African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song (A Library of America Anthology)

Notes From Black ReadsA deep, beautiful and comprehensive overview of African American poetry from 1770 to the present day. You could literally teach a years-long seminar built around this book. In 1,000+ pages, editor Kevin Young acknowledges in his engaging and moving introduction that page constrictions required him to leave out “verse for young people,” “folk songs and ballads,” as well as longer prose poems. That’s OK. That just means we have additional volumes to look forward to. A literary landmark: the biggest, most ambitious anthology of Black poetry ever published, gathering 250 poets from the colonial period to the presentAcross a turbulent history, from such vital centers as Harlem, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and the Bay Area, Black poets created a rich and multifaceted tradition that has been both a reckoning with American realities and an imaginative response to them. Capturing the power and beauty of this diverse tradition in a single indispensable vol