The poetry of Black America: anthology of the 20th century

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868-1963) : The song of the smoke -- James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938) : O black and unknown bards ; The creation ; The glory of the day was in her face ; Go down death -- Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) : We wear the mask ; Sympathy ; Frederick Douglass ; When Malindy sings ; The paradox -- Alice Dunbar Nelson (1872-1906) : Sonnet -- William Stanley Braithwaite (1878-1962) : To -- ; In a grave-yard ; Golden moonrise -- Leslie Pinckney Hill (1880-1960) : "So quietly" -- Angelina Weld Grimke (1880-1958) : The black finger ; Tenebris ; Your hands ; A winter twilight -- Anne Spencer (1882- ) : Letter to my sister ; Lady, lady -- Jessie Redmond Fauset (1882-1961) : Oriflamme -- Ray Garfield Dandridge (1882-1930) : Time to die ; Zalka Peetruza -- Walter Everette Hawkins (1883- ) : A spade is just a spade ; The death of justice -- Effie Lee Newsome (1885- ) : Morning light (the dew-drier) -- Georgia Douglas Johnson (1886-1966) : Old black men ; Common dust ; Escape ; The suppliant ; Prejudice ; Credo ; The riddle -- Fenton Johnson (1888-1958) : Tired ; Aunt Jane Allen ; The scarlet woman --

Claude McKay (1890-1948) : If we must die ; The tropics in New York ; Outcast ; America ; In bondage ; The lynching ; To the white fiends ; St. Isaac's Church, Petrograd ; The White House ; After the winter

Jean Toomer (1895-1967) : Reapers ; Beehive ; Georgia dusk ; Song of the son ; Brown river, smile ; The lost dancer ; Five vignettes

Joseph Seaman Cotter, Jr. (1895-1919) : And what shall you say? ; Sonnet to negro soldiers

Melvin B. Tolson (1898-1966) : PSI ; The sea-turtle and the shark ; African China

Frank Horne (1899- ) : Notes found near a suicide ; On seeing two brown boys in a Catholic church ; Kid stuff ; Resurrection

Lewis Alexander (1900-1945) : Negro woman ; Enchantment ; Dream song ; Nocturne Varial

Sterling A. Brown (1901- ) : Strong men ; Strange legacies ; Remembering Nat Turner ; Foreclosure ; After winter ; Sister Lou ; Southern road ; An old woman remembers ; Old Lem

Clarissa Scott Delany (1901-1927) : Solace

Langton Hughes (1902-1967) : The negro speaks of rivers ; Christ in Alabama ; Cross ; Song for a dark girl ; Dream variation ; Juke box love song ; I, too, sing America ; Motto ; Dream deferred ; Prime ; Cultural exchange ; Freedom ; October 16: the raid ; Death in Yorkville ; Militant ; Special bulletin

Gwendolyn B. Bennett (1902- ) : Heritage ;

To a dark girl ; Sonnet I ; Sonnet II ; Hatred

Arna Bontemps (1902- ) : Southern mansion ; The day-breakers ; The return ; A black man talks of reaping ; Close your eyes!

Countee Cullen (1903-1946) : In memory of Colonel Charles Young ; Saturday's child ; From the dark tower ; Yet do I marvel ; Heritage ; Four epitaphs ; Incident ; Black majesty ; For a mouthy woman ; Tableau ; Brown boy to brown girl ; Scottsboro, too, is worth its song

Donald Jeffrey Hayes (1904- ) : Appoggiatura

Frank Marshall Davis (1905- ) : Flowers of darkness ; Giles Johnson, Ph. D. ; Robert Whitmore ; Four glimpses of night ; I sing no new songs ; Snapshots of the cotton south

Helene Johnson (1907- ) : Magalu ; Poem ; Bottle: New York

Richard Wright (1908-1960) : I have seen black hands ; Between the world and me ; Hokku poems

Pauli Murray (1910- ) : Without name ; Mr. Roosevelt regrets ; Harlem riot, 1943 ; Death of a friend ; For Mack C. Parker

Robert Hayden (1913- ) : Middle passage ; A ballad of remembrance ; O Daedalus, fly away home ; Homage to the empress of the blues ; Mourning poem for the queen of Sunday ; "Summertime and the living ..." ; The whipping ; Those winter Sundays ; Frederick Douglass ; Runagate runagate ; Baha'u'llah in the garden of Ridwan ; El-hajj Malik El-Shabazz ;

Aunt Jemima of the ocean waves

Owen Dodson (1914- ) : Mary passed this morning ; From: poems for my brother Kenneth ; Sorrow is the only faithful one ; Yardbird's skull ; I break the sky

Margaret Danner : Far from Africa: four poems ; The elevator man adheres to form ; Best loved of Africa ; Sadie's playhouse

Dudley Randall (1914- ) : Legacy: my south ; The southern road ; Memorial wreath ; Black magic ; The profile on the pillow ; On getting a natural ; The intellectuals ; Roses and revolutions

John Henrik Clarke (1915- ) : Sing me a new song ; Determination

Margaret Walker (1915- ) : For my people ; We have been believers ; October journey ; Childhood ; Lineage ; Girl held without bail ; Birmingham ; For Malcolm X

Ray Durem (1915-1963) : Friends ; Vet's rehabilitation ; I know I'm not sufficiently obscure ; Problem in social geometry

the inverted square! ; Award

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917- ) : A song in the front yard ; The egg boiler ; The bean eaters ; The old-marrieds ; The last quatrain of the ballad of Emmett Till ; The Chicago Defender sends a man to Little Rock ; We real cool ; Bronzeville man with a belt in the back ; Strong men, riding horses ; Medgar Evers ; Malcolm X ; Martin Luther King Jr. ; The Blackstone rangers ; From: two dedications ; The sermon on the Warpland ;

The second sermon on the Warpland ; Riot ; Paul Robeson

Samuel Allen (Paul Vesey) (1917- ) : A moment please ; Dylan, who is dead ; To satch ; The staircase ; If the stars should fall

Nanina Alba (1917-1968) : Be Daedalus ; For Malcolm X

Myron O'Higgins (1918- ) : Young poet ; Two lean cats ... ; Vaticide

Bruce McM. Wright (1918- ) : The African affair

Alfred A. Duckett (1918- ) : Sonnet

Lance Jeffers (1919- ) : How high the moon ; On listening to the spirituals ; Grief streams down my chest ; My blackness is the beauty of this land

M. Carl Holman (1919- ) : Notes for a movie script ; And on this shore ; Picnic: the liberated

James A. Emanuel (1921- ) : The treehouse ; Church burning: Mississippi ; Emmett Till ; Get up, blues ; Old black men say

Adam David Miller (1922- ) : The hungry black child ; Crack in the wall holds flowers

Naomi Long Madgett (1923- ) : Mortality ; Simple ; Her story ; Black woman

Gloria C. Oden (1923- ) : Review from Staten Island ; The carousel ; The riven quarry ; Man white, brown girl and all that jazz

Mari Evans : ... And the old women gathered ; The rebel ; Black jam for Dr. Negro ; Vive noir! ; Into blackness softly ; To mother and Steve

Oliver Pitcher (1924- ) : Salute ; The pale blue casket

Zack Gilbert (1925- ) : My own hallelujahs ; When I heard dat white man say ;

For Stephen Dixon ; For Angela

Russell Atkins (1926- ) : It's here in the ; On the fine arts garden, Cleveland ; Night and a distant church ; Narrative

Bette Darcie Latimer (1927- ) : For William Edward Burghardt Du Bois on his eightieth birthday

Hoyt W. Fuller (1928- ) : Seravezza ; Lost moment

Lerone Bennet, Jr. (1928- ) : Blues and bitterness ; And was not improved

Sarah Webster Fabio (1928- ) : Black man's feast ; Evil is no black thing

Ted Joans (1928- ) : Its curtains ; Scenery ; The protective grigri

Sun Ra : Nothing is ; The plane: earth ; Primary lesson: the second class citizens

Raymond R. Patterson (1929- ) : When I awoke ; I've got a home in that rock ; You are the brave ; Birmingham 1963 ; At that moment ; Letter in winter ; Night-piece ; Black all day

Sarah E. Wright : To some millions who survive Joseph E. Mander, Senior ; Until they have stopped

Carl Gardner (1931- ) : The dead man dragged from the sea ; Reflections

Gerald W. Barrax (1933- ) : Efficiency apartment ; To a woman who wants darkness and time ; Black Narcissus ; For Malcolm: after Mecca ; Your eyes have their silence ; Fourth dance poem

Herbert Martin (1933- ) : Antigone I ; Antigone VI ; Lines ; A negro soldier's Viet Nam diary.

Etheridge Knight (1933- ) : Cell song ; The sun came ; The idea of ancestry ; To Dinah Washington ; He sees through stone ; It was a funky deal ; Portrait of Malcolm X ; For black poets who think of suicide

Conrad Kent Rivers (1933-1968) : Prelude ; Watts ; To Richard Wright ; Four sheets to the wind ; On the death of William Edward Burghardt Du Bois by African moonlight and forgotten shores ; If blood is black then spirit neglects my unborn son ; The train runs late to Harlem ; The still voice of Harlem

Calvin C. Hernton (1934- ) : The patient: Rockland County sanitarium ; Jitterbugging in the streets ; Fall down ; D blues

Audre Lorde (1934- ) : Coal ; Summer oracle ; Father, the year is fallen ; Now that I am forever with child ; And what about the children ; What my child learns of the sea ; Father Son and Holy Ghost ; Suffer the children ; Rites of passage

Imamu Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) (1934- ) : Each morning ; Preface to a twenty volume suicide note ; The invention of comics ; Way out west ; Legacy ; Letter to E. Franklin Frazier ; W.W. ; A poem for black hearts ; Leroy ; Bumi ; A guerrilla handbook ; We own the night ; SOS ; Study peace

Quandra Prettyman : Photograph ; Still life: lady with birds ; When Mahalia sings ; The mood

Joseph White : Black is a soul

Bob Kaufman (1935- ) : Mingus ; Blues note ; African dream ; Patriotic ode on the fourteenth anniversary of the persecution of Charlie Chaplin ; I have folded my sorrows ; Walking Parker home ; To my song Parker, asleep in the next room ; Falling

Henry Dumas (1935-1968) : Black trumpeter ; Buffalo ; America ; Knock on wood ; Black star line

James W. Thompson (1935- ) : You are alms ; The yellow bird

Jay Wright (1935- ) : Wednesday night prayer meeting ; An invitation to Madison County ; The homecoming singer ; Death as history ; Zapata & the landlord ; John Coltrane / an impartial review ;

For my unborn and wretched children ; When black people are ; In Orangeburg my brothers did ; Tomorrow the heroes

Sonia Sanchez (1935- ) : Homecoming ; Poem at thirty ; Right on: white America ; Poem ; Definition for blk/children ; Hospital/poem ; To all sisters ; Now poem. For us.

Johari Amini (1935- ) : To a poet I knew ; Positives ; Signals

Sam Cornish (1935- ) : The river ; Montgomery ; One eyed black man in Nebraska ; Frederick Douglass ; To a single shadow without pity ; Death of Dr. King ; Panther ; A black man

Clarence Major (1936- ) : Vietnam #4 ; Vietnam ; Blind old woman ; The design ; Swallow the lake

June Jordan (1936- ) : All the world moved ; The new pieta: for the mothers and children of Detroit ; Uncle bull-boy ; In memoriam: Martin Luther King Jr.

Lucille Clifton (1936- ) : Good times ; For deLawd ; Miss Rosie ; Those boys that ran together ; My mama moved among the days ; Listen children ; To Bobby Seale

Lebert Bethune (1937- ) : A juju of my own ; Harlem freeze frame ; Bwagamoyo ; Blue Tanganyika

Eugene Redmond (1937- ) : Definition of nature ; Gods in Vietnam

Michael S. Harper (1938- ) : Martin's blues ; Photographs: a vision of massacre ; Here where Coltrane is ; Come back blues ; Newsletter from my mother: ; Barricades ; Blue Ruth: America ;

Deathwatch ; Effendi -- Julia Fields (1938- ) : Alabama ; Poems: Birmingham 1962-1964 -- Norman Jordan (1938- ) : Black warrior ; Feeding the lions ; July 31, ; August 2, -- Keorapetse Kgositsile (1938- ) : Origins ; Ivory masks in orbit ; Spirits unchained ; For Eusi, Ayi Kwei & Gwen Brooks ; My name is Afrika -- Ishmael Reed (1938- ) : Rain rain on the splintered girl ; Sermonette ; Beware: do not read this poem ; I am a cowboy in the boat of Ra ; The gangster's death ; The feral pioneers ; Instructions to a princess -- Askia Muhammad Toure (1938- ) : Floodtide ; Tauhid ; Juju -- Jayne Cortez (1938- ) : Lead ; For real ; Initiation -- Primus St. John (1939- ) : Tyson's corner ; The morning star ; Benign neglect / Mississippi, 1970 ; Elephant rock ; Lynching and burning -- Ed Roberson (1939- ) : Othello Jones dresses for dinner ; Poll ; Mayday ; From: when thy king is a boy ; Blue horses ; Seventh son ; If the black frog will not ring -- Julius Lester (1939- ) : From: in the time of revolution ; On the birth of my son, Malcolm Coltrane ; Us -- Norman Henry Pritchard II (1939- ) : Aswelay ; Self ; Gyre's galax ; # ; Love -- Al Young (1939- ) : For poets ; A dance for militant dilettantes ; Dance of the infidels ; The dancer ; Myself when I am real ; The move continuing ; Kiss ; Yes, the secret mind whispers ; Loneliness --

Richard W. Thomas (1939- ) : The worker ; Martyrdom ; Riots and rituals ; Amen ; To the new annex to the Detroit county jail ; Life after death -- Welton Smith (1940- ) : Interlude ; The beast section ; Strategies -- Lawrence McGaugh (1940- ) : Two mornings ; Young training ; To children -- Lennox Raphael (1940- ) : Mike 65 -- Joe Johnson (1940- ) : Judeebug's country ; If I ride this train -- Sterling Plumpp (1940- ) : I told Jesus ; Half black, half blacker ; Beyond the nigger ; The living truth -- Rob Penny (1940- ) : The real people loves one another ; I remember how she sang ; Be cool, baby ; And we conquered -- Fred Johnson (1940- ) : Fire, hair, meat and bone ; Arabesque -- De Leon Harrison (1941- ) : The seed of Nimrod ; The room ; Yellow ; A collage for Richard Davis -- two short forms ; Some days / out walking above -- Carol Freeman (1941- ) : Christmas morning I ; I saw them lynch -- Tom Weatherly (1942- ) : Canto 4 ; Canto 5 ; Canto 7 ; Arroyo ; Imperial thumbprint ; First Monday Scottsboro Alabama -- Conyus (1942- ) : San Francisco county jail cell b-6 ; Upon leaving the parole board hearing ; Six ten sixty-nine ; Untitled requiem for tomorrow ; He's doing natural life -- Doughtry Long (1942- ) : #4 ; Ginger bread mama ; Negro dreams ; One time Henry dreamed the number -- F.J. Bryant, Jr. (1942- ) : Cathexis --

David Henderson (1942- ) : Keep on pushing ; Walk with de mayor of Harlem ; They are killing all the young men ; Do nothing till you hear from me ; White people ; The Louisiana Weekly #4 -- Quincy Troupe (1943- ) : A sense of coolness ; Dirge ; In Texas grass ; For Malcolm who walks in the eyes of our children ; Poem for friends -- Nikki Giovanni (1943- ) : Word poem ; Knoxville, Tennessee ; Nikki-Rosa ; The true import of present dialogue, black vs. negro ; My poem ; Dreams ; Poem for Aretha ; Poem for Flora ; 12 gates to the city ; Poem of Angela Yvonne Davis -- Charles Lynch (1943- ) : If we cannot live as people ; Memo -- K. Curtis Lyle (1944- ) : Songs for the cisco kid ; Songs for the cisco kid #2 ; Sometimes I go to Camarillo & sit in the lounge ; Lacrimas or there is a need to scream -- Ron Welburn (1944- ) : Avoidances ; Eulogy for populations ; Cecil county -- Charlie Cobb (1944- ) : Nation ; For Sammy Younge ; To Vietnam ; "Containing Communism" -- Barbara Mahone (1944- ) : Colors for mama ; Sugarfields ; A poem for positive thinkers -- Alice Walker (1944- ) : From: once ; In these dissenting times -- D.L. Graham (1944-1970) : Tony get the boys ; The west ridge is menthol-cool ; Soul -- Lorenzo Thomas (1944- ) : The subway witnesses ; Onion bucket --

Stanley Crouch (1945-) : Blackie thinks of his brothers ; No new music ; Riding across John Lee's finger ; Albert Ayler: eulogy for a decomposed saxophone player

Carole Gregory Clemmons (1945- ) : Spring ; Love from my father ; Migration ; I'm just a stranger here, heaven is my home

Calvin Forbes (1945- ) : Reading Walt Whitman ; Lullaby for Ann-Lucian

August Wilson (1945- ) : Theme one: the variations

Alvin Saxon (Ojenke) : Black power ; Watts ; A poem for integration

Mae Jackson (1946- ) : The blues today ; For some poets ; I remember ... ; I used to wrap my white doll up in ; Reincarnation ; January 3, 1970

L.V. Mack (1947- ) : Biafra ; Death songs

Felipe Luciano (1947- ) : You're nothing but a Spanish colored kid

Wayne Moreland (1948- ) : Sunday morning

Pearl Cleage Lomax (1948- ) : Glimpse

Charles Cooper (1948- ) : Rubin ; Honky ; Dreams

Richard E. Grant (1949- ) : Broken heart, broken machine

Victor Hernandez Cruz (1949- ) : Carmen ; Energy ; The electric cop ; Spirits ; The story of Zeros

Djangatolum (Lloyd M. Corbin, Jr.) (1949- ) : Ali ; Dedication to the final confrontation

Larry Thompson (1950- ) : Black is best

Angelo Lewis (1950- ) : America bleeds ; Clear

Elouise Loftin (1950- ) : Woman ; Virginia ; Weeksville women

Julianne Perry (1952- ) : To L. ; No dawns.