CONTENTS

About the Editors

Acknowledgments

An Address to Miss Phillis Wheatly, Ethiopian Poetess

An Evening Thought: Salvation by Christ, with Penetential Cries

BENJAMIN BANNEKER

A Mathematical Problem in Verse

PHILLIS WHEATLEY

On Being Brought from Africa to America

To S.M., a Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works

On the Death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield

A Farewell to America

An Hymn to the Morning

An Hymn to the Evening

GEORGE MOSES HORTON

On Liberty and Slavery

On Hearing of the Intention of a Gentleman to Purchase the Poet’s Freedom

Early Affection

George Moses Horton, Myself

The Slave’s Complaint

GEORGE BOYER VASHON

JAMES MONROE WHITFIELD

Lines on the Death of John Quincy Adams

FRANCES E. W. HARPER

The Slave Mother

Let the Light Enter

The Slave Auction

Songs for the People

President Lincoln’s Proclamation of Freedom

A Double Standard

Bible Defence of Slavery

Bury Me in a Free Land

Learning to Read

JOSEPH SEAMAN COTTER, SR.

Dr. Booker T. Washington to the National Negro Business League

Frederick Douglass

Ned’s Psalm of Life for the Negro

The Don’t-Care Negro

William Lloyd Garrison

JAMES WELDON JOHNSON

O Black and Unknown Bards

Go Down Death (A Funeral Sermon)

Sence You Went Away

The Creation (A Negro Sermon)

The Glory of Day Was in Her Face

PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR

When Malindy Sings

A Negro Love Song

We Wear the Mask

Robert Gould Shaw

Frederick Douglass

An Ante-Bellum Sermon

Ere Sleep Comes Down to Soothe the Weary Eyes

WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE

The House of Falling Leaves

Letter to My Sister

Lines to a Nasturtium

GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON

The Heart of a Woman

I Want to Die While You Love Me

The White House

The Harlem Dancer

The Tropics in New York

November Cotton Flower

MELVIN B. TOLSON

STERLING A. BROWN

Frankie and Johnny

Long Track Blues

Odyssey of Big Boy

Seeking Religion

Slim in Atlanta

To a Certain Lady, in Her Garden

GWENDOLYN BENNETT

LANGSTON HUGHES

Christ in Alabama

Dream Variations

Harlem Night Song

Harlem Sweeties

House in the World

Madam and the Rent Man

Suicide’s Note

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

Theme for English B

A Brown Girl Dead

Yet Do I Marvel

From the Dark Tower

Death to the Poor

A Negro Mother’s Lullaby

Saturday’s Child

Scottsboro, Too, Is Worth Its Song

Those Winter Sundays

A Plague of Starlings

Frederick Douglass

Homage to the Empress of the Blues

Paul Laurence Dunbar

A Letter from Phillis Wheatley

MARGARET WALKER

October Journey

GWENDOLYN BROOKS

The Bean Eaters

A Song in the Front Yard

Of De Witt Williams on His Way to Lincoln Cemetery

Beverly Hills, Chicago

To an Old Black Woman, Homeless and Indistinct

The Blackstone Rangers

Grandfather Was Queer, Too

Walking Parker Home

RAYMOND PATTERSON

Twenty-six Ways of Looking at a Blackman

God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen

God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen Part II

ETHERIDGE KNIGHT

The Idea of Ancestry

For Freckle-Faced Gerald

Dark Prophecy: I Sing of Shine

AMIRI BARAKA (LEROI JONES)

Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note

from Hymn to Lanie Poo: Each Morning

A Short Speech to My Friends

Three Modes of History and Culture

Black Bourgeoisie

But What Can You Teach My Daughter

Revolution Is One Form of Social Change

Reflections After the June 12th March for Disarmament

LUCILLE CLIFTON

the lost baby poem

light on my mother’s tongue

why some people be mad at me sometimes

to my friend, jerina

4/30/92 for rodney king

Journey to the Place of Ghosts

The Healing Improvisation of Hair

The Albuquerque Graveyard

Love in the Weather’s Bells

Meta-A and the A of Absolutes

The Lake in Central Park

Desire’s Persistence

MICHAEL S. HARPER

Dear John, Dear Coltrane

We Assume: On the Death of Our Son, Reuben Masai Harper

Here Where Coltrane Is

Last Affair: Bessie’s Blues Song

Br’er Sterling and the Rocker

Nightmare Begins Responsibility

In Hayden’s Collage

Angola (Louisiana)

The Ghost of Soul-making

My Father’s Face

Paul Laurence Dunbar in the Tenderloin

I Am a Cowboy in the Boat of Ra

The Reactionary Poet

Dance of the Infidels

How the Rainbow Works

The Blues Don’t Change

How Stars Start

From Bowling Green

Leaving Syracuse

Before Making Love

On the Turning Up of Unidentified Black Female Corpses

Invisible Dreams

HAKI MADHUBUTI (DON L. LEE)

We Walk the Way of the New World

the self-hatred of don l. lee

SHERLEY ANNE WILLIAMS

Letters from a New England Negro

My Grandfather Walks in the Woods

Emily Dickinson’s Defunct

Tuskegee Airfield

YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA

Elegy for Thelonious

February in Sydney

My Father’s Love Letters

NATHANIEL MACKEY

Black Snake Visitation

Dayton, O., the 50’s & 60’s

“Teach Us to Number Our Days”

The Great Palace of Versailles

A Reconsideration of the Blackbird

Landscape with Saxophonist

Lessons from a Mirror

The Undertaker’s Daughter Feels Neglect

Crows in a Strong Wind

Muddy Waters & the Chicago Blues

Travelin’ Shoes

Aubade for Eve Under the Arbor

Celestial Mechanics

The Lovesong of Emmett Till

The Summer Was Too Long

ELIZABETH ALEXANDER

The Venus Hottentot

REGINALD SHEPHERD

Narcissus in Plato’s Cave

Tantalus in May

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHIES

PERMISSIONS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS