Frances Ellen Watkins Harper: Bury Me in a Free Land
All that my yearning spirit craves,
Is bury me not in a land of slaves.
Paul Laurence Dunbar: Sympathy
I know why the caged bird beats his wing
Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
For he must fly back to his perch and cling…
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.
Thomas Sayers Ellis: Godzilla’s Avocado
An artichoke’s heart does not pump ketchup.
It pumps pesto,
oily, olive clots of guacamole.
Sheila Carter-Jones: Running into a high school classmate years after
I was the only, back then Negro, girl
in a class of four hundred waves splashing,
tossing me about in the crash
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: “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
Audio: Gwendolyn Brooks at the Library of Congress
From the Archive of Recorded Poetry at the Library of Congress The twenty-ninth person appointed Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Gwendolyn Brooks reads selections … Continue reading
Sam Hamill: Remembering Gwendolyn Brooks
When I was a boy on a Utah farm, I listened to Chicago blues and dreamed of the city’s big shoulders and wide arms and the roads leading up from … Continue reading
Video: Tim Seibles — “One Turn Around the Sun”
. Tim Seibles reads “One Turn Around the Sun” at the 2014 Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness, March 28, 2014 at the National Geographic Grosvenor … Continue reading
