African American poetry: 250 years of struggle & song

Introduction / by Kevin Young

Bury me in a free land: 1770-1899

Lift every voice: 1900-1918

The dark tower: 1919-1936

Ballads of remembrance: 1936-1959

Ideas of ancestry: 1959-1975

Blue light sutras: 1976-1989

Praise songs for the day: 1990-2008

After the hurricane: 2009-2020

ONE: BURY ME IN A FREE LAND 1770-1899. On imagination ; On Recollection ; On the Death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield. 1770 ; To S. M. a young African Painter, on seeing his Works ; To His Excellency General Washington / Phillis Wheatley

An Address to Miss Phillis Wheatly, Ethiopian Poetess, in Boston / Jupiter Hammon

[Bars Fight] / Lucy Terry

A Mathematical Problem in Verse / Benjamin Banneker

To Eliza ; The Slave's Complaint ; On hearing of the intention of a gentleman to purchase the Poet's freedom ; Division of an estate ; The Art of a Poet ; George Moses Horton, Myself / George Moses Horton

An Appeal to Woman ; The Grave of the Slave / Sarah Louisa Forten

Concatination [Selected Pottery Verses, 1834-1862] / David Drake

The Natives of America ; Reflections / Ann Plato

Armand Lanusse: Epigram ; Camille Thierry Ideas ; Pierre Dalcour: Verse Written in the Album of Mademoiselle _____ ; Victor-Ernest Rillieux: Love and Devotion/ Les Cenelles

America ; To Cinque / James M. Whitfield

Hope and Confidence / Charles L. Reason

A Life-Day / George B. Vashon

The Emigrant / Benjamin Clark

Song for the First of August / James Madison Bell

A June Song ; A Parting Hymn ; In the earnest path of duty / Charlotte Forten Grimḱe

Toussaint L'Ouverture ; Self-Mastery / Henrietta Cordelia Ray

from The Rape of Florida ; A Question / Albery A. Whitman

The Slave Mother ; Bury Me in a Free Land ; Learning to Read ; A Double Standard ; Songs for the People / Frances Ellen Watkins Harper.

TWO: LIFT EVERY VOICE 1900-1918. The House of Falling Leaves / William Stanley Braithwaite

Driftwood / Olivia Ward Bush

America ; Character or Color

Which? ; Late Mother / Carrie Williams Clifford

Paul Laurence Dunbar / James D. Corrothers

A Prayer ; And What Shall You Say? ; Supplication ; A Woman at Her Husband's Grave / Joseph Seamon Cotter, Jr.

Dr. Booker T Washington to the National Negro Business League / Joseph Seamon Cotter, Sr.

A Litany at Atlanta / W. E. B. Du Bois

We Wear the Mask ; A Negro Love Song ; When Malindy Sings ; When de Co'n Pone's Hot ; An Ante-Bellum Sermon ; Sympathy ; A Death Song ; Compensation / Paul Laurence Dunbar

Violets ; I Sit and Sew ; The Proletariat Speaks / Alice Dunbar-Nelson

The Black Finger ; A Mona Lisa ; El Beso ; You ; Rosabel ; The Eyes of My Regret ; Trees ; Tenebris ; Grass Fingers ; To Keep the Memory of Charlotte Forten Grimké / Angelina Weld Grimké

Wooing ; A Spade Is Just a Spade ; Here and Hereafter / Walter Everette Hawkins

Retrospect / Josephine D. Heard

When I Die ; The Lonely Mother ; Who Is That A-Walking in the Corn? ; from African Nights / Fenton Johnson

Lift Every Voicce and Sing ; Sence You Went Away ; O Black and Unknown Bards ; My City ; Go Down Death / James Weldon Johnson

from The Fledgling Poet and the Poetry Society / George R. Margetson

Ode to the Sun / Eloise Bibb Thompson

To a Little Colored Boy / Priscilla Jane Thompson

The New Negro / Lucian B. Watkins.

THREE: THE DARK TOWER 1919-1936. Japanese Hokku ; Negro Woman ; Effigy / Lewis Grandison Alexander

Heritage ; Lines written at the Grave of Alexander Dumas ; Fantasy ; To a Dark Carl ; Dirge for a Free Spirit ; I Build America ; Epitaph / Gwendolyn B. Bennett

The Return ; A Black Man Talks of Reaping ; Southern Mansion ; The Day-breakers / Arna Bontemps

Ma Rainey ; Old Lem ; Slim Greer ; Strange Legacies ; Southern Cop ; To a Certain Lady, in Her Garden ; Let Us Suppose / Sterling A. Brown

Portraiture ; Black Baby ; Impressions from a Family Album ; Coveted Epitaph ; Denial ; Idle Wonder / Anita Scott Coleman

Longings ; Goal ; Farewell ; Having Had You ; Four Poems

After the Japanese ; For a New Mother ; I Look at Death / Mae V. Cowdery

Yet Do I Marvel ; Incident ; Tableau ; Saturday's Child ; Heritage ; from Epitaphs ; From the Dark Tower ; Uncle Jim ; Scottsboro, Too, Is Worth Its Song / Countee Cullen

No Images ; Nineteen-twenty-nine ; My Lord, What a Morning ; Down-Home Boy ; Carry Me Back / Waring Cuney

The Mask ; Solace / Clarissa Scott Delany

Dead Fires ; La Vie C'est la vie ; Oblivion / Jessie Redmon Fauset

My Last Name / Nicolas Guillen

Notes Found Near a Suicide / Frank Horne

The Negro Speaks of Rivers ; The Weary Blues ; Mother to son ; Jazz Band in a Parisian Cabaret ; Beale Street Love ; Cross ; Personal ; Midwinter Blues ; Bound No'th Blues ; Dream Variations ; I, Too ; Song for a Dark Girl ; Let America be America Again ; from Montage of a Dream Deferred ; Madam and the Rent Man ; from Ask Your Mama / Langston Hughes

The Singer ; The Maestro / Eva A. Jessye

The Heart of a Woman ; Cosmopolite ; Black Woman ; Old Black Men ; Common Dust ; I Want to Die While You Love Me ; Interracial / Georgia Douglas Johnson

Sonnet to a Negro in Harlem ; Poem ; Invocation / Helene Johnson

Jamaica Market / Agnes Maxwell-Hall

Christmas in de Air ; The Harlem Dancer ; Harlem Shadows ; If We Must Die ; On Broadway ; The Tropics in New York ; The Lynching ; America ; My Mother ; "The white man is a tiger at my throat" / Claude McKay

Man and Maid / Myra Estelle Morris

Shadow / Richard Bruce Nugent

Requiem ; This Is My Vow / Lucia Mae Pitts

October Prayer ; Flag Salute / Esther Popel

Black and Blue ; The Tree of Hope / Andy Razaf

At the Carnival ; White Things ; Sybil Warns Her Sister / Anne Spencer

Five Vignettes ; Her Lips Are Copper Wire ; from Cane ; from Essentials ; Be with Me / Jean Toomer.

FOUR: BALLADS OF REMEMBRANCE 1936-1959. To Satch (American Gothic) ; Nat Turner or Let Him Come ; If the Stars Should Fall / Samuel Allen

Narrative ; Night and a Distant Church ; It's Here in The ; Spyrytual / Russell Atkins

from A Street in Bronzeville ; Beverly Hills, Chicago ; The Bean Eater ; We Real Cool ; A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Missippi. Meanwhile, a Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon ; The Last Quatrain of the Ballad of Emmett Till ; The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock ; The Lovers of the Poor ; Malcolm X ; The Second Sermon on the Warpland ; Paul Robeson ; The Life of Lincoln West ; The Boy Died in My Alley ; Infirm ; I Am a Black ; An Old Black Woman, Homeless, and Indistinct / Gwendolyn Brooks

To Julia de Burgos ; Ay, Ay, Ay of the Kinky-Haired Negress ; Poem of the Unborn Child ; Farewell in Welfare Island ; The Sun in Welfare Island / Julia de Burgos

The Small Bells of Benin ; Etta Moten's Attic / Margaret Danner

from Ebony Under Granite ; Mojo Mike's Beer Garden ; Four Glimpses of Night / Frank Marshall Davis

Sorrow Is the Only Faithful One ; The Morning Duke Ellington Praised the Lord and Six Little Black Davids Tapped Danced Unto / Owen Dodson

Those Winter Sundays ; Frederick Douglass ; Middle Passage ; Runagate Runagate ; A Letter from Phillis Wheatley ; Paul Laurence Dunbar ; [American Journal] / Robert Hayden

The Truth ; Jazz Is My Religionj ; The Nice Colored Man / Ted Joans

Hawk Lawler: Chorus ; I, Too, Know What I Am Not ; Would You Wear My Eyes? ; War Memoir ; Walking Parker Home ; Crootey Songo ; Heavy Water Blues ; Blues for Hal Waters ; Oregon / Bob Kaufman

from Dark Testament ; Prophecy / Pauli Murray

A Private Letter to Brazil ; Review from Staten Island ; Man White, Brown Girl and All That Jazz / Gloria C. Oden

Young Poet / Myron O'Higgins

Harlem Dawn ; A Definition ; Jean-Jaques / Oliver Pitcher

Booker T. and W.E.B. ; An Answer to Lerone Bennett's Questionnaire On a Name for Black Americans ; A Poet Is Not a Jukebox / Dudley Randall

Ballad of American Mores ; Face of Poverty / Lucy E. Smith

Dark Symphony ; from Harlem Gallery, Book I: The Curator / Melvin B. Tolson

For My People ; Molly Means ; October Journey / Margaret Walker

Between the World and Me ; Selected Haiku / Richard Wright.

FIVE: IDEAS OF ANCESTRY 1959-1975. Still I Rise ; Phenomenal Woman / Maya Angelou

Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note ; Look for You Yesterday, Here You Come Today ; Notes for a Speech ; The Liar ; Short Speech to My Friends ; Three Modes of History and Culture ; SOS ; Black Art ; Why's 12 / Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones)

King: April 4, 1968 / Gerald Barrax

Blues ; All God's Chillun ; The White River ; Sam Lord / Kamau Brathwaite

"in the inner city" ; miss rosie ; good times ; admonitions ; "being property once myself" ; the lost baby poem ; from some jesus ; cutting greens ; homage to my hips ; "the light that came to lucille clifton" ; jasper texas 1998 ; why some people be mad at me sometimes ; "i am accused of tending to the past" ; Jump Rope Rhymes (transcribed) ; study the masters ; to my last period ; wishes for sons ; "surely i am able to write poems" ; "won't you celebrate with me" / Lucille Clifton

How Long Has Trane Been Gone ; Orisha ; Rape ; Jazz Fan Looks Back / Jayne Cortez

Son of Msippi ; Black Star Line ; Outer Space Blues / Henry Dumas

I Am a Black Woman / Mari Evans

I Would Be for You Rain / Sarah Webster Fabio

High on the Hog / Julia Fields

Black Power ; Nikki-Rosa ; For Saundra ; Ego Tripping ; A Poem for Carol ; Legacies / Nikki Giovanni

American History ; Dear John, Dear Coltrane ; Nightmare Begins Responsibility ; Reuben, Reuben ; Tongue-Tied in Black and White ; Last Affair: Bessie's Blues Song ; The Love Letters of Helen Pitts Douglass / Michael S. Harper

Do Nothing till You Hear from Me ; A Coltrane Memorial / David Henderson

Medicine Man / Calvin Hernton

What Would I Do White? ; These Poems ; I Must Become a Menace to My Enemies ; Poem about My Rights ; Poem for Haruko / June Jordan

Blues for Some Literary Friends & Myself ; For Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers / Keorapetse Kgositsile

A Poem for Myself ; The Idea of Ancestry ; The Bones of My Father ; Haiku ; For Freckle-Faced Gerald ; The Violent Space ; Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane ; For Eric Dolphy ; Feeling Fucked Up / Etheridge Knight

On Being Head of the English Department / PInkie Gordon Lane

Coal ; Revolution Is One Form of Social Change ; A Litany for Survival ; Power ; Lunar Eclipse ; Inheritance

His / Audre Lorde

But He Was Cool ; Don't Cry, Scream / Haki Madhubuti (Don L. Lee)

Swallow the Lake ; Hair / Clarence Major

Malcolm X

An Autobiography ; Don't Say Goodbye to the Porkpie Hat / Larry Neal

26 Ways of Looking at a Black Man / Raymond R. Patterson

Howlin Wolf ; Big Maybelle / Sterling D. Plumpp ; From Where the Blues? ; "WE NEED" ; " ; Metagnomy / N. H. Pritchard

Beware: Do Not Read This Poem ; Paul Laurence Dunbar in the Tenderloin ; The Reactionary Poet / Ishmael Reed

sonnet ; poll ; the poor houses ; othello jones dresses for dinner ; American Jazz Quartet / Ed Roberson

how i got ovah / Carolyn Rodgers

for our lady ; A Poem for My Father ; A poem for my brother ; from Philadelphia: Spring, 1985 ; haiku (for Osage ave and Doorknop) ; haiku (for mungu and morani and the children of soweto) ; two haiku (for Clarence H. Watson and The Count) ; tanka (for papa Joe Jones who used to toss me up to the sky) ; haiku (for domestic workers in the african diaspora) ; haiku ("man. you write me so") ; tanka ("like dark old men the") ; haiku ("like ermine when i") ; haiku ("i want to make you") ; blues ; Song No. 2 / Sonia Sanchez

Whitey on the Moon ; The Revolution Will Not Be Televised ; Home Is Where the Hatred Is / Gil Scott-Heron

After Vallejo / A. B. Spellman

Inauguration ; Song / Lorenzo Thomas

One for Charlie Mingus ; Poem for My Father ; After Hearing a Radio Announcement: A Comment on Some Conditions / Quincy Troupe

A Far Cry from Africa ; Codicil ; Blues ; from The Schooner Flight ; Sea Canes ; Volcano ; Easter ; from Omeros: Chapter VIII / Derek Walcott

Women / Alice Walker

blues for franks wooten ; from Maumau American Cantos: Canto 4 / Tom Weatherly

How Stars Start ; Dance of the Infidels ; Boogie with O.O. Gabugah ; The Old O.O. Blues ; A Poem for Players / Al Young.

SIX: BLUE LIGHT SUTRAS 1976-1989. Twenty-Year Marriage ; I Can't Get Started ; Two Brothers ; The Good Shepherd: Atlanta, 1981 / AI

from Haiti / Will Alexander

Titta / George Barlow

Soul Make a Path Through Shouting ; Sally Hemings to Thomas Jefferson / Cyrus Cassells

from Portrait of a Nude Woman as Cleopatra / Barbara Chase-Riboud

What It Means to Be Dark ; Mastectomy ; from American Sonnets / Wanda Coleman

Harriet in the Promised Land / Sam Cornish

Blackbottom ; The Weakness ; On the Turning Up of Unidentified Black Female Corpses ; Black Boys Play the Classics / Toi Derricotte

Leaving Eden ; from The Arcanum Poems ; Father / Ralph Dickey

Tour Guide: La Maison des Esclaves ; Turning Forty in the 90's ; Wednesday Mourning ; Heartbeats / Melvin Dixon

The House Slave ; David Walker (1785-1830) ; Adolescence

II ; Banneker ; from Thomas and Beulah ; Canary ; The Return of Lieutenant James Reese Europe ; Hartie McDaniel Arrives at the Cocoanut Grove ; from Sonata Mulattica / Rita Dove

The Dance ; The Supremes ; from Brutal Imagination Cornelius Eady

Brown Girl Levitation, 1962-1989 ; Concerto no. 7: Condoleezza [working out] at the Watergate Nikky Finney

Some Pieces ; Hand Me Down Blues ; Dark Mirror / Calvin Forbes

This Bridge Across ; Time with Stevie Wonder in It ; Chris Gilbert: An Improvisation / Christopher Gilbert

Vernacular Examples ; Palaver ; Sotto Voce / C. S. Giscombe

For My Mother (May I Inherit Half Her Strength) ; For Claude McKay / Lorna Goodison

Goldsboro Narrative #4: My father's Viet Nam tour near over ; Goldsboro Narrative #28 ; Goldsboro Narrative #33 ; Goldsboro Narrative #7 ; Annual Visit of the Quiet, Unmarried Son / Forrest Hamer

Heavy Corners ; Civil Servant ; For My Own Protection / Essex Hemphill

"C"ing in Colors: Blue / Safiya Henderson-Holmes

Surplus Future Imperfect ; Woman, with wings ; Should you find me / Erica Hunt

Deep Song / Gayl Jones

i done got so thirsty that my mouth waters at the thought of rain / Patricia Spears Jones

Fragments from the Diary of Amelie Patiné, Quadroon, Mistress of Monsieur Jacques R _____ / Sybil Kein

from The Women of Plums / Dolores Kendrick

Annabelle ; More Girl Than Boy ; Letter to Bob Kaufman ; Blue Light Lounge Sutra for the Performance Poets at Harold Park Hotel ; February in Sydney ; from Dien Cai Dau ; Venus's-flytraps ; My Father's Love Letters ; Anodyne ; Ode to the Maggot / Yusef Komunyakaa

Falso Brilhante ; Song of the Andoumboulou: 31 / Nathaniel Mackey

Gra'ma ; Try to Understand Papa ; Throwing Stones at the All White Pool ; Fade to Black / Colleen J. McElroy

Life in a Sterile Environment: A Case Study ; The Day before Kindergarten: Taluca, Alabama, 1959 ; A Reconsideration of the Blackbird ; An Anointing ; Poem for My Mothers and Other Makers of Asafetida ; The Lynching / Thylias Moss

from Muse & Drudge ; from Sleeping with the Dictionary / Harryette Mullen

A Strange Beautiful Woman ; Sleepless Nights ; Lonely Eagles ; Star-Fix / Marilyn Nelson

How I Became the Blues / Brenda Marie Osbey

The Broken English Dream / Pedro Pietri

The Black Back-Ups / Kate Rushin

All the Way Home ; from Dreamer / Primus St. John

Trying for Fire / Tim Seibles

from for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf / Ntozake Shange

Building Nicole's Mama ; Don't Drink the Water / Patricia Smith

from Free! / Sekou Sundiata

Inside the Blues Whale ; Scrapple ; Washing the car with My Father ; John Henry Sleeping in High Grass / Afaa Michael Weaver

from Letters to a New England Negro / Sherley Anne Williams.

SEVEN: PRAISE SONGS FOR THE DAY 1990-2008. Blue ; The New Religion / Chris Abani

The Venus Hottentot ; Nineteen ; Ars Poetica #28: African Leave-Taking Disorder ; Ars Poetica #100: I Believe ; Praise Song for the Day / Elizabeth Alexander

loose strife ; Doug Flutie's 1984 Orange Bowl Hail Mary as Water into Fire / Quan Barry

Verbal Mugging / Paul Beatty

Prayer of the Backhanded ; Bullet Points ; 'N'em ; Another Elegy ; The Tradition / Jericho Brown

A Balance of Blues & Angels / Darrell Burton

nap-i-ness / Kyle Dargan

Natural ; Black Funk / Kwame Dawes

Wednesday Poem / Joel Dias-Porter

Frequently Asked Questions #10 / Camille Dungy

View of the Library of Congress from Paul Laurence Dunbar High School / Thomas Sayers Ellis

Sugar and Brine: Ella's Understanding ; Salt / Vievee Francis

burial ; A Small Needful Fact / Ross Gay

Santa Ana of Grocery Carts ; Teeth ; Ode to the Little "r" / Aracelis Girmay

Seeing the Body / Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Black Mary Integrates the School House / Duriel E. Harris

Touch ; Satchmo Returns to New Orleans ; The Golden Shovel ; Carp Poem / Terrance Hayes

How to Listen ; Euphoria ; Ferguson / Major Jackson

The Gospel of Barbecue / Honorée Fannone Jeffers

Charity on Blind Tom ; General Bethune on Blind Tom ; Blind Boone's Vision ; Minnehaha / Tyehimba Jess

Jesse Owens, 1963 ; Rope / A. Van Jordan

Thirty Lines About the Fro ; My Father's Kites / Allison Joseph

Drop it Like It's Hottento Venus / Douglas Kearney

Hostage / Daniell Legros Georges

Plantation ; from Voyage of the Sable Venus ; "Lucy Terry Prince Prepares for Her Marriage" / Robin Coste Lewis

Ode to the Diasporican / Mariposa

from Good Stock Strange Blood / Dawn Lundy Martin

from The Big Smoke ; Robot Music / Adrian Matejka

What the Oracle Said / Shara mcCallum

The Keepin' It Real Awards / Tony Medina

Blackout 1977 / Tracie Morris

gayl jones ; cecil taylor ; johnny cash ; I ran from it but was still in it / Fred Moten

On Confessionalism / John Murillo

Written by Himself ; Raisin / Gregory Pardlo

Bembe-Faced ; Arroz con Son y Clave / Willie Perdomo

Blue ; Cotillion ; A Great Noise ; Speak Low / Carl Phillips

I want to not have to write another word about who cops keep killing / Khadijah Queen

from Citizen: An American Lyric / Claudia Rankine

The Difficult Music ; The Lucky One ; Hesitation Theory ; My Mother Was No White Dove / Reginald Shepherd

from The Lost Letters of Frederick Douglass ; statistical haiku (or, how do they discount us? let me count the ways) ; ode to my blacknes / Evie Shockley

Don't You Wonder, Sometimes? ; The Universe Is a House Party ; Declaration / Tracy K. Smith

Offering ; Snow / Sharan Strange

Ode to Gentrification / Samantha Thornhill

Flounder ; Drapery Factory, Gulfport, Mississippi, 1956 ; Graveyard Blues ; Pilgrimage ; Miscegenation ; Incident / Natasha Trethewey

Strip ; RR Lyrae: Matter / Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon

Wind Talker ; Work Ethic / Frank X. Walker

Dissidence ; Gwendolyn Brooks / Anthony Walton

"The reeds shook. A wide flat ass cradled in leather pants. This" / Simone White

Amethyst Rocks / Saul Williams

Money Road / Kevin Young.

EIGHT: AFTER THE HURRICANE 2009-2020. How Can Black People Write about Flowers at a Time Like This / Hanif Abdurraqib

La Negra Takes Medusa to the Hair Salon / Elizabeth Acevedo

Cento Between the Ending and the End / Cameron Awkward-Rich

America Will Be / Joshua Bennett

A Postmodern Two-Step / Reginald Dwayne Betts

upon viewing the death of basquiat / Mahogany L. Browne

Massa's House / Dominique Christina

Nashville / Tiana Clark

Dear _____, / DeLana R. A. Dameron

My First Black Nature Poem(TM) / LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs

I saw Emmett Till this week at the grocery store / Eve L. Ewing

Aunt Flo and Uncle Phineas / Sean Hill

(Afterward) One Corner More / Notes on a Letter to the Singer Abbey Lincoln from Her Lover, Abraham Lincoln / Harmony Holiday

After the Hurricane / Ishion Hutchinson

Kansas / Gary Jackson

Kudzu / Saeed Jones

The moon rose over the bay. I had a lot of feelings / Donika Kelly

One Country / Rickey Laurentiis

Still When I Picture It the Face of God Is a White Man's Face / Shane McCrae

Closer / Anis Mojgani

#sayhername / Aja Monet

The President's Wife / Morgan Parker

Violins / Rowan Ricardo Phillips

History / Camille Rankine

Black Can Sleep / Justin Phillip Reed

Children Listen / Roger Reeves

Why Is We Americans / Alison C. Rollins

Object Permanence / Nicole Sealey

Gnawa Boy, Marrakesh, 1968 / Charif Shanahan

Fisherman's Daughter / Safiya Sinclair

dinosaurs in the hood / Danez Smith

Your National Anthem / Clint Smith

Prayer / Phillip B. Williams

Ode to Herb Kent / Jamila Woods.