Poetry

More than a book of poems but a call to action.With fierce honesty and poetic grace, We Be Black, We've Been Blue explores the complexities of being black and overcoming past traumas. Dare to dig into this honest collection of urban poetry and short...

A finalist for the 2015 National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award In How to Be Drawn, his daring fifth collection, Terrance Hayes explores how we see and are seen. While many of these poems bear the clearest imprint yet of Hayes's...

A powerful collection of autobiographical poems from Yale Young Poets Award Winner and Philadelphia's Poet Laureate Airea D. Matthews about the economics of class and its failures for those rendered invisible by it.As a former student of economics, Airea...

A new memoir and collection of love poems by #1 New York Times bestselling author and Newbery Medalist Kwame Alexander. In a powerfully intimate and non-traditional (or "new-fashioned") memoir, Kwame Alexander shares snapshots of a man learning how to...

From Cornelius Eady, one of America's most engaging voices, comes an exciting collection of poetry that at once delineates the arc of the poet's universe and highlights the range of his considerable talents. Cornelius Eady's poems show him in full...

A preeminent voice in contemporary literature, Major Jackson offers steady miracles of vision and celebrations of language in rapturous, sophisticated poems. With selections from five acclaimed volumes--including his Cave Canem Poetry Prize-winning...

The intellectual and cultural revival of African-American arts and politics in the 1920s and 1930s was centered in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City.Here are poems from three major contributors to that rebirth: The Weary Blues by Langston Hughes, The...

A meditation on our times, cast through a reconsideration of the Justice Department's investigation of the Ferguson Police Department In August 2014, Michael Brown--a young, unarmed black man--was shot to death by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri...

Slaves in chains, toiling on master's plantation. Beatings, bloodied whips. This is what many of us envision when we think of 19th century African Americans; source materials penned by those who suffered in bondage validate this picture. Yet slavery was...

"A powerful celebration of poets...Lit lovers will be dazzled." --Publishers Weekly   Examines firsthand the lives of legendary Black writers who made a way out of no way to illuminate a road map for budding creators desiring to follow in their...

This wittily written book takes you on a lyrical journey through the various stages of a woman and the self-discovery of love, sex, heartbreak, pain, the empowering effects of being a woman, and her worth coupled with the anxieties of life that give...

"It is time to sing." Grown is a gospel, with Claudia Wilson "singing soprano in perfect pitch." Wilson draws the reader into both the poignant melody and discord of blackness in America, through vivid vignettes and hymn-like prose. This collection is...

Over the course of these poems, the Black, queer protagonist begins to erase violent structures and fill the white spaces with her hard-won wisdom and love. I am the Most Dangerous Thing doesn't just use poetry to comment on life and history. The book is...