In this classic collection of poetry, the reader will find a bold poem for each crucial issue of Black life.
Eugene B. Redmond
Arkansippi Memwars
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Celebrating a career that spans four decades, Eugene B. Redmond’s collected work—Arkansippi Memwars—triumphs. An award-winning poet, playwright and educator, Redmond represents through his body of work the veracity and audacity of the Black Arts Movement, the traditions of the Yoruba, and the complex history of the Black American. The poetry of Redmond moves to the cadence of drums stripped from his ancestors and reclaimed by the burgeoning Hip-Hop movement of the 1970s. Fearless, sharp, and satirically masterful are but a few words to describe the excellence of Eugene Redmond and his poetry.
Kalamu ya Salaam
Precise Tenderness
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With Precise Tenderness, Kalamu ya Salaam, our long-cherished cosmic deputy, has gifted us another amazing collection of poetry. This volume is a unique exploration of haiku fueled by his seemingly boundless imagination, deft wordplay, and Black Aesthetic wanderings. This creative master artfully paints the page while orchestrating blues/jazz/gospel soundings. "Falling is minor," writes the poet in Haiku #13. What's major is how the poet soars and gets our spirits to fly as we read. Whether issuing political commentary, musing about love and self-inspection, or making his characteristic and inevitable visit to erotica, Kalamu ya Salaam is an immensely profound and inspiring craftsperson. This collection is not only precise tenderness. It is precise brilliance.
Nora Brooks Blakely
Seasons (Hardcover)
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Seasons: A Gwendolyn Brooks Experience captures her life and work in a new book filled with thematic collections of her poetry and prose; photos; memories from family, friends, peers and mentees and gripping illustrations from the award-winning artist, Jan Spivey Gilchrist. Now more than ever the words of Gwendolyn Brooks demonstrate their continued relevance in the 21st century. The national centennial celebration is one part of a resurgence of appreciation for her powerful work and the impact she had on 20th century literature as well as the Black Arts Movement.
Haki R. Madhubuti
Run Toward Fear
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Run Toward Fear offers readers a mixture of poems that challenge and cause both reflection on and questioning about many headline issues that have launched this century. Madhubuti includes poignant moving tributes to Jacob Carruthers, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Amiri Baraka, as well as heartfelt words that provide comfort and guidance to the families of the 21 people who lost their lives in Chicago's E-2 nightclub tragedy. The final section of the book, ""A Poet's Handbook,"" provides personal and sometimes anecdotal insights on the craft of writing poetry.
Patrick T. Reardon
Puddin'
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It is the story of a baby—me—during my first fourteen months, leading up to the birth of David. It’s told from the perspective and in the voice of a baby. Each of this small book’s 101 chapters is imagined. Yet, each is rooted in reality, in facts and feelings.
Kelly Norman Ellis
The Spaces Between Us: Poetry, Prose and Art on HIV/AIDS
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As HIV continues to change life on this planet, encouraging tough conversations about sex, sexual orientation, healthy relationships and trust, it invigorates those young and old to challenge the status quo of silence. Editors Kelly Norman Ellis and M.L. Hunter have assembled established and emerging writers and artists from around the globe, such as American Book Award and Pew Fellowship winner Lamont B. Steptoe; renown poet and educator Tony Medina; and Emmy award-winner Kwame Dawes, for this haunting and inspiring collection of poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction that paints living portraits of HIV/AIDS.
Sterling Plumpp
Ornate with Smoke
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Poetry that comes out of the jazz music of African American artists.
Quraysh Ali Lansana
They Shall Run
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These poems trace the journeys of the great Black historical figure Harriet Tubman and her fugitives through the backwoods of America.
Keorapetse Kgositsile
To the Bitter End
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South African poet Keorapetse Kgositsile rejuvenates the African spirit and continues the quest for total and uncompromised liberation.
Kelly Norman Ellis
Tougaloo Blues
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This collection of poems explores the author's southern roots through a blues/narrative voice and revisits her Mississippi youth, while revealing the contemporary voice of a Black woman searching for place and community outside of her southern past.
Sterling Plumpp
Velvet Bebop Kente Cloth
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This collection is the third in a trilogy of poetic works created by Sterling Plumpp to allow audiences to explore the language of music articulated through the nuances of jazz, blues, and bebop. The poetry in Velvet Be Bop Kente Cloth utilizes distinct rhythms and a non-conventional use of line and line breaks. It also draws upon the musical innovations established by Charlie Parker, Dizzie Gillispie, and others.
Joyce Ann Joyce
Warriors, Conjurers and Priests (Hardcover)
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In Warriors, Conjurers and Priests: Defining African-centered Literary Criticism, Joyce Ann Joyce brilliantly merges her vision of African American literary criticism with her understanding of the politics of higher education. Collected together, these essays depict the literary critic as a shaman and literary conjurer, steeped in the spirituality and history of Black culture. Her analysis offers perceptive readings of major Black literary figures of the 20th century - including Gwendolyn Brooks, Sonia Sanchez, James Baldwin, Ann Petry, Terry McMillan, Ishmael Reed and others. Professor Joyce demonstrates extensive research, while illustrating the interconnectedness of fiction and poetry to historical, political and cultural reality. At the same time, she provides balanced critiques rather than one-sidedness posing as universality. Most importantly, hers is a voice that recognizes the heterogeneity of the Black community and, in hopes of heightening understanding, does not fear discussing the strengths and weaknesses of diverse views.
Kahil El' Zabar
Mis Taken Brilliance
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Mis Taken Brilliance is percussionist extraordinaire Kahil El'Zabar's debut poetry collection. El'Zabar's many moods are expressed in an ecology of rhythm and rifts, harmony and phraseology. El'Zabar is the talking drummer who revels in the textures, the tonality, and beat of life.
Maulana Karenga
Million Man March/Day of Absence
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A comprehensive treatment of the 1996 Million Man March using essays, photographs, and poetry.
Useni Eugene Perkins
Memories & Images
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Perkins reveals his personal development into his present philosophy as he recounts his childhood, extols his heroes, and sings about the jazz greats.
Mzee Lasana Okpara (Fred Lee Hord)
Longer Than Breath
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When I met Toussaint, I was struck instantly by both his name and demeanor. Over the years, it became clear my son-in-law was a new Toussaint, principled warrior, and community leader. This book of poems is an extended conversation between me and his widowed wife, my daughter. So how many Black women have lost life partners, this, however, was not the result of external violence, just the wearing away of his body. Their love remains intact.
Mzee Lasana Okpara (Fred Lee Hord)
Life Sentences
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Life Sentences: Freeing Black Relationships is a Black man's response to the devastating effect of the Euro-Western concept of love on Black relationships. Author Mzee Lasana Okpara (formerly Fred Hord) demonstrates keen insight and confronts complex contemporary and historical issues which thwart efforts towards genuine bonding between the Black man and woman. Okpara's voice is intimate, challenging, and resolute.
Haki R. Madhubuti
Liberation Narratives
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Spanning a long career, these poems helped define and sustain a movement that added music and brash street language to traditional poetics. Like Amiri Barka (aka LeRoi Jones), this poet and social activist has long combined the personal and the political by adding anger, activism, and outsider art to well-crafted poems. Spoken-word poetry (which recently garnered the author a Grammy nomination) and ""message"" poetry aimed at community healing are innovations in the later works, and as a whole the poems provide an overview of emerging black culture as they borrow language from black consciousness, hip-hop, political speeches, and motivational talks.
Cranston Knight
La Brigada
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The poems in ""La are"" are about the impact of Spain on La Brigada, the American unit that fought in the Spanish Civil War. As Cranston Knight states, the poems are about ""those who struggled in a time vortex to save millions in a forgotten war, a forgotten country."" To bridge the cultural and language gap in the telling of these stories, Knight includes a selection of the book's poems in both English and Spanish.
Haki R. Madhubuti
Killing Memory, Seeking Ancestors
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Written in the tradition and style of the Black Arts Movement, this collection contains lyrical poems, laced with satirical allusions and political exhortations to Black readers.
Wade Hudson
Journey
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Estella Conwill Majozo
Jiva Telling Rites
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This is a collection of poems in verse and short prose that tells the story of a woman's anguish and growth in a hostile environment. The poems move into praise songs for people deemed worthy of recognition.
Mzee Lasana Okpara (Fred Lee Hord)
Into Africa, Being Black
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This precious volume of new and selected poems justly widens Dr. Hord's space among the poets of the Black Arts Movement. He remains, as John O. Killers would state, one of the long distance runners. He is in a league with Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Askia Toure, Jayne Cortez, Eugene Redmond, Lucille Clifton, Kalamu ya Salaam, and others who created a movement that helped to change America and the world for the literate and liberated majority.
Cranston Knight
In the Garden of the Beast
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Chronicling the lives of an African American soldier, his Vietnamese lover, and their child, this poetry collection deals painfully and poignantly with the reality of the Vietnam war.
Keith Gilyard
Impressions
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The heart of this ambitious and energetic collection is the conscientious and trusted mind of a giving and loving Black artist who in his own way understands history, psychology, economics, politics, and, most of all, the unique power of language in his application of “chord inversions” in the use of serving the urgent needs of Black lives. As a poet and empirical scientist who dances with words, ideas, real life, practical clarifications, and humor, Gilyard challenges his readers to act.