Poetry

In his much-anticipated follow-up to The Crown Ain't Worth Much, poet, essayist, biographer, and music critic Hanif Abdurraqib has written a book of poems about how one rebuilds oneself after a heartbreak, the kind that renders them a different version...

Winner Gish Prize for Lifetime Achievement A representative collection of the life work of the much-honored poet and a founder of the Black Arts movement, spanning the 4 decades of her literary career. Gathering highlights from all of Sonia Sanchez's...

Award-winning poet and playwright Idris Goodwin interrogates and remixes our cultural past in order to make sense of our present and potential futures. "Situated squarely in the oral traditions of hip-hop and breakbeat poetry, Idris Goodwin's work...

In this his fourth collection, award-winning poet Kyle Dargan examines the mechanics of the heart and mind as they are weathered by loss. Following a spate of deaths among family and friends, Dargan chooses to present not color-negative elegies but...

"In Point Blank, we are given an intimate look at one man's inner and outer life, but there's no navel-gazing nonsense. There's always an awareness, implied or explicit, of the sociopolitical crucible. With language both tough-minded and...

Fusing the personal and the political in high-voltage verse, Amiri Baraka--"whose long illumination of the black experience in America was called incandescent in some quarters and incendiary in others" ("New York Times")--was one of the preeminent...

A dazzling collection of 810 haiku, the rigorous 17-syllable Japanese poem, by the famed author of "Native Son" and "Black Boy".

Charged with sensuality and passion, Pablo Neruda's love poems caused a scandal when published anonymously in 1952. In later editions, these verses became the most celebrated of the Noble Prize winner's oeuvre, captivating readers with earthbound images...

Phenomenal Woman is a phenomenal poem that speaks to us of where we are as women at the dawn of a new century. In a clear voice, Maya Angelou vividly reminds us of our towering strength and beauty. Here is a poem that radiates wisdom and conviction,...

Rhythmic lyrical poems that embody black music, existence, and tragedy. The poems in this collection center on the word "dub," which accrues a subtle lyrical connotation throughout its various forms and meanings--to bestow, vest, crown, and also to...

An anthology of poems and art exploring Afrofuturism, science fiction, and speculative fiction by Black writers and writers of color.

Say it with her now: "I love my people!" In rhythmic prowess, Kim Singleton recounts the beauty and legacy of Black people who are "too many to name, from the corners of obscurity, to the highest of fame." I Love My People is a poetic tribute to African...