from Emergency Management
by Camille Rankine (published in The New Yorker, February 3, 2020)
... I sip at punch.
So well practiced at this
living. I have a way of seeing
things as they are: it’s history
that’s done this to me...
A literary landmark: the biggest, most ambitious anthology of Black poetry ever published, gathering 250 poets from the colonial period to the present
Colorado Book Awards Finalist for Poetry
Shortlisted for the Reading the West Poetry Book Award
Maya Phillips’ stunning debut collection Erou borrows the framework of the traditional Greek epic to interrogate the inner workings of a present-day nuclear family and the role of a patriarch whose life, marriage, and death are imagined as a sort of hero’s journey.
Poems shimmering with lyricism ask who can inherit a country?
“When an author’s unmitigated brilliance shows up on every page, it’s tempting to skip a description and just say, Read this! Such is the case with this breathlessly powerful, deceptively breezy book of poetry.” —Booklist, Starred Review
Winner, 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award, poetry category
Winner, 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Prize
Finalist, 2015 National Book Award, poetry category
Finalist, 2015 NAACP Image Awards, poetry category
Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude is a sustained meditation on that which goes away—loved ones, the seasons, the earth as we know it—
A Most Anticipated Book of 2021 by Oprah Magazine • Time • Vogue • Vulture • Essence • Elle • Cosmopolitan • Real Simple <
The poems in this highly anticipated second book are elegiac poems, as concerned with honoring our dead as they are with praising the living. Through Aracelis Girmay's lens, everything is animal: the sea, a jukebox, the desert. In these poems, everything possesses a system of desire, hunger, a set of teeth, and language.
A definitive selection of Audre Lorde’s "intelligent, fierce, powerful, sensual, provocative, indelible" (Roxane Gay) prose and poetry, for a new generation of readers.
A complete collection—over 300 poems—from one of this country's most influential poets.
FINALIST FOR THE 2020 NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR POETRY
FINALIST FOR THE 2021 NAACP IMAGE AWARD FOR POETRY
Danez Smith is our president
Finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry
Winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection
[Smith's] poems are enriched to the point of volatility, but they pay out, often, in sudden joy.The New Yorker
NPR Best Books of 2019
Chicago Tribune Best Books of 2019
Chicago Review of Books Best Poetry Book of 2019
O Magazine Best Books by Women of Summer 2019
The Millions Must-Read Poetry of June 2019
LitHub Most Anticipated Reads of Summer 2019
My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter is poet Aja Monet's ode to mothers, daughters, and sisters--the tiny gods who fight to change the world.
WINNER OF THE 2020 PULITZER PRIZE FOR POETRY
Finalist for the 2019 National Book Award
100 Notable Books of the Year, The New York Times Book Review
One Book, One Philadelphia Citywide Reading Program Selection, 2021
Sharp, lyrical poems celebrating the Black vernacular—its influence on pop culture, its necessity for familial survival, its rite in storytelling and in creating the safety found only within its intimacy
“Terrific . . . illuminates life in this country in a strikingly original way.”—Ron Charles, The Washington Post
*2018 12 best books to give this holiday season --TODAY Show
*Best Books of 2018 --Rolling Stone
A National Book Critics Circle Poetry Award Winner!
This revolutionary, award-winning play by a lauded playwright and poet is a fearless portrayal of the experiences of women of color—“extraordinary and wonderful…that anyone can relate to” (The New York Times) and continues to move and resonate with readers today more than ever.
From its inception in California in 1974 to its highly acclaimed critical s
* Finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry *
* Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry * Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism * Winner of the NAACP Image Award * Winner of the L.A. Times Book Prize * Winner of the PEN Open Book Award *
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR:
Subverting celebrated classics of poetry and mythology and examining horrors from contemporary film and cultural fact, National Book Award winner Justin Phillip Reed engages darkness as an aesthetic to conjure the revenant animus that lurks beneath the exploited civilities of marginalized people.
A play about the imagined fault line between black and white lives by Claudia Rankine, the author of Citizen
ONE OF PUBLISHERS WEEKLY'S TOP 10 POETRY BOOKS OF FALL 2017
NPR'S MOST ANTICIPATED POETRY BOOKS OF 2017
“[Trethewey’s poems] dig beneath the surface of history—personal or communal, from childhood or from a century ago—to explore the human struggles that we all face.” —James H.
Ain't Never Not Been Black foregrounds Black pleasure Black pain and Black love in unflinchingly Black ways. Engaging with themes of masculinity, racism, love, and joy, Johnson is at once critical and creative. His spoken word performance transfers effortlessly to the page, with poems that will encompass you.
Winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize
* Poet Laureate of the United States *
* A New York Times Notable Book of 2011 and New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice *
* A New Yorker, Library Journal and Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year *
Shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize
Finalist for the Forward Prize for Best Collection
The extraordinary new poetry collection by Tracy K. Smith, the Poet Laureate of the United States
Even the men in black armor, the ones
Jangling handcuffs and keys, what else
Are they so buffered against, if not love’s blade
How to Carry Water: Selected Poems of Lucille Clifton celebrates both familiar and lesser-known works by one of America's most beloved poets, including 10 newly discovered poems that have never been collected.
" The BreakBeat Poets is] one of the most diverse and important poetry anthologies of the last 25 years."--Latino Rebels
Memento Mori is a meditation on mortality, change and loss. Rather than being simply somber, this volume observes our human condition through a poetic kaleidoscope, with glimpses of irony and humor that offer a refreshing contrast to the more difficult moments. Coe is a storyteller who writes with compassion, insight and a razor-sharp eye for detail.
Maya Angelou’s debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide. Her life story is told in the documentary film And Still I Rise, as seen on PBS’s American Masters.
William Evans, the award-winning poet and cofounder of the popular culture website Black Nerd Problems, offers an emotionally vulnerable poetry collection exploring the themes of inheritances, dreams, and injuries that are passed down from one generation to the next and delving into the lived experience of a black man in the American suburbs today.
In We Inherit What the Fi
The beauty and spirit of Maya Angelou’s words live on in this complete collection of poetry, including her inaugural poem “On the Pulse of Morning”
One of America’s most celebrated poets challenges us with this powerful and deeply personal collection of verse that speaks to the injustices of society while illuminating the depths of her own heart.
A representative collection of the life work of the much-honored poet and a founder of the Black Arts movement, spanning the 4 decades of her literary career.
From NPR correspondent and New York Times bestselling author, Kwame Alexander, comes a powerful and provocative collection of poems that cut to the heart of the entrenched racism and oppression in America and eloquently explores ongoing events. A book in the tradition of James Baldwin’s “A Report from Occupied Territory,” Light for the World to See