Across a turbulent history, Black poets created a rich and multifaceted tradition that has been both a reckoning with American realities and an imaginative response to them. One of the great American art forms, African American poetry encompasses many kinds of verse: formal, experimental, vernacular, lyric, and protest. The anthology opens with moving testaments to the power of poetry as a means of self-assertion, as enslaved people voice their passionate...

"During the pitched battle over slavery in the United States, Black writers-enslaved and free-allied themselves with the cause of abolition and used their art to advocate for emancipation and to envision the end of slavery as a world-historical moment of possibility. They borrowed from the European tradition of Romanticism-its lyric poetry, prophetic visions-to write, speak, and sing their hopes for what freedom might mean. Authors like Frances Ellen...

African American poetry -- Harlem Renaissance -- Maya Angelou -- Amiri Baraka -- Paul Beatty -- Anra Bontemps -- Gwendolyn Brooks -- Sterling A. Brown -- Lucille Clifton -- Countee Cullen -- Owen Dodson -- Rita Dove -- Paul Laurence Dunbar -- James A. Emanuel -- Nikki Giovanni - George Moses Horton -- Langston Hughes -- James Welson Johnson -- Bob Kaufman -- Yusef Komunyakaa -- Audre Lorde -- Claude McKay -- Haki R. Madhubuti -- Jean Toomer -- Alice...