Here, for the first time, is a complete collection of Langston Hughes's poetry - 860 poems that sound the heartbeat of black life in America during five turbulent decades, from the 1920s through the 1960s. The editors, Arnold Rampersad and David Roessel, have aimed to recover all of the poems that Hughes published in his lifetime - in newspapers, magazines, and literary journals, and in his books of verse. They present the poems in the general order...

From Lollapalooza to Carnegie Hall, Patricia Smith has taken the stage as this nation's premier performance poet. Featured in the film Slamnation and on the HBO series Def Poetry Jam, Smith is back with her first book in over a decade-a National Poetry Series winner weaving passionate, bluesy narratives into an empowering, finely tuned celebration of poetry's liberating power.

Following Jamaal May's award-winning debut collection, Hum (2013), these new poems explore parallel landscapes of the poet's interior and an insidious American condition. Using dark humor that helps illuminate the pains of maturity and loss of imagination, May uncovers language like a skilled architect-digging up bones of the past to expose what lies beneath the surface of the fragile human condition.

This collection of poems begins rooted in the landscape of the U.S. South as it voices singular lives carved out of immediate and historical trauma. While these poems dwell in the body, often meditating on its frailty and desire, they also question the weight that literary, historical, and religious icons are expected to bear. Within the vast scope of this volume, the poems arc from a pig farmer's funeral to Georges de la Tour's paintings and Toni...

The Heart of a Woman and Other Poems (1918) is a collection of poetry by Georgia Douglas Johnson. Marking Johnson's debut as one of the leading poets of the Harlem Renaissance, The Heart of a Woman and Other Poems is an invaluable work of African American literature for scholars and poetry enthusiasts alike. Comprised of Johnson's earliest works as a poet, the collection showcases her sense of the musicality of language while illuminating the experiences...

Thirty-two poems that reflect aspects of the African American experience.

"This lyrical poem tells the story of Black History in America, from slavery to the Civil Rights movement to present day struggles"--