Poetry

In her best imitation of a historian, poet Sasha Debevec-McKenney combs through the past. Joy Is My Middle Name is about crawling through your twenties and emerging into your thirties. Walking uneasily through cities and rural towns, talking about sex,...

Harryette Mullen is one of contemporary poetry's most influential voices, for her inventive language play, keen wit, formal experimentation, and pointed critique of American culture. In Regaining Unconsciousness, her first new collection in twelve years,...

In henceforce, Kamden Ishmael Hilliard's poems take us on unimaginable voyages within and beyond the contours of our quotidian experience. This is not simply geographic travel, however: though Hilliard's poems explore air travel, transcontinental...

"It is hard to express how important I feel this book is."--Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple A powerful and poetic illustrated meditation on hip-hop and mindfulness "I want to create music and experiences for people to understand that it's okay...

AUTHOR OF THE PULITZER PRIZE AND NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER, JAMESAUTHOR OF ERASURE, now adapted for the screen as the OSCAR-WINNING FILM, AMERICAN FICTIONPercival Everett is diving back into poetry with his spellbinding new collection, SONNETS FOR A...

A preeminent voice in contemporary literature, Major Jackson offers steady miracles of vision and celebrations of language in rapturous, sophisticated poems. Razzle Dazzle traces the evolution of Jackson's transformative imagination and fierce music...

Nursery Rhymes in Black is a poetic recollection of race, roots, culture, and identity. Paying homage to the memory and work of elders and ancestors, Latorial Faison remembers her own matriarch, mother, grandmother--the rich memories of having grown up...

The Japanese word 'koan' is a seemingly unanswerable riddle used by practitioners of Zen Buddhism to trigger spiritual enlightenment and understanding.

When I think of the kind of writing that really moves me, I think of the elements present in Bennett's poetry: honesty about Black women's interior lives, clarity (because we don't have time to talk around a thing), and a mean metaphor. Amanda Bennett...

In The Night Before the End of the World, award-winning author Ran Walker crafts 200 microfiction and prose poem pieces that pulse with afrosurrealism, horror, humor, love, and loss. Each piece, ranging from 9-235 words, explores the wild and often...

Jerry T. Johnson's Bad Fruit boldly asks society: have we lost our minds or taken leave of our senses? We eat lies and say the lies taste good. We inhale pollutants and say the air is fresh. We watch glaciers melt and say there is no global warming. We...

An unforgettable poetry collection blending the author's personal experiences with shared empathetic moments from others, "Poetic Rants of Pain and Appreciation" dives into the vulnerability of life and the struggle of growing up multiracial in a big...