Amiri Baraka: Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note
And now, each night I count the stars,
And each night I get the same number.
And when they will not come to be counted,
I count the holes they leave.
Amiri Baraka: The Liar
What I thought was love
in me, I find a thousand instances
of fear.
Audio: WeWeWeWe The Remarkable (for Gwendolyn Brooks)
The Pool Players.
Seven at the Golden Shovel.
Thomas Sayers Ellis: All Their Stanzas Look Alike
All their Selected Collecteds
All their Oxford Nortons
All their Academy Societies
All their Oprah Vendlers
All their stanzas look alike
Richard Wright: Haiku
I am nobody:
A red sinking autumn sun
Took my name away.
Video: Terrance Hayes, “American Sonnets For My Past and Future Assassin”
Terrance Hayes discusses his poetry collection, American Sonnets for my Past and Future Assassin at Politics and Prose in Washington DC on 7/16/18. Written during the first two hundred days … Continue reading
Video: How do you raise a black child? A poem by Cortney Lamar Charleston
A poem by Cortney Lamar Charleston — presented as a film directed by Seyi Peter Thomas of Station Film. HOW DO YOU RAISE A BLACK CHILD? From the dead. With pallbearers … Continue reading
Claude McKay: America
Although she feeds me bread of bitterness, And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth, Stealing my breath of life, I will confess I love this cultured hell that tests … Continue reading
Video: Where are the African Gods?
. “Where are the African Gods to save us from this misery and shame?” Lyricist Abbey Lincoln and director Rodney Passé create a meditative portrait of black masculinity through images … Continue reading
Video: “The Tao of the Black Plastic Comb” by Glenis Redmond
. Directed by Irving Hillman, this short video is an interpretation of Glenis Redmond’s poem “The Tao of the black plastic comb.” To learn more about Glenis Redmond, click here. … Continue reading
Margaret Walker: Sorrow Home
My roots are deep in southern life; deeper than John Brown or Nat Turner or Robert Lee. I was sired and weaned in a tropic world. The palm tree and … Continue reading
Margaret Walker: I Want to Write
I want to write I want to write the songs of my people. I want to hear them singing melodies in the dark. I want to catch the last floating … Continue reading
Margaret Walker: For My People
For my people everywhere singing their slave songs repeatedly: their dirges and their ditties and their blues and jubilees, praying their prayers nightly to an unknown god, bending their knees … Continue reading
Margaret Walker: Dark Blood
There were bizarre beginnings in old lands for the making of me. There were sugar sands and islands of fern and pearl, palm jungles and stretches of a never-ending sea. … Continue reading
