The 100 Best African American Poems: A Black Poetry Collection

by Nikki Giovanni

A collection of classic and contemporary poems by Black authors selected by New York Times bestselling author and acclaimed poet Nikki Giovanni. Immerse yourself in the heart and soul of African American literature with The 100 Best African American Poems . This diverse anthology offers a vibrant tapestry of voices that echoes centuries of struggle, triumph, and profound insight. The 100 Best African American Poems is a riveting exploration of African American life, culture, and history, as seen through the lens of poetry. The anthology spans different periods and styles, showcasing the richness and variety of African American poetic expression. From legendary poets like Langston Hughes and Maya Angelou to contemporary voices pushing the boundaries of poetic art, Giovanni's expertly curated selection provides a comprehensive view of the African American poetic tradition. Each poem is a lyrical journey that invites readers to engage with poignant themes, stirring narratives, and powerful emotions. Key

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, Race, African American, African American Literature

256 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2010

About the author

Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni Jr. was an American poet, writer, commentator, activist, and educator. One of the world's most well-known African-American poets, her work includes poetry anthologies, poetry recordings, and nonfiction essays, and covers topics ranging from race and social issues to children's literature. She won numerous awards, including the Langston Hughes Medal and the NAACP Image Award. She was nominated for a Grammy Award for her poetry album, The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection. Additionally, she was named as one of Oprah Winfrey's 25 "Living Legends". Giovanni was a member of The Wintergreen Women Writers Collective.
Giovanni gained initial fame in the late 1960s as one of the foremost authors of the Black Arts Movement. Influenced by the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power Movement of the period, her early work provides a strong, militant African-American perspective, leading one writer to dub her the "Poet of the Black Revolution". During the 1970s, she began writing children's literature, and co-founded a publishing company, NikTom Ltd, to provide an outlet for other African-American women writers. Over subsequent decades, her works discussed social issues, human relationships, and hip hop. Poems such as "Knoxville, Tennessee" and "Nikki-Rosa" have been frequently re-published in anthologies and other collections.
Giovanni received numerous awards and holds 27 honorary degrees from various colleges and universities. She was also given the key to over two dozen cities. Giovanni was honored with the NAACP Image Award seven times. One of her more unique honors was having a South America bat species, Micronycteris giovanniae, named after her in 2007.
Giovanni was proud of her Appalachian roots and worked to change the way the world views Appalachians and Affrilachians.
Giovanni taught at Queens College, Rutgers, and Ohio State, and was a University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech until September 1, 2022. After the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007, she delivered a chant-poem at a memorial for the shooting victims.

Reviews

[Zanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just sharing a few of my own favourites from this. It comes with a CD = )
<3 Nikki Giovanni <3

The Girlfriend’s Train
Nikky Finney

“You write like a Black woman who’s never been hit before.”

I read poetry in Philly
for the first time ever.
She started walking up,
all the way, from in back
of the room.

From against the wall
she came,
big coat, boots,
eyes soft as candles
in two storms blowing.

Something she could not see
from way back there but
could clearly hear in my voice,
something she needed to know
before pouring herself back out
into the icy city night.

She came close to get a good look,
to ask me something she found
in a strange way missing
from my Black woman poetry.

Sidestepping the crowd
ignoring the book signing line,
she stood there waiting
for everyone to go, waiting
like some kind of Representative.

And when it was just the two of us
She stepped into the shoes of her words:
Hey,

You write real soft.
Spell it out kind.
No bullet holes,
No open wounds,
In your words.
How you do that?
Write like you never been hit before?
But I could hardly speak,
all my breath held ransom
by her question.

I looked at her and knew:
There was a train on pause somewhere,
maybe just outside the back door
where she had stood, listening.

A train with boxcars
that she was escorting somewhere,
when she heard about the reading.

A train with boxcars
carrying broken women’s bodies,
their carved up legs with bullet riddled
stomachs momentarily on pause
from moving cross country.

Women’s bodies;
brown, black and blue,
laying right where coal, cars,
and cattle usually do.

She needed my answer
for herself and for them too.
Hey,

We were just wondering
how you made it through
and we didn’t?

I shook my head.
I had never thought about
having never been hit
and what it might have
made me sound like.

You know how many times I been stabbed?

She raised her blouse
all the way above her breasts,
the cuts on her resembling
some kind of grotesque wallpaper.

How many women are there like you?
Then I knew for sure.

She had been sent in from the Philly cold,
by the others on the train,
to listen, stand up close,
to make me out as best she could.

She put my hand overtop hers
asked could we stand up
straight back to straight back,
measure out our differences
right then and there.

She gathered it all up,
wrote down the things she could,
remembering the rest to the trainload
of us waiting out back for answers.
Full to the brim with every age
of woman, every neighborhood
of woman, whose name
had already been forgotten.

The train blew his whistle,
she started to hurry.

I moved towards her
and we stood back to back,
her hand grazing the top
of our heads,
my hand measuring out
our same widths,
each of us recognizing
the brown woman latitudes,
the Black woman longitudes
in the other.

I turned around
held up my shirt
and brought my smooth belly
into her scarred one;
our navels pressing,
marking out some kind of new
Equatorial line.


Cleaning
Camille J Dungy

I learned regret at Mother’s sink,
Jarred tomatoes, river-mid brown,
A generation old, lumping
Down the drain. Hating wasted space,
I had discarded what I could
Not understand. I hadn’t known
A woman to fight drought or frost
For the promise of winter meals,
Hadn’t known my great-grandmother,
Or what it was to have then lose
The company of that woman
Who, upon seeing her namesake,
Child of her child, grown and gliding
Into marriage, gifted the fruit
Of her garden, a hard-won strike
Against want. Opening the jar,
I knew nothing of the rotting
Effect, the twisting grip of years
Spent packing, or years spent moving,
Further each time, from known comforts:
A grandmother’s garden, her rows
Always neat, the harvest: bright wealth
Mother hoarded. I understood
Only the danger of a date
So old. Understanding clearly
What is fatal to the body,
I only understood too late
What can be fatal to the heart


Thomas Sayers Ellis: All Their Stanzas Look Alike


Nikki-Rosa
Nikki Giovanni

Childhood remembrances are always a drag
If you’re Black
You always remember things like living in Woodlawn
With no inside toilet
And if you become famous or something
They never talk about how happy you were to have
Your mother
All to yourself and
How good the water felt when you got your bath
From one of those big tubs that folk in Chicago barbeque in
And somehow when you talk about home
It never gets across how much you
Understood their feelings
As the whole family attended meetings about Hollydale
And even though you remember
Your biographers never understand
Your father’s pain as he sells his stock
And another dream goes
And though you’re poor it isn’t poverty that
Concerns you
And though they fought a lot
It isn’t your father’s drinking that makes any difference
But only that everybody is together and you
And your sister have happy birthdays and very good
Christmases
And I really hope no white person ever has cause
To write about me
Because they never understand
Black love is black wealth and they’ll
Probably talk about my hard childhood
And never understand that
All the while I was happy


We Real Cool
Gwendolyn Brooks

The Pool Players.
Seven at the Golden Shovel

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.


Nikki Giovanni: Train Rides - In Praise of Black Men


The Supremes
Cornelius Eady

We were born to be gray. We went to school,
Sat in rows, ate white bread,
Looked at the floor a lot. In the back
Of our small heads

A long scream. We did what we could,
And all we could do was
Turn on each other. How the fat kids suffered!
Not even being jolly could save them.

And then there were the anal retentive,
The terrified brown-noses, the desperately
Athletic or popular. This, of course,
Was training. At home

Our parents shook their heads and waited.
We learned of the industrial revolution,
The sectioning of the clock into pie slices.
We drank cokes and twiddled our thumbs. In the
Back of our minds

A long scream. We snapped butts in the showers,
Froze out shy girls on the dance floor,
Pinpointed flaws like radar.
Slowly we understood: this was to be the world.

We were born insurance salesmen and secretaries,
Housewives and short order cooks,
Stockroom boys and repairmen,
And it wouldn’t be a bad life, they promised,
In a tone of voice that would force some of us
To reach in self-defense for wigs,
Lipstick,

Sequins.

[robin friedman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Poet's Anthology Of African American Poetry

African Americans have made large contributions to the literature of the United States especially in poetry. The award-winning poet Nikki Giovanni has selected for this volume 100 (or so) of the best poems written by African Americans. The book is accompanied by a CD of readings of 36 of the poems.

As Giovanni recognizes, it isn't possible for anyone to pick out the 100 "best" of a large, complex genre. Few informed readers would agree on the choice of 100 "best" poems. Furthermore, any anthology of poetry will involve considerations of subjectivity -- personal preference -- and inclusiveness -- offering works from a variety of authors, styles, and time periods -- in making the selections. So it is with this anthology. Giovanni's book includes both personal favorites and attempts to capture part of the large range of African American poetry. Her selection is broad and fascinating. It includes many outstanding poems together with some that did not work for me and that may not appeal to every reader.

The poems are not organized in the collection on the basis of chronology or poet. They are presented in a collage-like fashion; although the opening two poems, "The Aunt" by Mari Evans and "For my People" by Margaret Walker set the tone for the volume. Evans' poem is about family and individuality while Walker's poem is more communal and political. The earliest poet included is Paul Laurence Dunbar. He is represented by two works, including a poem in dialect, "A Negro Love Song" and his most famous poem, "We Wear the Mask." Langston Hughes has the largest number of individual poems in the collection with at least eight works, including "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" and Gwendolyn Brooks is also well represented with seven poems including "We Real Cool". Other famous poets whose works are represented include Sterling Brown, Countee Cullen, Robert Hayden, James Weldon Johnson (including "Lift every Voice and Sing"),Sterling Brown, Amiri Bakara (LeRoi Jones), and more. There are six poems included by Giovanni herself, including the concluding poem of the volume "Ego Tripping". Richard Wright, better known as a novelist, is represented by an early sharply-written poem, "Between the World and Me". The Harlem Renaissance writer Waring Cuney is represented by his wonderful poem, long one of my favorites, "No Images."

There are many poems of varying themes by African American women. I enjoyed Georgia Douglas Johnson's short poems, "Trifle" and "The Heart of a Woman", Naomi Madgett's personal, "Woman with Flower" , Gloria Oden's "The Carousel", Lucille Clifton's "Homage to my Hips" and June Jordan's "If you saw a Negro Lady." None of these poems were earlier familiar to me. I was especially pleased to get to know Gwendolyn Brooks' extended poem, "A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi, Meanwhile, A Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon", a ballad about the murder of Emmett Till.

Poetry should be heard and read aloud to be appreciated, and the CD accompanying this book adds a great deal. The poems are well-selected and are read with drama, passion, and spontaneity. Some of the readings are drawn from historical recordings and feature Gwendolyn Brooks and Robert Hayden reading their own poems. Giovanni and Sonia Sanchez, and Marilyn Nelson also read their own works. Most of the readings were done at Virginia Tech under Giovanni's supervision by an enthusiastic group readers including Ruby Dee and Virginia Tech's president, Dr. Charles Steger. The readings are done with spirit and offer an excellent gateway to the poems and to the art of reading aloud.

This book is a fine anthology of African American poetry including both familiar and unfamiliar selections in a variety of styles and voices. Readers who love poetry or African American literature will enjoy this book and CD.

Robin Friedman

[Mark Robison · Rating 4 out of 5]

I get poetry books regularly from the library, read a few poems, and return them because they don't capture me. This is especially true of anthologies, which often feel like consuming a healthy food that's good for you but you'd never seek out. This one was different, perhaps because it's not really the "100 best African-American Poems" but just 100 poems by African-American writers that Nikki Giovanni and her team of collaborators really enjoyed - and the poems weren't forced into boring chronological order.

A number of times after reading a poem whose author I wanted to read more of, I'd look them up on Goodreads only to find they'd never published a book or their books were near impossible to get. I felt lucky to read these.

Poems of jazz and blues, race and gender, sex and abortion, love and memories. Yes Lucille Clifton, Gwendolyn Brooks, Langston Hughes, Audre Lorde, Elizabeth Alexander, Sonia Sanchez, Kevin Young, Terrence Hayes, Amiri Baraka, Robert Hayden, Rita Dove, of course Nikki Giovanni. No Maya Angelou, Claudia Rankine, Tracy K. Smith.

these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
I have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top!
- Lucille Clifton

[Brown Girl Reading · Rating 3 out of 5]

I decided to get this book because I'm lacking collections and books of poetry in my library and was won over immediately when I saw it on Kim Lechelle's You Tube channel. I felt what better way to start a collection with this one. The book was edited by Nikki Giovanni which is definitely a selling point. She has chosen some of the most poignant, lyrical, culturally rich poems by some of the most prominent writers from the African-American community - some gone for many years and others still alive today. The poems are direct and full of feeling and emotions that follow the history of African-Americans through the years. At times I found some of the poems a little too sad but I accepted their realness and the history they depict and quickly left that critic on the back burner. The thing that really won me over the most about this book was the CD that accompanied it. All the poems came alive for me even more. Some I've listened to quite a few times because they were recited in such a vivacious, tangible fashion. Two of my favourite poems are Who Can Be Born Black? by Mari Evans and A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi. Meanwhile, A Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon by Gwendolyn Brooks (extremely well recited on the CD). I give this book 3,5 stars. Check it out!

[Tom LA · Rating 3 out of 5]

Picked up this book at bookstore and opened it randomly. The first poem I found was the following:

No images

She does not know
Her beauty,
She thinks her brown body
Has no glory.
If she could dance
Naked
Under palm trees
And see her image in the river,
She would know.

But there are no palm trees
On the street,
And dish water gives back no images.


10 seconds later, I came out of the bookstore with the book in my hand. Oh yes, I did pay for it! Anyway, many poems unfortunately are not as beautifully strong and elegant as this one, but I can say I liked a fair number of them. Some more used a lot of words to say very little. A few more others, well, with all due respect they seem to be written by people in need of a good mental hospital to take care of them. But overall, this is a good collection that provided some emotional color while I'm pushing my way through the tongue-stuck-to-your-teeth dry "Bearing the Cross", an almost day by day, pedantic biography of MLK.

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn't able to give this collection the time and contemplation it deserves before it was due back at the library, but--speaking as someone who's intimidated by poetry--the poems in this book are beautiful, heart-breaking (and at times funny), and wonderfully varied. There are a few well known poems, but more that I wasn't familiar with. There were poems I could relate to on a deep level, poems that educated me, and poems that mystified and eluded me. This is #ownvoices writing in all its glory. An African American would get an entirely different experience from reading this volume, but I needed the window.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's no small thing to put together an anthology that romps along and never bothers with section head ("Poems about Boats" "Poems for Sadness") -- but just does what it does, with poems you've heard a thousand times and poems you are so glad to meet. ("From" by A. Van Jordan, e.g.) I used to shelve (and display) this book at the library a thousand times and never once opened it -- maybe because the cover's a bit bleh, and maybe I thought it was a publishing stunt. But I was wrong and I've finally enjoyed the whole thing. (EXCEPT didn't listen to one single bit of the CD. That's the next frontier. Right now I can't imagine it being anything other than a cringe-fest. HA -- I'm probably wrong about that, too.)

[Avery Amstutz · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a white dude I found this set of poems riveting. The pride, brilliance, anguish, and love these poems speak with is captivating. This book shows in vivid detail that racial representation is not a benevolent gesture from the majority to the minority, but representation means giving space for the excellence of those unlike ourselves to penetrate our literary monoliths.

[Lori · Rating 5 out of 5]

In my opinion, Nikki Giovanni represents one of the best modern poets of the 20th and 21st centuries. So when she edits or publishes a book of poems, I pick up a copy and peruse the content. She includes poetry with an eclectic blend of beloved poets such as Gwendolyn Brooks, Lucille Clifton, Langston Hughes, and Richard Wright. And of course, Nikki Giovanni includes a sampling of her own poems to delight avid fans like me.

Another bonus with this book is that there is a companion CD featuring readings by Nikki Giovanni and other poets.

[Vilo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection is amazing and includes a CD with various readers reading different poems. There are a few poems that are pretty raw. Most are stunning emotionally and in visual imagery. Two of my favorites are a poem about living in Boston, not knowing anyone else black, and a poem of Nikki Giovanni's that includes the line "black love is black wealth." All due respect to Ms. Giovanni, I think I could say the same of my dirt-farming white grandparents and their children (my mom and her siblings), but I agree with the idea. There are more measures of a life than we generally discuss.

[Jonathan Tennis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed a number of these poems. Giovanni’s work editing this collection exposed me to a number of poets that I had not yet discovered. Some of the poems I really enjoyed include the following: I am a Black Woman by Mari Evans; My Father’s Love Letters by Yusef Komunyakaa; Ballad of Birmingham by Dudley Randall; The Mother by Gwendolyn Brooks; Incident by Countee Cullen; Trifle by Georgia Douglas Johnson; Marchers Headed for Washington, Baltimore, 1963 by Remica L. Bingham; The Girlfriend’s Train by Nikky Finney; Dancing Naked on the Floor by Kwame Alexander.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powerful. Masterful. Each of these packed a punch and made me wish I had known more than the few of these poems I already did. My personal favorite is Bicycles by Nikki Giovani, not sure why but it really was amazing. I love the color and vibrance and doubts and fear these poems show. It's something to see vulnerable hearts create art.

[Lisa McMillon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I truley enjoyed this anthology of poetry. It felt like listening to jazz music. Each poem with it's different nuances and poetic ideas, it felt like a journey through time hearing the voices that create art from words.

[Wonder · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poety is subjective. You should read these.

[C. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The 100 Best African-American Poem collection is broad, diverse, and covers a multitude of topics. Some of the prose will make you smile and other pieces will make you reminisce and think of those you love. Many of the writers poems will amaze you, make you sit up, and take notice of life. Then there are a few explicit with words not spoken in “polite” company.

This is A solid book offering you a brief yet powerful look at brilliant poetry. Truths and reflections of life, love, grief, struggle and joy are found in these thought-provoking pages. If not for the few words I could not speak to my parents, it would be a five-star. I love five-star books that I can share and freely recommend to anyone in my circle, no matter their age or relation. 4,75 stars

[Nadine in NY Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

I need to read more poetry anthologies. An anthology gets you up out of a rut, mixes it up, opens your eyes.

This collection of "100 Best African American Poems" is not 100 (I counted 116) and it's not "the best." Because how can anyone come up with "the 100 best" of anything? You'll find a few of the old standards in here ("We Real Cool" and "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" and "homage to my hips," for example) but you'll find a lot of new and worthy poems that you probably have not encountered before unless you are incredibly well read. Most of these poems are from the last thirty years. Most of these poems were new to me.

[Julia Bucci · Rating 5 out of 5]

from Remica L. Bingham, "Marchers Headed for Washington, Baltimore, 1963

...When travelers approached, the first son
to spot them would stand and shout, Here two come,
Mama--or three or four, even nine came
into view once. Rushing to the door with arms
outstretches, he'd clutch the plates warming
his small hands, then go to the roadside with her message:
This is for your journey, my mama said,
in hopes that none of you will ever stop.

She fed hundreds that way, never seeing
any face close enough to recall it
clearly, her name unknown by those saying grace.
Her marching--from kitchen to porch,
then steadily back and back again--all but in place."

[Meghan Austin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this a good collection. I am not (pardon the pun) well-versed in poets and poetry, although I do enjoy it. From the title, I had a misconception - this is more a collection of preference, I believe, than it is a collection of poems that were important in their time and from their authors. (I do not want to downplay the importance of these poems.)

I got this book from my local library, and it has been taped up in such a way that I did not have access to the CD without tearing the book cover. I think this would have added a lot to the experience of this collection.

[Sydney Robertson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't read a lot of poetry, so I don't have experience reviewing it. What I can say about this collection is that I thoroughly enjoyed it and will turn it time and time again. There were poets I learned about in school and ones I had never heard of before. All were genius and beautiful. When I read about experiences besides my middle-class white female one, I feel more American--like the only way to be in this country is to learn and feel others' pains and histories and joys. This collection helped me to do that.

[Elise · Rating 3 out of 5]

Poems I liked: For My People (Margaret Walker); Ars Poetica: Nov. 7, 2008 (L. Lamar Wilson); The Sermon on the Warpland (Gwendolyn Brooks); I Am a Black Woman (Mari Evans); Those Winter Sundays (Robert Hayden); The Negro Speaks of Rivers (Langston Hughes); The Creation (James Weldon Johnson); Go Down Death (James Weldon Johnson); Between Ourselves (Audre Lorde); The Union of Two (Haki R. Madhubuli); Theme for English B (Langston Hughes); The Mother (Gwendolyn Brooks); We Wear the Mask (Paul Laurence Dunbar); The Carousel (Gloria C. Oden); Lot's Daughter Dreams of Her Mother (Opal Moore); and Bicycles (Nikki Giovanni).

[Luna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am going to buy a copy someday. I just... I haven't really read poetry in an intense way since high school and wow. Reading through the 100 Best African American poems curated by Nikki Giovanni made me crave for creativity, art, and playfulness with words. I just felt like I was visualizing art come to life on paper, dance around, swim in my head, and made me feel abundant.

Definitely going to purchase a copy soon so I can continue to revisit these poems 24/7.

[Raymond · Rating 5 out of 5]

Never before did I realize that I have superpowers, that I can be both invisible and a beast at the very same time, that I can make people leap across the street in a single bound from a simple glance, that I am a powerful shape shifter, but I still cannot make school boards buy school books for school children.

Everything in here is dope.

[Leslie · Rating 5 out of 5]

As I got into this collection, I realized that I was already familiar with some of these poems - it was lovely to rediscover them, and experience the ones new to me. The enclosed CD makes the work come alive, but I read through them first. Excellent.

[Robin · Rating 3 out of 5]

My favorites were: Ballard of Birmingham by Dudley Randall, Song Through the Wall by Akua Lezli Hope, and The Untitled Superhero Poem by Tonya Maria Matthews

[Mersadise Aichele · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Kim Bonnette · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many of the poems were powerful or poignant. However, it wasn't consistent, and there didn't seem to be any theme or chronology or thread connecting and driving the collection forward.

[Malola · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took me a while to finish this.
Some poems are pure gold; others not so much.

[Terry · Rating 4 out of 5]

For devoted poetry readers or scholars of African American culture, this isn't anything shocking. The expected choir assembles: Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Gwendolyn Brooks, Rita Dove, Amiri Baraka, Tupac Shakur. The editor is bold/brazen enough to include six of her own works. And so who might appreciate this collection?

People who aren't yet over-educated. As an informal introduction, it is excellent. As an entry into poetry in general and African American voices in particular, it is wonderful. Most of the poems are top-notch; I delighted in Akua Lezli Hope's "Song Through the Wall" and Toi Derricotte's "Before Making Love". Printz Award-winner Kwame Alexander is represented, some years before his wider success. I'm so glad I picked this up.

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rather than a selection of the 100 "Best" (whatever that means), it's better to think of these as something of a sampler. The collection presents a solid mix of classic African-American work with newer, slam and hip hop infused material. Uniting the work is a certain aural orientation: these are all poems meant to be heard, to be read aloud. Among the newer voices, Kwame Alexander I a very nice find. His "Dancing Naked on the Floor" has a strong Spoken Word aspect, the sort that had me warning to keep sharing the poem with friends. Another bold voice is that of Asha Bandele, whose "Subtle Art of Breathing" also brings a combination of performance and politics as she considers the death of a young woman.

[Owen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a collection! Tupac Shakur and Langston Hughes. Nikki Giovanni and Amiri Baraka. A cross section of language and soul to be sung, recited, and celebrated. The accompanying CD with performances of selected poems is amazing. Especially when the author of the poem gets to give voice to their work.

I would not be able to choose a mere hundred either. I do not envy the editor, but she did a remarkable job.

I highly recommend this book.