics at work in the poetry by these five, who serve as representative examples of the larger field of avant garde poetry written by those of African descent through the English-speaking Diaspora. First, against centuries of doubt promulgated by some of the West’s most highly regarded philosophers, the chapter addresses the question of whether an African (American) ethics exists at all. Second, the chapter asks, who is the Other and what is consciousness, in light of twentieth-century phenomenological, existential, and poststructuralist theory. The next section takes on the term of the title, and answers the question, “what is other-consciousness?”, a term derived from both W.E.B. Du Bois and ethical literary criticism. Fourth, the chapter offers a way of reading this often difficult writing that insists that form is as meaningful as content, process as well as product, literate as well as oral. It also explains what these particular poets have in common and why they are appropriate for an ethical study. The last section wonders what method is ethical, given the problematic of imposing the theory of European colonizers onto the poetry of the descendants of formerly enslaved and colonized peoples.