Poetry

Finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry Brutal Imagination is the work of a poet at the peak of his considerable powers, confronting a crucial subject: the black man in America. "A hymn to all the sons this country has stolen from her...

Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral by Phillis Wheatley, Negro Servant to Mr. John Wheatley, of Boston, in New England (published 1 September 1773) is a collection of 39 poems written by Phillis Wheatley, the first professional...

In this jaunty and intimate collection, Kevin Young invents a language as shimmying and comic, as low-down and high-hearted, as the music from which he draws inspiration. With titles such as "Stride Piano," "Gutbucket," and "Can-Can," these poems have...

A collection of imaginative and witty poems, this work displays astonishing energy; beauty of expression; and a range of reference to contemporary life, history, art, and literature. Including both meditative and narrative poems, this volume frequently...

Set against the media environment that saturates even our most intimate spaces, Dispatch attends to, revises, and thinks adjacent to the news of racial/gendered violence in the US, from the nineteenth century to the present day. These poems ask: What...