From the Publisher: This comprehensive collection features the finest works of one of the most-admired and widely-read African-American poets. Both dialect and standard-English poems appear here, including "Ode to Ethiopia," "Worn Out," "Not They Who Soar," "When Malindy Sings," "We Wear the Mask, "Dinah Kneading Dough," "The Haunted Oak," "Black Samson of Brandywine," and many more.

The classic volume by the distinguished modern poet and winner of the 1950 Pulitzer Prize that represents her technical mastery, her compassionate and illuminating response to a world that is both special and universal, and her warm humanity. ""If you wanted a poem," wrote Gwendolyn Brooks, "you only had to look out of a window. There was material always, walking or running, fighting or screaming or singing." From the life of Chicago's South Side...

"A lyrical masterpiece." —School Library Journal (starred review)

Originally performed at the Kennedy Center for the unveiling of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, and later as a tribute to Walter Dean Myers, this stirring and inspirational poem is New York Times bestselling author and National Book Award finalist Jason Reynolds's rallying cry to the young dreamers of the world.
For Every One is...

A collection of poems in which Tracy K. Smith examines the discoveries, failures, and oddities of humans. "With allusions to David Bowie and interplanetary travel, Life on Mars imagines a soundtrack for the universe to accompany the discoveries, failures, and oddities of human existence. In these brilliant new poems, Tracy K. Smith envisions a sci-fi future sucked clean of any real dangers, contemplates the dark matter that keeps people both close...

A collection of poetic works drawn from the personal writings of the award-winning music artist and lyricist explores such themes as love, the self, and the author's experiences as an African-American woman.

Acclaimed writer Walter Dean Myers celebrates the people of Harlem with these powerful and soulful first-person poems in the voices of the residents who make up the legendary neighborhood: basketball players, teachers, mail carriers, jazz artists, maids, veterans, nannies, students, and more. Exhilarating and electric, these poems capture the energy and resilience of a neighborhood and a people.

Selected by Seán Hewitt as a Granta Book of the Year
In trailblazing poet, essayist, teacher and activist June Jordan's poems, love is a vision of revolutionary solidarity, crossing borders both emotional and literal with an outstretched hand. Haruko traces the faltering arc of a passionate love affair with another woman while Love Poems encompasses relationships with men and women, political resistance, the need

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"In this collection of poetry, Nikki Grimes looks afresh at the poets of the Harlem Renaissance -- including voices like Langston Hughes, Georgia Douglas Johnson, and many more writers of importance and resonance from this era -- by combining their work with her own original poetry. Using "The Golden Shovel" poetic method, Grimes has written a collection of poetry that is as gorgeous as it is thought-provoking. This special book also includes original...

In a career that has spanned more than a quarter century, Nikki Giovanni has earned the reputation as one of America's most celebrated and controversial writers. Now, she presents a stunning collection of love poems that includes more than twenty new works. From the revolutionary Seduction to the tender new poem, Just a Simple Declaration of Love, from the whimsical I Wrote a Good Omelet to the elegiac All Eyez on U, written for Tupac Shakur, these...

Francisco has created his own words for the things we cannot give name to. I'll Fly Away uses Francisco's invented lexicon as the palette to paint an intimate portrait of black life in America- one that praises joy and grace without shying away from the hard truths confronting all of us today.