African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song

by Kevin Young (Editor)

A literary landmark: the biggest, most ambitious anthology of black poetry ever published, gathering 250 poets from the colonial period to the present

Only now, in the 21st century, can we fully grasp the breadth and range of African American poetry: a magnificent chorus of voices, some familiar, others recently rescued from neglect. Here, in this unprecedented anthology expertly selected by poet and scholar Kevin Young, this precious living heritage is revealed in all its power, beauty, and multiplicity. Discover, in these pages, how an enslaved person like Phillis Wheatley confronted her legal status in verse and how an antebellum activist like Frances Ellen Watkins Harper voiced her own passionate resistance to slavery. Read nuanced, provocative poetic meditations on identity and self-assertion stretching from Paul Laurence Dunbar to Amiri Baraka to Lucille Clifton and beyond. Experience the transformation of poetic modernism in the works of figures such as Langston Hughes, Fenton Johnson, and Jean Toomer. Understand the threads of poetic history—in movements such as the Harlem and Chicago Renaissances, Black Arts, Cave Canem, Dark Noise Collective—and the complex bonds of solidarity and dialogue among poets across time and place. See how these poets have celebrated their African heritage and have connected with other communities in the African Diaspora. Enjoy the varied but distinctly Black music of a tradition that draws deeply from jazz, hip hop, and the rhythms and cadences of the pulpit, the barbershop, and the street. And appreciate, in the anthology's concluding sections, why contemporary African American poetry, amply recognized in recent National Book Awards and Poet Laureates, is flourishing as never before. Taking the measure of the tradition in a single indispensable volume, African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song sets a new standard for a genuinely deep engagement with Black poetry and its essential expression of American genius.

Genres: Poetry, African American, Nonfiction, Anthologies, Race, History, American

1150 pages, Hardcover

First published September 15, 2020

About the author

Kevin Young is an American poet heavily influenced by the poet Langston Hughes and the art of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Young graduated from Harvard College in 1992, was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University (1992-1994), and received his MFA from Brown University. While in Boston and Providence, he was part of the African-American poetry group, The Dark Room Collective.

Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, Young is the author of Most Way Home, To Repel Ghosts, Jelly Roll, Black Maria, For The Confederate Dead, Dear Darkness, and editor of Giant Steps: The New Generation of African American Writers; Blues Poems; Jazz Poems and John Berryman's Selected Poems.

His Black Cat Blues, originally published in The Virginia Quarterly Review, was included in The Best American Poetry 2005. Young's poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, and other literary magazines. In 2007, he served as guest editor for an issue of Ploughshares. He has written on art and artists for museums in Los Angeles and Minneapolis.

His 2003 book of poems Jelly Roll was a finalist for the National Book Award.

After stints at the University of Georgia and Indiana University, Young now teaches writing at Emory University, where he is the Atticus Haygood Professor of English and Creative Writing, as well as the curator of the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library, a large collection of first and rare editions of poetry in English.

Reviews

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘The African American experience,’ writes poet Kevin Young, ‘is a central part of the nation’s chorus, with Black poetry offering up a daily epic of struggle and song.’ Chronicling a long and storied history of Black poetry, Young edits and delivers an impressively expansive and insightful anthology, African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song, combining a vast assortment of poets for the Library of America series. ‘The difficult miracle of Black poetry in America: that we persist,’ writes poet June Jordan, ‘published or not, and loved or unloved: we persist.’ The spirit of Black poetry persists even further in this anthology as Kevin Young collects poets from 1770 to the present, from major names like former US Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith, Gwendolyn Brooks, Nikki Giovanni, Robert Hayden, Audre Lorde, Maya Angelou, Langston Hughes and more to lesser known poets who will continue to speak out in print for generations to come. With a marvelously erudite introduction on the history and legacy of Black poetry that steps through each era to address the key writers, themes, stylistic choice and historical context, Kevin Young’s anthology is cause for celebration for any lover of the written word. And what better way to celebrate that with the poem from one of my all-time favorite poets, Lucille Clifton’s won’t you celebrate with me?

won't you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.

This anthology should not only be an essential part of any poetry lover’s library, but any lover of American literature in general. It is such a vast and vibrant collection of poets and poems that give voice to an important legacy of struggles, successes and social insight. Divided into chronological sections that highlight eras such as the Harlem Renaissance, Young discusses in his introduction how this collection is divided in half over two key ideas:

‘For the poetry writing toward freedom at the start of the African American tradition, found at the beginning of this book, enslavement was a reality, or a constant threat, or an immediate memory. For those poets in this second section, while in touch with the trauma of slavery as all subsequent generations have been, they often had enslaved parents yet were not necessarily enslaved themselves.’

Yet even for the later poets, the horrors of slavery still haunt the nation and have forever marred history and the present from its evils. Looking towards the start of the collection there are many voices that decry the evils of slavery or speak out on the injustices that continuously oppressed Black americans. Take James M. Whitfield’s poem, America, for instance, which begins:

America, it is to thee,
Thou boasted land of liberty,-
It is to thee I raise my song
Thou land of blood, and crime, and wrong.
It is to thee, my native land,
From which has issued many a band
To tear the black man from his soil,
And force him here to delve and toil…

The early portions of this book keep alive the dawn of America under the shadow of slavery and racism, showing great poets like Phillis Wheatley or others that should never be lost to obscurity with themes around ‘captivity and freedom, exile and migration, transport both literal and metaphoric,’ as these poet’s words ‘ventures and versifies freedom.’ Above all things, we see the human spirit for survival and rising above championed in their words.

Portraiture
—Anita Scott Coleman

Black men are the tall trees that remain standing in a forest after a fire.

  Flame strips their branches,
  Flame sears their libs,
  Flame scorches their trunks;
  Yet stand these trees,
  For their roots are thrust deep
  In the heart of the earth.

Black men are the tall trees that remain standing in a forest after a fire.

This collection is a vital way to keep these voices alive, especially as these are voices that have often been silenced or otherwise dismissed. If these are voices that have been left out of the history of the nation than it is only a flawed, distorted and propagated history as these voices have always been there. As Lorenzo Thomas writes, I was singing / There I was singing / In a heathen voice / You could not hear. These are important voices that have recognized their need to speak out as well. As Audre Lorde—you may recognize her from her often quoted line ‘the masters tools will never dismantle the master’s house’— writes in her poem A Litany for Survival:

when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid.

So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive.

As Young discusses, the language and the shapes it takes on is key to the tradition of poetry. ‘Black Arts was not always interested in history as much as it was in charting a new future,’ and many of the poets employed the malleability of language to push it towards new horizons. Much of this was done alongside music and Young selects many poems that show how poetry can ‘embody music—not only free jazz or the “new thing” as it was known, but the music of the page that Black Arts poets embrace.’ Poet June Jordan used what she termed ‘vertical rhythm,’ a form that ‘not only trios down the page, but springs across it, often suggesting Billie Holiday, John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, and other musicians who made an impression on the culture.’ Take a look:

I must become
I must become a menace to my enemies
–June Jordan

Ain’t no tellen
  where the jazz of yo/songs.
  wud have led us.
–Sonia Sanchez

We can see poetry coincide with the movement and historical progression of music, such as embodying hip hop, or Tracy K. Smith harnessing the imagery of David Bowie, or even poets expanding upon each other such as Wanda Coleman’s frequent use of the “golden shove,” which borrows a line from the existing poem and uses words from each line as the last word of each line in a new poem. Poetry is always experimenting and reaching new heights.

History
—Camille Rankine

Our stone wall was built by slaves and my bones, my bones
are paid for. We have two

of everything, twice heavy
in our pockets, warming
our two big hands.

This is the story, as I know it. One morning:
the ships came, as foretold, and death
pearl-handled, almost

and completely.
How cheap a date I turned out to be.

Each finger weak with the memory:
lost teeth, regret. Our ghosts
walk the shoulders of the road at night.
I get the feeling you’ve been lying to me.

Young discusses how much of this collection highlights the struggles of Black Americans in a country that is hostile to them and this grief, fear, and frustration can be felt penetrating nearly every page. There are poems of police brutality that scorch the reader with their passion and power, poems decrying violence of many sorts such as Aja Monet’s poem #sayhername about violence against women and lists the names of Black women who have been murdered. Poetry has long been a form of protest and that tradition is certainly alive in this collection.

Bullet Points
—Jericho Brown

I will not shoot myself
In the head, and I will not shoot myself
In the back, and I will not hang myself
With a trashbag, and if I do,
I promise you, I will not do it
In a police car while handcuffed
Or in the jail cell of a town
I only know the name of
Because I have to drive through it
To get home. Yes, I may be at risk,
But I promise you, I trust the maggots
Who live beneath the floorboards
Of my house to do what they must
To any carcass more than I trust
An officer of the law of the land
To shut my eyes like a man
Of God might, or to cover me with a sheet
So clean my mother could have used it
To tuck me in. When I kill me, I will
Do it the same way most Americans do,
I promise you: cigarette smoke
Or a piece of meat on which I choke
Or so broke I freeze
In one of these winters we keep
Calling worst. I promise if you hear
Of me dead anywhere near
A cop, then that cop killed me. He took
Me from us and left my body, which is,
No matter what we've been taught,
Greater than the settlement
A city can pay a mother to stop crying,
And more beautiful than the new bullet
Fished from the folds of my brain.

Though not all is harsh and sorrowful here as this collection certainly is a celebration of Black arts and artists but also a celebration of Black identity as well. Evie Shockley’s poem ode to my blackness wrestles with this love for her Black identity while also acknowledging the struggles that come from racist oppressions due to being Black. In it she writes of her identity as such:

You are my shelter from the storm
    And the storm
My anchor
    And the troubled sea

But there are also many poems of love, of laughter, of solitude and sweetness to be found. There is also this poem, one of my absolute favorite poems:

Object Permanence
—Nicole Sealey

We wake as if surprised the other is still there,
each petting the sheet to be sure.

How have we managed our way
to this bed—beholden to heat like dawn

indebted to light. Though we’re not so self-
important as to think everything

has led to this, everything has led to this.
There’s a name for the animal

love makes of us—named, I think,
like rain, for the sound it makes.

You are the animal after whom other animals
are named. Until there’s none left to laugh,

days will start with the same startle
and end with caterpillars gorged on milkweed.

O, how we entertain the angels
with our brief animation. O,

how I’ll miss you when we’re dead.

This is such an impressive anthology and brings us up to the present day. We have Hanif Abdurraquib asking ‘How Can Black People Write about Flowers at a Time Like This, Eve L. Ewing writing about the ghost of Emmett Till (read it HERE), or Cameron Awkward-Rich with his plea ‘Oh / friends, my friends— / bloom how you must, wild / until we are free.’ In this collection, these poets bloom and this is an incredible and essential collection.

5/5

[robin friedman · Rating 5 out of 5]

African American Poetry In The Library Of America

The United States is blessed with a great and diverse literary tradition with reflection on the American experience and on its efforts and frequent failures to realize its ideals of liberty and equality. This tradition may be at its strongest in poetry. Even though the art is underappreciated by many, our country has produced many poets of high achievement. In furtherance of its mission to present the best of American writing, the Library of America has published large anthologies of American poetry from the 17th and 18th century, two volumes of 19th century poetry, two volumes of 20th century poetry, and a volume of American religious poetry. These volumes make an impressive collection.

The Library of America has now added a vitally important collection to its celebration of American verse in this new anthology of the poetry written by African Americans, "African American Poetry: 250 years of Struggle & Song". From pre-revolutionary times to the present, African Americans have made contributions to poetry which celebrate the beauty of language and creativity and reflect upon their experiences. Kevin Young, currently the Director of the Schomberg Center for Black Culture and the soon to be Director of the Museum of African American History in Washington, D.C. edited this volume and wrote a perceptive and lengthy Introduction to its contents. Young's poem "Money Road" also appears in the volume.

Reading this anthology can be overwhelming in terms of the quality and variety of the poetry and in terms of volume. The book includes the work of 248 poets spread over nearly 1000 pages. The volume also includes Young's introduction, biographical sketches of each poet included in the collection, and notes explaining references that may be unfamiliar to the reader. A strong impression of the range and themes of African American poetry can be gained by reading through the entire volume while many individual writers are worth spending time with on their own. The book can be approached in different ways: I recommend reading it through a little at a time and reading the poems together with the biographical sketches.

The book includes only published, written poems. A decision needed to be made at the outset to exclude works such as the spirituals, folk poetry, children's poetry, the blues, hip-hop and other more vernacular works. These sources might be explored in anthologies of their own.

The poetry in this volume shows many themes and styles of writing over its 250 year scope. Many poems celebrate individual experience of living and of love and death. Others describe the African American experience in the United States beginning with slavery and through the continued struggle for equality and for treatment as persons. The tone of the poems vary as do individual styles of writing. With the broad scope of the volume it is valuable to look for differences and continuities.

The book is organized into eight sections. The sections are chronological but the poets in each section are presented alphabetically. The sections are grouped into themes, and the work of some poets could fall within more than one section even though each writer appears only once. Some discussion of each section may be useful to see the scope and content of the volume. Section One, "Bury me in a Free Land 1770 --1899" is chronologically the longest part of the book and begins with Phillis Wheatley. Section Two "Lift Every Voice 1900 -- 1918" includes James Weldon Johnson's famous poem known as the "Negro National Anthem" together with poems by Paul Laurence Dunbar, among many others. Section Three, "The Dark Tower 1919 -- 1936" roughly covers the Harlem Renaissance, including Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Bennett, Jean Toomer, and many others, familiar and unfamiliar. Section Four, "Ballads of Remembrance 1936 -- 1959" includes Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Hayden, and Margaret Walker, among poets who wrote in Chicago and elsewhere.

The poets in Part Five, "Ideas of Ancestry 1959-- 1975" include Lucille Clifton, June Jordan, and Amiri Bakara. Part Six, "Blue Light Sutras 1976-1989" includes poems by AI, Rita Dove, and Yusef Komunyakaa. Part Seven is entitled "Praise Songs for the Day 1990 -- 2008" and the poets include the recent Pulitzer Prize winner, Jericho Brown, Elizabeth Alexander, and Natasha Tretheway. The final part, "After the Hurricane 2009 -- 2020" includes single poems by many contemporary writers including Joshua Bennett, Latasha Nevada Diggs, and Allison C. Rollins.

Each reader will find poems in this volume to love. Some readers may prefer more traditional forms of writing with other readers will like more modernistic themes and poetic forms. There is a wealth of poetry, both familiar and unfamiliar in this collection. Many of the latter sections of the book, in particular, feature winners of the Pulitzer Prize, the MacArthur Fellowship, Poets Laureate of the United States or of various states and cities, and recipients of other honors and recognitions.

It is difficult to single out poems in a collection as broad as this anthology. My favorites included poems I already knew well, including Sterling Brown's poem "Ma Rainey" about the great blues singer. I also continue to love Waring Cuney's poem "NO IMAGES" which helped introduce me to African American poetry when I read it in an earlier anthology many years ago. A third special poem is "Those Winter Sundays", Robert Hayden's remembrance of his father.

Kevin Young concludes his Introduction with the observation: "The African American experience, these poets know, is a central part of the nation's chorus, with Black poetry offering up a daily epic of struggle and song". Readers of this LOA volume will find their understanding of the African American experience and of the American experience enriched through the magic of art and poetry.

Robin Friedman

[Alicia (PrettyBrownEyeReader) · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the most definitive African American poetry anthology I have read. The collection contains some familiar and often anthologized poems and poets. It is the not so familiar poems and poets that are within this anthology that are the most intriguing. The anthology is divided into eight sections. Each of the sections covers a time period characterized by the types of poems produced during the era. Editor, Kevin Young explains each of these sections masterfully in the introduction of the anthology. He also describes how each time period influenced or was influenced by other periods. For anyone interested in African American poetry, this is a must have anthology!

I was given the opportunity to review an advanced copy of this book via NetGalley.

[Alicia Bayer · Rating 5 out of 5]

It took me quite a long time to work through this anthology, as it is massive. It's arranged by date and features hundreds of poets whom I never knew and was so glad to be introduced to. Some poems spoke to me more than others and the styles were incredibly diverse. Obviously it covers very raw, devastating subjects and obviously there are many great poets who couldn't be included. I was glad to see that my poetry mentor from college, the amazing Nikky Finney, was included, and I discovered so many more poets whose work I plan to seek out. This is a book that every school, library and home should have a copy of. It's tough reading but a fantastic compilation of phenomenal work. The biographies at the end are also really moving, interesting, inspiring, you name it. Highly recommended.

I read a temporary digital ARC of this book for review.

[Kim Lockhart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Indescribable.

You have to immerse yourself before you can get close to understanding the life force, the powerful rising of these voices across time. They would not be denied. They would express the depth of their experiences.

Stunning, sometimes hard, and always beautiful.

I need to buy this tome. It's a repository of expository themes, clamoring to be heard.

[Jungian.Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks to #Netgalley for making this book available to me.
This is a collection of poems by African American poets who write about their experience living in American, their experience with racial inequality, motherhood, and the fear of raising children in a country infested with discrimination and marginalized profiling that leads to death of millions of sons and daughters.
I cannot express enough the importance of this book and the impression it made and I have also been introduced to a lot of new poets, one of them is Khadijah Queen whose prose addresses loss of the sense of self and that of family and the retention she wears to deflect from her problem in order to allow the focus to be moved to police brutality and the devastating effects it has on families and how sadness, tears, and marches are not an antidote or a treatment of pain experience for over 25o years.
There are so many poems that speak volumes about the black experience including those who were able to build thing up from the ground and others whose hard work was overshadowed and burnt to the ground like it was in Tulsa.
There is a poem by Clint Smith that addresses the injustice that Colin Kaepernick was dealt with in his poem "Your National Anthem". A child will grow, he won't remain a boy that you think is cute, because someday he would begin to ask for his right to live, then he is threatening and not so cute anymore.
I also really enjoyed Yusef Komunyakaa's poems such as "Annabelle" and "More Girl Than Boy" there is also Carl Phillips's poem "Blue" which struck a chord with me.
I hope you check this book out upon its release.

[Christina · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received a review copy of this a couple months ago and cannot tell you how much I have enjoyed working my way through this collection. I was so sad when I browsed the table of contents upon receiving this book and only recognized a shamefully small handful of names; I am so happy to have had the opportunity to have met them all.

This is an invaluable anthology that deserves to be kept alongside (and taught alongside, for that matter) your Norton Anthologies. Kevin Young did a fantastic job with the introduction, the structure, the author profiles, and the selections of poems themselves. I particularly appreciated the highlighting of women and members of the LGBTQ community. The time periods/creative movements that served as the theme for each section were interesting to learn about and I greatly enjoyed how different generations and movements are clearly in dialogue with each other.

"These poems
they are things that I do in the dark
reaching for you
whoever you are
and
are you ready?"
- from "These Poems" by June Jordan (one of my favorites).

[Fatima Anwar · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is important. For someone, who have only known racism from 3rd point of view, this book is an introduction to the black struggles in their everyday lives. African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song sets a new standard for a genuinely deep engagement with Black poetry and its essential expression of American genius

[Laura Hoffman Brauman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m not even sure how to begin to review a collection like this. I received this for Christmas 2020 and have spent the past year dipping in and out of the collection. Kevin Young, the editor, did a masterful job of pulling together works from 246 poets, representing works spanning from the 1770’s through today. There were many poems in here that I was familiar with and I appreciated the opportunity to revisit them. I gained the most, though, from the number of new poets that this anthology introduced me to and I will be looking for more comprehensive collections of some of their work. The anthology is segmented into 8 time periods and it is an effective way to structure it so that you see the themes and styles of poets and their contemporaries as well as recognize the way that earlier generations influenced future artists. One of the things that struck me the most in reading through this was poetry as a form of social commentary or protest. When growing up, I always thought of poetry as something that was about expressing beauty, probably based on what poems/poetry we were being taught. In this collection, the use of poetry as part of a commentary/protest/reaction to contemporary events is evident throughout. If you pick this up (and you should), don’t skip the introduction - it’s worth the price of the book alone. I’d recommend reading it before beginning and then as you get ready for each time period, go back and take a look at that section of the intro - I found the context added a lot as I read the sections.

[Cook Memorial Public Library · Rating 5 out of 5]

A 2020 staff favorite recommended by Jo. Check our catalog: https://encore.cooklib.org/iii/encore...

[Jared · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellence.

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like many aspects of American arts and culture, poetry has been extremely white. This book does a tremendous job of rounding out our country’s poetic landscape by pulling together the work of African American poets from as far back as the mid 1700s to the present day. Though poetry is still not my strong suit, many of the works here are absolutely fabulous and provide a great artistic counterpoint to the triumphalist narrative that many white American poets have given throughout our history. One of the best things about this collection though is how, by reading this book from cover to cover, one can get a sense of how African American poetry evolved over the years from the familiar verses and meters of the past to a completely original style that begins to take hold in the 20th century. The brief biographical sketches of the poets in the back of the book is also incredibly useful and I would highly recommend that you read each one before you read a poet’s work(s). One thing I do wish this book had done was provide some dates for when specific poems were written. While the book is organized into chronological sections, those sections are internally organized by the poets’s last names and many of the works seem to have been written outside of their proscribed time frame. Thus, it would have been nice to see when a poem was written, even if the editor could only make an educated guess. This volume in the fabled Library of America collection has provided a tremendous contribution to American letters that fans of poetry will enjoy for years to come.

[Edina Biro · Rating 5 out of 5]

@Thanks NetGalley for giving me the access to read this wonderful story. It was such an emotional journey. I loved every line of this book. I give 5 stars to this wonderful book.

[Serena · Rating 4 out of 5]

African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song edited by Kevin Young is a compendium like no other, exploring the wide breadth of African American poetry from songs to poems and much more. There are eight sections in this collection and there are the familiar, often anthologized poems we've come to know, but there are also the unfamiliar poets who have been obscured by American culture for far too long. The struggle is real and it continues 250 years later.

Young says the collection contains "poems we memorize, pass around, carry in our memory, and literally inscribe in stone." And I would agree wholeheartedly with that.

This is a collection that should be brought to classrooms as young as elementary schools. These are the poems and truths that need to be taught so that we can learn from the past and move forward as a nation to a brighter future.

Full review posts on Dec. 2, 2020: https://savvyverseandwit.com/2020/12/...

[David]

Of 146 poets in this volume old enough to have been published before I began to study poetry, I had heard of only 10. I’m not sure whether my reaction to that should be “so few,” or “so many.” My secondary and post-secondary undergraduate education occurred in an atmosphere that was almost entirely white. It was not that Blacks were excluded but that almost no one non-Caucasian lived here for such a long time. And I do not recall, with respect to those writers I knew before the age of 20, to what extent race played any role in the way these figures were taught in my schools. Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes drew specific attention to their status as African-Americans. Amiri Baraka was taught under his chosen name with attention given particularly to that development in African-American history. However, I’m almost equally certain in the other direction that Gil Scott-Heron was only ever a name to me, the name of a guy who wrote some fascinating verse and music, but whose picture I had never seen. I memorized Gwendolyn Brooks’ “We Real Cool” at the age of 13, which is when I first encountered Cullen and Hughes as well. But at the end of 1979, as I was about to turn 20, that’s all I knew about African-American poetry. I had a literature degree. Obviously some bits were missed. I might add that my knowledge of fellow Canadian poets of African descent was far smaller. In any case this collection has introduced me to about 230 writers of whom I had never before heard, at least 100 of them contemporaries of mine or younger, and I am pleased about that. It is a remarkable collection, filling almost 1000 pages with examples drawn from people in all walks of life. Enough biographical detail is included in the scholarly apparatus to ensure that readers like myself get some idea of the reality and background related to all these people. Explanatory notes are included, but are not, at least in my opinion, overdone. One of the most important books I have read in recent years.

[Debra Hines · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this anthology of poetry. Of course I did not read every single poem in the book, but I sampled at least one poem by each author and for my favorite authors, like Langston Hughes, Frances Harper and Natasha Trethaway, I read most of their included poems. I discovered some new poems that I loved - Your National Anthem by Clint Smith, Women by Alice Walker, and the heart wrenching Wednesday Poem by Joel Dias-Porter, among many more. Definitely a collection teachers should use to find text...comprehensive and vast.

[Danyel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and Library of America for a gifted eARC of this book.

Kevin Young has a smooth writing style that flows similarly to a poem. He gives a great general overview of each section with information about the poets and the effect of their writing during that time period. Overall this is an incredible anthology of African American poetry from so many different time periods. It has a mixture of well known and lesser-unknown poets and does an amazing job of featuring them all. Kevin Young put together an invaluable resource.

[Jack Heller · Rating 5 out of 5]

How should I review an anthology of 960 pages of poetry? I have read a lot of poetry by a lot of these poets before, but this volume has 250 poets. Of course, I haven't understood or retained all that I had read. But the virtues of a volume such as this include an immersive experience. And the introduction to numerous poets I need to read more of. This book is a starting point for future shopping.

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

It took me nearly a month to get through this, but I am so glad that I took the time to read to it. This is a beautiful anthology of African American poetry that stirred my emotions. Containing poems from people who were enslaved to poems written during the tumultuous year of 2020, this collection really has it all.

[Tasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

This anthology was also part of a daily ritual for me and has expanded my understanding of and appreciation for the traditions of African American poetry. The anthology is chronological and the intro is excellent.

[Kris (My Novelesque Life) · Rating 5 out of 5]

RATING: 5 STARS

MUST READ!!! There is so much rich language, emotions, ideas, a timeline of history that it broke me a little to return this to the library. While I read this anthology, I kept a little notebook beside me writing down new-to-me poets that I would need to find books on and research further online. I read many of these poets out loud as I had to hear the cadence in each poem. Several of the poems are rattling around in my mind right now coming to me at various times.

[Andréa]

Note: I accessed a digital review copy of this book through Edelweiss.

[Michelle McGrane · Rating 5 out of 5]

𝑨𝒇𝒓𝒊𝒄𝒂𝒏 𝑨𝒎𝒆𝒓𝒊𝒄𝒂𝒏 𝑷𝒐𝒆𝒕𝒓𝒚: 250 𝒀𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒔 𝒐𝒇 𝑺𝒕𝒓𝒖𝒈𝒈𝒍𝒆 & 𝑺𝒐𝒏𝒈 (edited by poet, scholar and brilliant curator, Kevin Young) is an invaluable 1,170 page anthology which belongs in every personal bookcase, school and public library.

*

𝑶𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑻𝒖𝒓𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑼𝒑 𝒐𝒇 𝑼𝒏𝒊𝒅𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒇𝒊𝒆𝒅 𝑩𝒍𝒂𝒄𝒌 𝑭𝒆𝒎𝒂𝒍𝒆 𝑪𝒐𝒓𝒑𝒔𝒆𝒔
Toi Derricotte

Mowing his three acres with a tractor,
a man notices something ahead—a mannequin—
he thinks someone threw it from a car. Closer
he sees it is the body of a black woman.

Medics come and turn her with pitchforks.
Her gaze shoots past him to nothing. Nothing is explained. How many black women
have been turned up to stare at us blankly,

in weedy fields, off highways,
pushed out in plastic bags,
shot, knifed, unclothed partially, raped,
their wounds sealed with a powdery crust.

Last week on TV, a gruesome face, eyes bloated shut.
No one will say, "She looks like she's sleeping," ropes
of blue-black slashes at the mouth. Does anybody know
this woman? Will anyone come forth? Silence

like a backwave rushes into that !eld
where, just the week before, four other black girls
had been found. The gritty image bangs in the air
just a few seconds, but it strikes me,

a black woman, there is a question being asked
about my life. How can I
protect myself? Even if I lock my doors,
walk only in the light, someone wants me dead.

Am I wrong to think
if five white women had been stripped,
broken, the sirens would wail until
someone was named?

Is it any wonder I walk over these bodies pretending they are not mine, that I do not know
the killer, that I am just like any woman—
if not wanted, at least tolerated.

Part of me wants to disappear, to pull
the earth on top of me. Then there is this part that digs me up with this pen
and turns my sad black face to the light.

*

Kevin Young is the Andrew W. Mellon Director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture and poetry editor of 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑵𝒆𝒘 𝒀𝒐𝒓𝒌𝒆𝒓. He has previously served as curator of the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library at Emory University and director the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library. Young is the author of many books, including 𝑩𝒓𝒐𝒘𝒏, 𝑩𝒖𝒏𝒌, 𝑩𝒍𝒖𝒆 𝑳𝒂𝒘𝒔 and 𝑱𝒆𝒍𝒍𝒚 𝑹𝒐𝒍𝒍. Among the anthologies he has edited are 𝑩𝒍𝒖𝒆𝒔 𝑷𝒐𝒆𝒎𝒔, 𝑱𝒂𝒛𝒛 𝑷𝒐𝒆𝒎𝒔, 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑨𝒓𝒕 𝒐𝒇 𝑳𝒐𝒔𝒊𝒏𝒈: 𝑷𝒐𝒆𝒎𝒔 𝒐𝒇 𝑮𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒇 & 𝑯𝒆𝒂𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒈, and, for Library of America, 𝑱𝒐𝒉𝒏 𝑩𝒆𝒓𝒓𝒚𝒎𝒂𝒏: 𝑺𝒆𝒍𝒆𝒄𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝑷𝒐𝒆𝒎𝒔.


A huge thank you to @NetGalley and The Library of America for a DRC of 𝑨𝒇𝒓𝒊𝒄𝒂𝒏 𝑨𝒎𝒆𝒓𝒊𝒄𝒂𝒏 𝑷𝒐𝒆𝒕𝒓𝒚: 250 𝒀𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒔 𝒐𝒇 𝑺𝒕𝒓𝒖𝒈𝒈𝒍𝒆 & 𝑺𝒐𝒏𝒈, edited by Kevin Young.

[Fred Dameron · Rating 5 out of 5]

What can one say? This is a fantastic collection of African American Poetry that is a must read for thoiseof us trying to understand what it means to be black and American. I will be honest, I'm a white 61 year old male who can NEVER actually understand what happens when a black person is pulled over for minor traffic violations. My skin color protects me from that. And that mere fact is so so wrong in this country. I try my best in this Red Racist Town of Abilene TX to support our black community and use my privilege to do so. I loved this work!! I learned much that I Brady new but poetry express's the feeling of being raped, beaten, cut out of the system so much better than history or even photography. The Lost Baby by Lucille Clifton or Rape by Jayne Cortez show how ineffectyive the system is when applied to blacks. A poem about my rights by June Jordan expresses how few rights Black America have. Building Nicoles Mama by Patricia Smith hit home as a former HS bio teacher. How the teacher is substituting as Mama for so many of her 2nd graders. My daughter, who taught 1st grad had the same issue. But in poetry I could feel the strain even more than when E-beth told us about her day. #Say Her Name by Aja Monet really hit home. As I drove around Abilene with Say herName on the back of my car I got both yea, Right On, thumbs up and race traitor, were going to beat you, and spit at. ReRead first line. My skin color stopped the actual violence. Bigots thought process " If he was black the cops won't believe him, but he's white with Disabled Veteran Plates. The y will believe him and we'll go to jail." Now jail is where these bigots belong but until they swing? Any way The last work that is going in my copy book is Dear _______ by Delana R.A. Dameron. My family came to this new world around 1640 to 1650 in the Tide Water region of the Chesapeake. The Marsh has our nam. Some time around 1760 65 we became land poor. We freed our salves and moved west. SO I hope that after 250 years or so Ms. Delana would forgive our family sins. I will be finding and purchasing her poetic works before the year ends. I will also ask my younger daughter that these works should be bought for the Library she works for, she's the purchasing agent, as a forever tribute to both Black America and in a small way for one of the few good things my ancestors did.

[Trevor Seigler · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think I can officially retire the caveat "I'm not much of a reader of poetry" after completing this massive collection of Black poetry that covers the beginning of the country up until our present moment. Compiled by poet and author Kevin Young, "African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song" has a lengthy list of poets and some of their best work in its contents.

Beginning with Phillis Wheatley and Jupiter Hammon, the first two Black poets to be published in America, the collection proceeds to capture the different poetical forms that evolved as America itself shrugged off the styles of Old Europe and began to expand its own voice in literature. The irony being, of course, that enslaved people of color were not legally permitted to read or write; many of the poets featured here descended from those enslaved people. And their contributions to American literature have often been ignored during their lifetimes, but this collection goes a long way towards remedying that neglect.

I was familiar with a few of the poets featured in the book (Paul Laurence Dunbar, James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, Amiri Baraka, Maya Angelou, Wheatley, and Claudia Rankine, among others), but many of the poets featured here were new to me, and I got something of a much-needed education in a wide variety of schools of poetry over the years. I heartily recommend trying to read every poem if you can, though I'll confess that a couple were bewildering in terms of layout and style (and some I skipped because I was already familiar with them from previous exposure in either college or in a book of that poet's works). I personally loved discovering the work of poets like Sterling A. Brown, Bob Kaufman, Angela Weld Grimke, Robert Hayden, and so many others. This might end up topping my list of best reads for this year (it's hard to think of another poetry book sweeping it from the top of "best poetry collection" for the year), and I'm glad that I gave it the time to work its charms on me.

"African American Poetry" is a large book, but it's a great collection of pieces that still speak no matter how far away they are from our collective moment (and many of the best poems are from the latter sections of more recent poetry). I loved this book, and I'm more than happy to recommend it to anyone interested in American literature and the Black contribution to it.

[Vidya Tiru · Rating 5 out of 5]

As I just skimmed through it, my first reaction was Wow! And then, as I read the introduction (which you must in this book without fail), I thought, “This is a work of love!” Of love of poetry, of culture, of people, of pride in who we are, of history, and of

Considering the magnitude of care and effort that this book has definitely taken, I will be investing some amount of the same care and effort as I read it. Thankfully, I could profess to be not completely ignorant as I turned the pages of this book; as previous reads had introduced me to at least some of the names and a few of the poems included here. But as I mention, it is just a few and I am so glad to be able to learn about more poets and their wonderful poems through this epic anthology.

The book is divided into eight sections arranged chronologically from 1770 all the way to 2020. Within each section, the poets are arranged alphabetically (except for the first section which covers the longest period of time – from 1770 to 1899). And with almost 250 poets included, along with so many of each of their poems, I cannot begin to state just a few of them, even with, ‘as an example.’ So I will let the book speak for itself, which it does – brilliantly, magnificently, wow-ly!

The backmatter does total justice to this book; there are brief biographical notes of the included poets, as well as further notes on the poems themselves which add so much to the reading of the book.

I think the best way to read this book (which I will be doing for the rest of it) is by reading it a little at a time; reading the poets/poems along with their related biographies/notes to get the most out of it.

Check out more about the book and other related resources at the LOA website.

In Summary
A must have for classrooms and libraries everywhere; and a must read for all who love poetry or want to learn more about African American history or who love to read!

Highly highly recommend!

Disclaimer: Thanks to NetGalley and LOA for the digital review copy of this book. These opinions are my own and not influenced by anyone else.

[Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this anthology was a manifold experience: a history class, a lesson in poetics and what can be done on the page, an overview of some of the major African-American voices since 1770, and a sampling of many different writers—often beautiful and breathtaking.

I read the introduction both before and after reading all of the poems, and Kevin Young does a masterful job as editor. He explains, very understandably, why some limitations were made for the anthology. For instance, anonymously written folk songs and spirituals were not included.

I think Young's choice of ordering the anthology's sections by time period made the most sense. It allowed me to get an understanding of how trends in writing were changing in individuals and as collective groups.

The notes in the back were enlightening. I had not prior heard of many of the references made. For example, I was particularly disturbed by Sarah Baartman's story and what she had to endure. And I had not heard of Sally Hemings before either. These are just two of the many historical allusions throughout the collection.

Some of the poets I will be looking into more:

- Phyllis Wheatley
- Charlotte Forten Grimké
- Albery A. Whitman
- Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
- Olivia Ward Bush
- Claude McKay
- Gwendolyn Brooks
- Richard Wright
- Maya Angelou
- Michael S. Harper
- Ai
- Cyrus Cassells
- Barbara Chase-Riboud
- Wanda Coleman
- Sam Cornish
- Toi Derricotte
- Ralph Dickey
- Melvin Dixon
- Rita Dove
- Nikky Finney
-Sybil Kein
- Yusef Komunyakaa
-Colleen J. McElroy
- Tim Seibles
- Patricia Smith
-Sekou Sundiata
- Afaa Michael Weaver
- Chris Abani
- Darrell Burton
- Kwame Dawes
- Ross Gay
- A. Van Jordan
- Allison Joseph
- Natasha Trethewey
- Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon
- Anthony Walton
- Hanif Abdurraqib
- Joshua Bennett
- Reginald Dwayne Betts
- Tiana Clark
- Donika Kelly
-Rickey Laurentiis
- Anis Mojgani
- Roger Reeves
- Nicole Sealey
- Safiya Sinclair
- Danez Smith
- Clint Smith
- Phillip B. Williams
- Jamila Woods

[J Earl · Rating 5 out of 5]

African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song, edited by Kevin Young, is a sweeping anthology that doesn't simply present the poetry but presents a history of the poetry. His introduction does a great job of both presenting the chronology as well as explaining both what is excluded and included. As with any anthology decisions have to be made and Young makes a strong case for why he made the ones he made.

No doubt everyone comes to any anthology with some ideas about what they expect. Those expectations are rarely the goals set by the editor so there is going to be some disconnect. Such is the case for me with this collection, but after reading why the selections were made and, most important, reading any new works I might not have known, I came away quite satisfied.

This anthology is weighted toward the more recent, as in the past sixty years or so. I found this helpful since many of the older works are anthologized far more often. Those complaining about being too recent to be included, well, they have their own agendas. I recall studying Eliot, Frost, Sandburg, Cummings, Williams, and others when I was young and many of those works were well under sixty years old. So what other reason could these people have for complaining about this collection including newer work? Hmmmmm. I think I hear dog whistles.

I highly recommend this to readers of poetry who might recognize that their knowledge and appreciation of African American poetry is limited to the few included in most survey courses. Like any anthology you'll like some and not like some. But they all speak to the reader and the newer ones speak to us about the society we are still living in.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

[Gustavo Araújo · Rating 3 out of 5]

anthology that chronicles the rich and diverse tradition of African American poetry. Spanning over two centuries, this collection showcases the voices of poets who have articulated the African American experience through different eras, from the early days of slavery to the contemporary period.

Kevin Young, a poet and cultural critic, has curated this anthology with a keen eye for both historical significance and artistic merit. The collection includes canonical figures like Phillis Wheatley, Langston Hughes, and Gwendolyn Brooks, as well as lesser-known poets whose works deserve wider recognition. Young's selection highlights the thematic depth and stylistic variety within African American poetry, addressing themes of resistance, identity, love, and freedom.

The anthology is organized chronologically, allowing readers to trace the evolution of African American poetic expression alongside the broader socio-political landscape. The poems are often accompanied by brief contextual notes, which enrich the reader's understanding of the historical and cultural backdrop against which these works were created.

One of the strengths of this anthology is its inclusivity, offering a platform to voices that have been historically marginalized. The diversity of styles—from formal verse to spoken word—reflects the dynamism and adaptability of African American poetry.

However, the sheer scope of the anthology might be overwhelming for some readers. While the chronological arrangement provides a logical progression, it can also lead to a fragmented reading experience. The absence of a unifying narrative or thematic thread might make it challenging for readers to see the connections between the works, especially when engaging with the anthology in a non-linear fashion.

[Harry Allagree · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some books seem to defy adequate review by a reader. This is one of them. On one hand, it's an amazing work, one worthy of continual study. But it's exceedingly painful by its nature: a book of poetry spanning "250 Years of Struggle & Song" by wonderful, brilliant, loving human beings, a good portion of whom live in America. Tje writers of these poems are, directly indirectly, bearers of the injustice of this country, because of the black color of their skin, and because the the prejudice of people with white skin who wield exceptional power over who & what are okay or not okay. Painful in another sense, for me personally, because I'm not even familiar with the names of, maybe, a half dozen of the writers, much, less their poetry. Further, I felt disgruntled in reading the poems because I could not truly understand much of what was written, thereby missing so much of an extremely rich legacy of human knowledge. I suspect the majority of white people like me in America could say the same -- & that is our fault!

What strikes me about the book is the honesty in the writings, often in raw images & language, about their own or others' experiences. Another is the priority of education for this group of writers, and these poets' own educational accomplishments. There are few who haven't earned several academic & other degrees, awards, etc., most from highly prestigious institutions in the country.