Poetry

This dazzling Christmas poem by Maya Angelou is powerful and inspiring for people of all faiths. In this beautiful, deeply moving poem, Maya Angelou inspires us to embrace the peace and promise of Christmas, so that hope and love can once again light up...

Praise for Stephen Mitchell's translation of Rilke: ""Perhaps the most beautiful group of poetic translations this century has produced."" -- Chicago Tribune ""This is, without any doubt, the best English rendering of Rilke. It is as faithful to the...

As he did for Black women in Black Roses, Harold Green III, poet and founder of the music collective Flowers for the Living, now honors the Black men he most admires--groundbreakers including Tyler Perry, Barry Jenkins, Billy Porter, Chance the Rapper,...

One glance at So Far, So Good and it becomes evident that this is not merely a collection of a song writer's lyrics. The song-poems of this undisputed "Bluesologist" triumphantly stand on their own, evoking the rhythm and urgency which have distinguished...

Celebrate Black poets--a collection of classic and contemporary Black authors selected by New York Times bestselling author Nikki GiovanniAward-winning poet and writer Nikki Giovanni takes on the impossible task of selecting the 100 best African American...

From the publication of his first book in 1926, Langston Hughes was hailed as the poet laureate of black America, the first to commemorate the experience of African Americans in a voice that no reader, black or white, could fail to hear. Lyrical and...

Winner of the 2020 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets Layered, complex, and infinitely compelling, Chet'la Sebree's Field Study is a daring exploration of the self and our interactions with others--a meditation on desire, race, loss...

Nominated for an NAACP Image AwardA Publishers Weekly Top 10 History Title for the seasonBooklist's Top 10 Diverse Nonfiction titles for the yearBookRiot's 50 Must-Read Poetry CollectionsMost Anticipated Books of the Year--The Rumpus, Nylon A revelatory...

Rita Dove's Collected Poems 1974-2004 showcases the wide-ranging diversity that earned her a Pulitzer Prize, the position of U.S. poet laureate, a National Humanities Medal, and a National Medal of Art. Gathering thirty years and seven books, this volume...

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "The Color Purple" gives readers her first new collection of poetry in more than a decade, poems that reaffirm her as "one of the best American writers of today" ("The Washington Post").

In her legendary career, artist and activist Nikki Giovanni has established herself as a writer who can entertain and challenge, and a voice for social justice who can inform and inspire in times of national crisis. Controversial, revolutionary,...

"Tracy K. Smith's poetry is an awakening itself." --Vogue Celebrated for its extraordinary intelligence and exhilarating range, the poetry of Tracy K. Smith opens up vast questions. Such Color: New and Selected Poems, her first career-spanning volume,...

Collected here are poems from Ai's previous five books--Cruelty, Killing Floor, Sin, Fate, and Greed--along with seventeen new poems. Employing her trademark ferocity, these new dramatic monologues continue to mine this award-winning poet's often...

What happens when a Midwestern girl migrates to a haunted Southern town, whose river is a graveyard, whose streets bear the names of Southern slave owners? How can she build a home where Confederate symbols strategically stand in the center of town? Can...

Dasan Ahanu is a southern storyteller who uses his poetry as a tool for conveying messages and for giving voice to the lived experiences of those who find themselves at the center and in the margins. Everything Worth Fighting For: An exploration of being...

As Marilyn Hacker has written, Black, lesbian, mother, cancer survivor, urban woman: by product of Lorde's selves has ever silenced the others; the counterpoint among them is often the material of her strongest poems.