The garden thrives: twentieth-century African-American poetry

James Weldon Johnson. The color sergeant/Girl of fifteen/Before a painting

Paul Laurence Dunbar. Summer in the South/Sympathy/A companion's progress/The made to order smile/Common things

William Stanley Braithwaite. The house of falling leaves/A city garden/Rye bread

Angelina Weld Grimké. At April/Butterflies

Claude McKay. Jasmine/The tropics in New York/Flame-heart/My mother/To O.E.A./The lynching

Jean Toomer. I sit in my room/Reapers/Beehive/Portrait in Georgia/Her lips are copper wire/Evening song/Merl/People/It is everywhere/Delivered at the knighting of Lord Durgling by Great Bruce-Jean

Melvin B. Tolson. Old houses/The note/Victor Garibaldi/Lena Lovelace/Old Pettigrew/Festus Conrad

Sterling A. Brown. Foreclosure/Vifginia portrait/To Sallie, walking/After winter

Langston Hughes. Harlem/Strange hurt/Moonlight night: Carmel/Seascape/Cross

Arna Bontemps. Close your eyes!/Southern mansion/The return/Nocturne of the wharves/To a young girl leaving the hill country/My heart has known its winter

Countee Cullen. Leaves/Night rain/A brown girl dead/Uncle Jim/The wind bloweth where it listeth

Pauli Murray. Returning spring/Conquest/Redemption

Robert Hayden. Full moon/The broken dark/Monet's "Waterlilies"/Names/Paul Laurence Dunbar/Sphinx

Margaret Walker Alexander. People of unrest/Memory/Iowa farmer/Chicago/October journey

Gwendolyn Brooks. To be in love/Kitchenette building/Strong men, riding horses/Mrs. Small/A sunset of the city/Bronzeville woman in a red hat

Pinkie Gordon Lane. Midnight song/Girl at the window/Wind thoughts/Lake Murry/Spring/On being head of the English Department

Naomi Long Madgett. Woman with flower/Black woman/Offspring/Simple

Gloria C. Oden. The carousel/The riven quarry/Bible study/Review from Staten Island/A private letter to Brazil/Man white, brown girl and all that jazz

Dennis Brutus. Off to Philadelphia in the morning/The sand wet and cool

Bob Kaufman. I, too, know what I am not/Oregon/Would you wear my eyes?/African dream

Russell Atkins. Probability and birds in the yard/Lakefront, Cleveland/New storefront/Narrative/Lisbon/Dark area

Dolores Kendrick. The 26th person

Derek Walcott. A village life/God rest ye merry, gentlemen/The glory trumpeter/Blues/Upstate/The swamp

Kamau Brathwaite. New year letter/Blues

Etheridge Knight. A poem of attrition/Green grass and yellow balloons/Upon your leaving/Feeling f**ked up/The idea of ancestry/Hard rock returns to prison from the Hospital for the Criminally Insane

He sees through stone

Gerald Barrax. King: April 4, 1968/Adagio/Visit/There was a song/Domestic tranquility/The scuba diver recovers the body of a drowned child/In the restaurant

Calvin C. Henton. The long blues/Fall down/Poem/The distant drum

Audre Lorde. Learning to write/What my child learns of the sea/Story books on a kitchen table/The woman thing/Fishing the white water

Sonia Sanchez. Father and daughter/July/Prelude to nothing/Blues

Henry Dumas. Island within island/Knees of a natural man/The zebra goes wild where the sidewalk ends

Amiri Baraka. The invention of comics/An agony. As now/A poem some people will have to understand/For Hettie

Jay Wright. The invention of a garden/Sketch for an aesthetic project/What is beautiful/The lake in Central Park/Journey to the place of ghosts

Sam Cornish. Generations 1/Generations 2/His fingers seem to sing

Colleen J. McElroy. Horoscope/The ghost-who-walks/Under the oak table/Learning to swim at forty-five/In my mother's room

Lucille Clifton. Cutting greens/"the rough weight of it"/Climbing/C. C. Rider/11/10 again/The women you are accustomed to

Jayne Cortez. Rape/No simple explanations

June Jordan. All the world moved/If you saw a Negro lady/Roman poem number nine/Speculations on the present through the prism of the past

Clarence Major. Swallow the lake/Giant red woman/Large room with wooden floor/I was looking for the university/Apple core/On trying to imagine the Kiwi pregnant

Lebert Bethune. Today Tutu is beating the same burru as me/For singing in good mood/Harlem freeze frame

Larry Neal. Don't say goodbye to the porkpie hat

Julia Fields. Citizen/The jolly fat widows

Ishmael Reed. Why I often allude to Osiris/Beware: Do not read this poem/The reactionary poet

Keorapetse Kgositsile. To mother/To my daughter/The Gods wrote

Michael S. Harper. The fireplace/Three o'clock love song/We assume: On the death of our son, Reuben Masai Harper/Nightmare begins responsibility

Linda Beatrice Brown. Winter sonnet/A green arbor

Al Young. The blues don't change/The curative powers of silence/I arrive in Madrid/Studio up over in your ear/California peninsula: El Camino Real

Primus St. John. Ocean of the streams of sorry/We are going to be here now/Pearle's poem/Song/Carnival

Norman Henry Pritchard II. Burnt sienna/The narrow path/Paysagesque/The cloak/Cassandra and friend/Love poem/Springtime/Landscape with nymphs and satyrs

Ed Roberson. Sonnet/True we are two grown men/Blue horses/Eclipse/The poor houses

Sterling Plumpp. Turf song/Another mule/Poem/Remembered

Toi Derricotte. Fears of the eighth grade/Touching/Not touching: My mother/Blackbottom/The weakness/The promise

Haki R. Madhubuti. Assassination/After her man had left her for the sixth time that year/A loneliness

William J. Harris. We live in a cage/Samantha is my Negro cat

Conyus. Six ten sixty-nine/Upon leaving the parole board hearing/A day in the life of ...

Weatherly. Blues for Franks Wooten/Mud water shango

David Henderson. Song of devotion to the forest/Horizon blues/Alvin Cash/Keep on dancin'/Do nothing till you hear from me

Everett Hoagland. Gorée/Big Zeb Johnson

Nikki Giovanni. Nikki-Rosa/The December of my springs/The life I led/Ego tripping

Ellease Southerland. Night in Nigeria/Two fishing villages/Recitation/Blue clay/Pale ant

Quincy Troupe. A sense of coolness/In Texas grass/In Jimmy's garden/Reflections on growing older

Alice Walker. The enemy/The kiss/Suicide

Sherley Anne Williams. She had known brothers/Straight talk from plain women/You were never Miss Brown to me

Lorenzo Thomas. Onion bucket/The subway witnesses/Electricity of blossoms

Calvin Forbes. Home/Potlicker blues/The potter's wheel/Dark mirror/The poet's shuffle/Hand me down blues

Stanley Crouch. No new music/Riding across John Lee's finger/Blackie thinks of his brothers/Like a blessing/Chops are flyin

Marlilyn Nelson Waniek. The ballad of Aunt Geneva/Tuskegee Airfield/The sacrament of poverty/Letter to a Benedictine monk

Wanda Coleman. Cousin Mary/Aunt Jessie/Breast examination

Yusef Komunyakaa. Back then/April Fools' Day/Instructions for building straw huts/The way cards fall/Gift horse/Untitled blues

Ai. I can't get started/Twenty-year marriage/The country midwife: A day/Before you leave/The kid/More

Nathaniel Mackey. Kiche manitou/Dream thief/The phantom light of all our day

Lorna Goodison. I am becoming my mother/Wedding in Hanover/Jamaica 1980/Kenscoff/On becoming a tiger

George Barlow. Nook/Salt/The place where he arose/Painting drunken twilight

Ntozake Shange. Dream of pairing/Ancestral messengers/Composition 13/Tango/Where the heart is/Oh, I'm 10 months pregnant

Gary Smith. The penitential cries of Jupiter Hammond

Christopher Gilbert. Kite-flying/Now/Beginning by value/The directions/Glimpses/This bridge across

Thulani Davis. Boppin' is safer than grindin'/Susannah/Playing solitaire

C.S. Giscombe. (the recent past)/(1962 at the edge of town)/(1978, remembering 1962)/Bro Duncanson (from the "In" sequence/(1980)

E. Ethelbert Miller. Mississippi/Jasmine/She is flat on her back/What the women told me

Michael S. Weaver. The weekend equestrian/The Appaloosa/Borders/Luxembourg Garden/My father's geography/The message on Cape Cod

Rita Dove. This life/Small town/Sightseeing/Planning the perfect evening/The fish in the stone/Sunday greens/Nightmare

Thylias Moss. An anointing/Tornados/The lynching/Fisher Street/Raising a humid flag/The owl in daytime

Cornelius Eady. The dance/Song/Sherbet/Why do so few Blacks study creative writing?/William Carlos Williams

Opal Palmer Adisa. Discover me/Women at the crossroad/The rainbow/A cultural trip

Patricia Smith. Annie Pearl Smith discovers moonlight/Biting black/They say that Black people ... /Dylan, two days/Blonde white woman

Karen Mitchell. On the anniversary of your death/Night rain/Tree stillness/The monster

Lucinda Roy. Suffering the sea change: All my pretty ones/The ride/Triple overtime/The bread man

Reuben Jackson. 1973/A lonely affair/Lady's way/After the dance/Jamal's lamentation

Cyrus Cassells. Soul make a path through shouting/These are not brushstrokes/A courtesy, a trenchant grace

Essex Hemphill. Where seed falls/Homocide/Soft targets/Family jewels

Lenard D. Moore. The homeplace/Again/Indian girl/The eternal landscape/From the field

Carl Phillips. You are here/Sunday/The reach

Sharan Strange. Childhood/Offering/Still life

Esther Iverem. Daddy's friends/Earth screaming/Murmur/Keeper

Elizabeth Alexander. Nineteen/Boston year/Painting/Ode/Farewell to you

Paul Beatty. Verbal mugging/Sitting on other people's cars

Thomas Sayers Ellis. A kiss in the dark/Shooting back/View of the Library of Congress from Paul Laurence Dunbar High School

Claudia Rankine. Eden/New windows/The man. His bowl. His raspberries

Reginald Shepherd. White days/The lucky one/What cannot be kept/Where when was

Kevin Young. The preserving/Field trip/Casting/The escape artist.