Black nature: four centuries of African American nature poetry

Cycle one: Just looking. We must be careful / Ed Roberson --

Earth is a living thing / Lucille Clifton --

Mountains of California, part I / Al Young --

Mountain road ends here / G.E. Patterson --

Queen Anne's lace / June Jordan --

On summer / George Moses Horton --

Yellow jacket / Nikki Giovanni --

Eclogue at twilight / Yusef Komunyakaa --

Ruellia noctiflora / Marilyn Nelson --

Evening primrose / Rita Dove --

Night-blooming cereus / Robert Hayden --

September night / George Marion McClellan --

Sweet enough ocean, cotton / Thylias Moss --

Metamorphism / Helene Johnson --

Brown girl's nature poem: provincetown / Toni Wynn --

What more? / Gerald Barrax Sr. --

Be careful / Ed Roberson --

Watching blackbirds turn to ghosts / Rachel Eliza Griffiths --

If winter comes, can spring? / Alvin Aubert --

31 words * prose poems [#12] / Rita Shockley.

Cycle two: Nature, be with us. We are not strangers here / Ravi Howard --

For a farmer / James A. Emanuel --

To waste at trees / Gerald Barrax Sr. --

White dog / Carl Phillips --

You must walk this lonesome / Evie Shockley --

Down from the houses of magic / Cyrus Cassells --

Ephemera / George Marion McClellan --

Sleepwalker on the mountain / Ruth Ellen Kocher --

#543 / Richard Wright --

Aphrodite of economy / Mark McMorris --

Arachis hypogaea / Marilyn Nelson --

In the Rachel Carson Wildlife Refuge, thinking of Rachel Carson / Anthony Walton --

language / Camille T. Dungy --

For Alice Walker (a summertime tanka) / June Jordan --

Generations / Lucille Clifton --

Work / Yusef Komunyakaa --

Poem to my child, if ever you shall be / Ross Gay --

To a certain lady, in her garden / Sterling Brown --

Urban nature / Ed Roberson --

September songs / Reginald Shepherd.

Cycle three: Dirt on our hands. from 12 million Black voices / Richard Wright --

Another April / Anne Spencer --

Barriers / Gerald Barrax Sr. --

Young peacock / Lenard D. Moore --

Urban renewal: XIII / Major Jackson --

Bees / Audre Lorde --

Carrion / Anthony Walton --

Look at the blackbird fall / June Jordan --

Flight of the California condor / Wanda Coleman --

Since everyone can never be safe / Camille T. Dungy --

Won't be but a minute / Patricia Smith --

Called / Michael S. Harper --

Harvest song / Jean Toomer --

Black man talks of reaping / Arna Bontemps --

Wood and rain / Melvin Dixon --

Joy in the woods / Claude McKay --

Sorrow home / Margaret Walker --

Blues aubade (or, Revision of the lean, post-modernist pastorale) / Honorée Fanonne Jeffers --

Romance / Ed Roberson --

April is on the way / Alice Dunbar-Nelson.

Cycle four: Pests, people too. Boll weevils, coyotes, and the color of nuisance / C.S. Giscombe --

Miscarriage in October with ladybugs / Amber Flora Thomas --

Man reading in bed by a window with bugs / Gregory Pardlo --

Pest / Major Jackson --

Ambition II: mosquito in the mist / Tim Seibles

#459 /

Richard Wright --

Market / Thomas Sayers Ellis --

For those who need a true story / Tara Betts --

Postcard to an ecologist / Lenard D. Moore --

Nature boy / C.S. Giscombe --

Plague of starlings / Robert Hayden --

O believer / Janice N. Harrington --

Brown menace or poem to the survival of roaches / Audre Lorde --

Life / Kwame Alexander --

What a snakehead discovered in a Maryland pond and a poet in corporate America have in common / Kamilah Aisha Moon --

Lost conquistador / Shane Book --

Beginning of the end of the world / Lucille Clifton --

Carpenter bee / Natasha Trethewey --

Yellowjackets / Yusef Komunyakaa.

Cycle five: Forsaken of the earth. Flowers / Alice Walker --

On imagination / Phillis Wheatley --

For Saundra / Nikki Giovanni --

Natural world / G.E. Patterson --

Lament for dark peoples / Langston Hughes --

White things / Anne Spencer --

Parsley / Rita Dove --

Haunted oak / Paul Laurence Dunbar --

from Rape of Florida, Canto I / Albery Whitman --

Swimchant of nigger mer-folk (an aquaboogie set in lapis) / Douglas Kearney --

Water USA / Clarence Major --

Migration / Major Jackson --

February leaving / Ruth Ellen Kocher --

Blue horses / Ed Roberson --

Sick man looks at flowers / Gwendolyn Brooks --

Prodigal / Arna Bontemps --

Potters' field / Cynthia Parker-Ohene --

Monument / Natasha Trethewey.

Cycle six: Disasters, natural and other. Disasters, nature, and poetry / Mona Lisa Saloy --

Floodtide / Askia M. Touré --

Children of the Mississippi / Sterling Brown --

Emmett Till / James A. Emanuel --

Sign post / Devorah Major --

Song / Audre Lorde --

Sacred history of the earth / G.E. Patterson --

Greenness taller than gods / Yusef Komunyakaa --

San Francisco, spring 1986 / Patricia Spears Jones --

Cure / Carl Phillips

Liturgy /

Natasha Trethewey --

Reapers / Jean Toomer

Earthquake blues /

Ishmael Reed --

Erasure / Amber Flora Thomas --

Floodsong 2: water moccasin's spiritual / Douglas Kearney --

Requiem / Anne Spencer --

Ice storm / Robert Hayden.

Cycle seven: Talk of the animals. Shepherd's tale / Sean Hill --

Beehive / Jean Toomer --

Black-and-white dusk at Limantour Beach / Rachel Eliza Griffiths --

Sympathy / Paul Laurence Dunbar --

Sea-turtle and the shark / Melvin B. Tolson --

#175 / Richard Wright --

European folk tale variant / Harryette Mullen --

Man raised as chicken / Wendy S. Walters --

Far / C.S. Giscombe --

Spider speaks / Shara McCallum --

Hummingbird / Cyrus Cassells --

Herd / Tim Seibles --

Speed / Cornelius Eady --

Points of view / Ishmael Reed --

Requiem for a nest / Wanda Coleman --

Surfaces and masks: XXX / Clarence Major --

Minks / Toi Derricotte --

Possum / Janice N. Harrington --

Appaloosa / Afaa Michael Weaver --

April lyric/All I know is / G.E. Patterson.

Cycle eight: What the land remembers. April in Eatonton / Honorée Fanonne Jeffers --

Locus / Robert Hayden --

Jaguaripe / Myronn Hardy --

What there was / Janice N. Harrington --

Wind talker / Frank X Walker --

Mulberry fields / Lucille Clifton --

I am black and the trees are green / E. Ethelbert Miller --

Maple remains / Amaud Jamaul Johnson --

Tallahatchie lullaby, baby / Douglas Kearney --

Out in the country of my country / June Jordan --

Three days of forest, a river, free / Rita Dove --

American light / Claudia Rankine --

Look ahead, look south: the future / C.S. Giscombe --

Southern song / Margaret Walker --

Wave / Ed Roberson --

Her table mountain / Evie Shockley --

from Juneteenth: the bicentennial poem / Sherley Anne Williams --

Tap-root / Indigo Moor --

Last talk with Jim Hardwick / Marilyn Nelson --

History as apple tree / Michael S. Harper.

Cycle nine: Growing out of this land. Writing home / Camille T. Dungy --

#559 / Richard Wright --

Millpond / Yusef Komunyakaa --

Seven pastorals at sixteen / Sean Hill --

Before a screen door / Janice N. Harrington --

Pull / Indigo Moor --

Two directions / C.S. Giscombe --

My grandfather walks in the woods / Marilyn Nelson --

Mississippi gardens / Stephanie Pruitt --

I called them trees / Gerald Barrax Sr. --

Beaches, why I don't care for them / Wanda Coleman --

At 57, my father learns to grow things / Ruth Ellen Kocher --

Suburban noir / Gregory Pardlo --

Letter to the local police / June Jordan --

Homeopathic / Frank X Walker --

Root / Terrance Hayes --

What my child learns of the sea / Audre Lorde --

Ritual of season / Remica L. Bingham --

More than once in caves / Mark McMorris --

Pachuta, Mississippi/A memoir / Al Young.

Cycle ten: Comes always spring. First skunk of spring / Marilyn Nelson --

[Earth, I thank you] / Anne Spencer --

Bemidji in spring / Sean Hill --

Winter poem / Nikki Giovanni --

After the winter / Claude McKay --

For Alexis / Joanne V. Gabbin --

Thank you / Ross Gay --

Spring down / George Marion McClellan --

Deep in the quiet wood / James Weldon Johnson --

Violets / Alice Dunbar-Nelson --

Man, his bowl, his raspberries / Claudia Rankine --

What to eat, and what to drink, and what to leave for poison / Camille T. Dungy --

Earth song / Langston Hughes --

Rondeau / Jessie Redmon Fauset --

Southern living / Kendra Hamilton --

Geraniums / Elizabeth Alexander --

My Mississippi spring / Margaret Walker --

Fearless / Tim Seibles.