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Black History Print

Celebrate and explore the rich tradition of African American poetry through essays on literary milestones, intersections of music, poetry and art, and profiles and poems of historical and contemporary poets who continue to pioneer new ground while keeping an eye on the past.
Featured Video

Rita Dove: The Musical Influence
"I want to believe—and I actually do believe—that I prefer to draw from the past more than break from the past."

Claudia Rankine in Conversation
"I think the great poems for me are ones that take me to a place that I recognize intuitively..."

From the White House: Poetry, Music & the Spoken Word
"What happens to the ones forgotten...?"

Schools & Movements

Schools & Movements

Harlem Renaissance
No place embodied the new aesthetic more than Harlem, home to a thriving artistic scene of literary magazines like The Crisis, cafes, jazz clubs, and scores of reading venues.

Schools & Movements

Negritude
The movement is marked by its rejection of European colonization and its role in the African diaspora.

Schools & Movements

Black Arts
Artists within the movement sought to create politically engaged work that explored the African American cultural and historical experience.

Schools & Movements

Jazz Poetry
Writing about jazz poetry is, as they say, like dancing about architecture.

Schools & Movements

Slam
Often highly politicized, drawing upon racial, economic, and gender injustices as well as current events for subject manner.

Schools & Movements

Dark Room Collective
It was the sustaining practice of writing in community just as much as the activism of building a community-based reading series for writers of color.

Great Books

Great Anthologies

Vintage Book of African American Poetry  
A vast narration of struggle, love, race, and redemption through the work of fifty poets.

Groundbreaking Books

The Bean Eaters
by Gwendolyn Brooks

Written during the early years of the Civil Rights movement, during which the Brooks's interest in social issues deepened and found expression in her work.

Groundbreaking Books

American Journal
by Robert Hayden

Hayden's poems, with their expansive connotations, transcend sociological definition. They are irreducible in their themes...

Groundbreaking Books

The Weary Blues
by Langston Hughes

The poems progress at a self-assured and lyrical pace—partly because Hughes expected them to be performed with musical accompaniment in the famous Harlem clubs of that era.

For the Classroom

Lesson Plan: Voice
Students participate in a series of learning activities employing interconnectivity between poems used and core texts to explore poetry as social commentary.
Poetic Forms

Blues Poem
A blues poem typically takes on themes such as struggle, despair, and sex.

The Bop
Not unlike the Shakespearean sonnet in trajectory, the Bop is a form of poetic argument consisting of three stanzas.

From the Poetry Store


The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes
By Langston Hughes

860 poems from one the most influential and most beloved American poets of the 20th century.

$35.00 | Order Now



The Vintage Book of African American Poetry The Vintage Book of African American Poetry

200 Years of Vision, Struggle, Power, Beauty, and Triumph from 50 Oustanding Poets.

$13.00 | Order Now

Featured Poets

Harryette Mullen
Born in Florence, Alabama and raised in Fort Worth, Texas, Harryette Mullen is the recipient of the 2009 Academy Fellowship for distinguished poetic achievement.

James Weldon Johnson
Author of God's Trombones, James Weldon Johnson was also a successful song-writer, foreign diplomat, and national organizer for the NAACP.

Amiri Baraka
A controversial figure because of his out-spoken political views, Amiri Baraka, formerly Leroi Jones, is a prolific poet and playwright who published many of the Beat poets, including Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac.

Lucille Clifton
Recipient of the National Book Award for poetry, Clifton is also an Emmy-award winner and a former Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

Featured Poems

The Present Crisis
by James Russell Lowell
When a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad earth's aching breast...

Frederick Douglas
by Paul Laurence Dunbar
A hush is over all the teeming lists...

America
by Claude McKay
Although she feeds me bread of bitterness...

Slim Greer in Hell
by Sterling A. Brown
Slim Greer went to heaven...

Still I Rise
by Maya Angelou
You may write me down in history...

Praise Song for the Day
by Elizabeth Alexander
Each day we go about our business...
Featured Audio

The Negro Speaks of Rivers Hear it!
by Langston Hughes
I've known rivers...

We Real Cool Hear it!
by Gwendolyn Brooks
We real cool. We...

A Lesson for This SundayHear it!
by Derek Walcott
The growing idleness of summer grass...

All Their Stanzas Look Alike (audio only) Hear it!
by Thomas Sayers Ellis
All their fences...

When Black People Are Hear it!
by A. B. Spellman
when black people are...

My Father's Love Letters Hear it!
by Yusef Komunyakaa
On Fridays he'd open a can of Jax...

I'm a Fool to Love You Hear it!
by Cornelius Eady
Some folks will tell you the blues is a woman...

The Day Duke Raised: May 24th, 1974 Hear it!
by Quincy Troupe
that day began with a shower...

Featured Essays

Women of the Harlem Renaissance
by Anthony Walton
In the time of the Harlem Renaissance, race and gender often hindered the building of artistic careers.

Tracy K. Smith in Conversation
Known for the mysterious but utterly lucid quality of her poems, Smith writes a history that is sub-rosa yet fully within her vision.

Sekou Sundiata: Defying Labels
Blues, jazz, funk, and Afro-Caribbean percussion surround the soulful voice of Harlem-born poet Sekou Sundiata on his recordings, The Blue Oneness of Dreams and Longstoryshort.

On Black Male Poetics
by Afaa M. Weaver

Despite their different choices, Hughes and Hayden had one thing in common. They loved living the life of the poet.

Recordings for Sale


Lucille Clifton & Gwendolyn Brooks CD Lucille Clifton & Gwendolyn Brooks CD
By Lucille Clifton



$12.00 | Order Now



Robert Hayden CD Robert Hayden CD
By Robert Hayden



$12.00 | Order Now



Marilyn Hacker & June Jordan CD Marilyn Hacker & June Jordan CD
By June Jordan



$17.00 | Order Now



Audre Lorde CD Audre Lorde CD
By Audre Lorde



$12.00 | Order Now

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