Lift Every Voice: Why African American Poetry Matters: Poetry

Abani, Chris

• Blue, 2004
• The New Religion, 2006

Ai

• Twenty-Year Marriage, 1973

Alexander, Elizabeth

• Ars Poetica #100: I Believe, 2005
• Praise Song for the Day, 2009
• Race, 2001
• The Venus Hottentot, 1990

Angelou, Maya

• Phenomenal Woman, 1978
• Still I Rise, 1978

Baraka, Amiri (also known as Leroi Jones)

• The Liar, 1963
• Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note, 1961
• Short Speech to My Friends, 1964

Betts, Reginald Dwayne

• A Postmodern Two-Step, 2012

Bontemps, Arna

• A Black Man Talks of Reaping, 1926

Brooks, Gwendolyn

• The Bean Eaters, 1963
• Beverly Hills, Chicago
• The Life of Lincoln West
• The Lovers of the Poor, 1963
• Paul Robeson
• We Real Cool, 1959

Brown, Jericho

• Another Elegy, 2014
• Bullet Points, 2019

Brown, Sterling A.

• Slim Greer

Clifton, Lucille

• Cutting Greens
• Homage to My Hips
• Jasper Texas 1998
• The Lost Baby Poem
• Miss Rosie
• To My Last Period
• Wishes for Sons
• Won't You Celebrate with Me

Cotter, Joseph Seamon, Sr.

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

Cullen, Countee

• Epitaphs, 1925

Cuney, William Waring

• Nineteen-twenty-nine
• No Images

Danner, Margaret

• Etta Moten's Attic, 1954

Davis, Frank Marshall

• Four Glimpses of Night

Derricotte, Toi

• Black Boys Play the Classics
• The Weakness

Diggs, LaTasha N. Nevada

• My First Black Nature Poem™

Dixon, Melvin

• Heartbeats

Dove, Rita

• Adolescence--II
• Banneker, 1983
• Canary

Du Bois, W.E.B.

• A Litany at Atlanta, 1920

Dumas, Henry

• Son of Msippi

Dunbar, Paul Laurence

• An Ante-Bellum Sermon
• Compensation
• A Death Song (scroll down)
• A Negro Love Song
• Sympathy
• We Wear the Mask, 1895
• When de Co'n Pone's Hot
• When Malindy Sings

Dunbar-Nelson, Alice Moore

• Violets, 1896
• I Sit and Sew

Dungy, Camille

• Frequently Asked Questions: #10

Forten, Sarah Louisa

• An Appeal to Women, 1834

Giovanni, Nikki

• Ego Tripping, 1968
• Legacies, 1972
• Nikki-Rosa, 1968

Gorman, Amanda (First National Youth Poet Laureate)

• The Hill We Climb (2021 Inauguration Poem)

Hammon, Jupiter

• An Address to Miss Phillis Wheatley

Harper, Frances Ellen Watkins

• Bury Me in a Free Land
• A Double Standard
• Learning to Read
• The Slave Mother, 1854
• Songs for the People

Harper, Michael S.

• American History
• Dear John, Dear Coltrane
• Last Affair: Bessie's Blues Song
• The Love Letters of Helen Pitts Douglass
• Nightmare Begins Responsibility

Hayden, Robert

• [American Journal], 1978
• Frederick Douglass, 1966
• Middle Passage, 1962
• Runagate Runagate, 1962
• Those Winter Sundays, 1966

Hayes, Terrance

• The Golden Shovel, 2010

Horton, George Moses

• George Moses Horton, Myself

Hughes, Langston

• Cross
• Dream Boogie: Variation
• I, Too
• Let America Be America Again
• Mother to Son
• The Negro Speaks of Rivers
• The Weary Blues

Jeffers, Honoree Fannone

• The Gospel of Barbecue, 2000

Jess, Tyehimba

• Blind Boone's Vision, 2016

Johnson, Fenton

• Who Is That A-Walking in the Corn?, 1918

Johnson. Georgia Douglas

• Common Dust
• The Heart of a Woman, 1918

Johnson, James Weldon

• Lift Every Voice and Sing, 1900
• O Black and Unknown Bards, 1917
• Sence You Went Away

Jordan, June

• Poem About My Rights
• Poem for Haruko

Kaufman, Bob

• Walking Parker Home, 1965

Knight, Etheridge

• For Freckle-Faced Gerald
• Haiku
• Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane
• The Idea of Ancestry
• The Violent Space

Lorde, Audre

• Coal
• A Litany for Survival
• Power

McCallum, Shara

• What the Oracle Said, 1999

McCrae, Shane

• Still When I Picture It the Face of God Is a White Man's Face, 2015

McKay, Claude

• America, 1921
• The Harlem Dancer, 1922
• Harlem Shadows
• If We Must Die
• The Lynching, 1922
• On Broadway
• The Tropics in New York

Monet, Aja

• #sayhername, 2015

Mullen, Harryette

• Sleeping with the Dictionary, 2002

Nelson, Marilyn

• Lonely Eagles, 1997

Pardlo, Gregory

• Raisin, 2014
• Written by Himself, 2010

Phillips, Carl

• Blue, 1992

Phillips, Rowan Ricardo

• Violins, 2016

Plato, Ann

• The Natives of America, 1841

Randall, Dudley

• Booker T. and W. E. B., 1969

Rankine, Camille

• History, 2016

Ray, Henrietta Cordelia

• Self-Mastery
• Toussaint L'Ouverture

Rollins, Alison C.

• Why Is We Americans, 2016

Shepherd, Reginald

• Hesitation Theory, 2007
• My Mother Was No White Dove, 2006

Shockley, Evie

• from The Lost Letters of Frederick Douglass, 2011

Smith, Danez

• Dinosaurs in the Hood, 2014

Smith, Tracy K.

• Declaration, 2018
• Sci-Fi, 2011

Spencer, Anne

• At the Carnival, 1922

St. John, Primus

• Dreamer

Thomas, Lorenzo

• Inauguration, 1979

Trethewey, Natasha

• Flounder, 2000
• Incident, 2007
• Miscegenation, 2007

Troupe, Quincy

• Poem for My Father

Walcott, Derek

• The Schooner Flight

Walker, Margaret

• For My People

Weaver, Afaa Michael

• Inside the Blues Whale, 2000
• Scrapple, 2013
• Washing the Car with My Father, 2013

Woods, Jamila

• Ode to Herb Kent, 2015

Wheatley, Phillis

• On Imagination, 1773
• To S.M., a Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works, 1773

Young, Kevin

• Money Road, 2016