Best African American Poetry

Relationships, love, pain, and fortitude are powerfully rendered in his poetry, and his message of perseverance in the face of emotional turmoil cuts to the heart of modern-day life. After returning to the northeast and moving to New York in pursuit of love, the young modern poet found that and much more.

Helium is filled with work that is simultaneously personal and political, blending love poems, self-reflection, and biting cultural critique on class, race and gender into an unforgettable whole. Rudy Francisco is one of the most recognizable names in Spoken Word Poetry.

Every woman should know the feelings of being loved and radiating those feelings back to her mate.

This definite collection brings together in fresh translations by an American poet the essential poems of the three greatest masters: Matsuo Basho in the seventeenth century; Yosa Buson in the eighteenth century; and Kobayashi Issa in the early nineteenth century. Here he presents three masters of the haiku form: Basho (1644-1694), the haiku poet most familiar to English readers; Buson (1716-1783), a visually oriented writer renowned in his time as a painter; and Issa (1763-1827), whose work is most poignant when he utilizes his ironic wit. Richly annotated, with illuminating essays on the poets and Japanese poetics, this anthology significantly broadens the pleasure of haiku for anyone unable to read them in the original.

Depression & Other Magic Tricks is the debut book by Sabrina Benaim, one of the most-viewed performance poets of all time, whose poem "Explaining My Depression to My Mother" has become a cultural phenomenon with over 50,000,000 views. Sabrina has written poems for ESPNW, The Government of Canada, & most recently, made her Canadian television debut with Sport Chek, writing & voicing the third instalment of their #WhatItTakes Olympic Manifesto video series.

"When you're dumb enough for long enough, you're gonna meet someone too smart to love you, and they're gonna love you anyway, and it's gonna go so poorly," Neil Hilborn writes in his debut full-length collection, OUR NUMBERED DAYS. Neil Hilborn is a College National Poetry Slam champion and a 2011 graduate with honors from Macalester College.

Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design. there is no anxious straining after mighty effects, but rather a constant readiness for what the occasion demands, a kind of Odyssean adequacy to the task in hand, and this line-by-line vigilance builds up into a completely credible imagined world.”. –from the Introduction by Seamus Heaney.

to roam a wilderness through which few other humans has passed . Thousands have had such dreams, but Richard Proenneke lived them. Keith based the text on the journals and photography of Richard Proenneke, who, after racking up years of 50-hour work weeks, did what many of us only fantasize about: he chucked it all and went to live in the woods.

With her beautiful face, full hips and round backside, nothing stands in the way of her confidence. He often wonders if Pita is good enough to settle down with or should he forgive the woman who caused him heartache and pain. Tyshae Owens, is a beautiful and smart nail technician at Luxury Tea. The saying is true, “what glitters isn’t gold.” Will she stay or will she move on to someone who can offer her the love she deserves?

With her beautiful face, full hips and round backside, nothing stands in the way of her confidence. He often wonders if Pita is good enough to settle down with or should he forgive the woman who caused him heartache and pain. Tyshae Owens, is a beautiful and smart nail technician at Luxury Tea. The saying is true, “what glitters isn’t gold.” Will she stay or will she move on to someone who can offer her the love she deserves?

Rakia, was left to die in the bathroom at her grandmother’s repast by none other than her evil cousin, Cara. Find out in this explosive FINALE if Zaire succeeds in avenging the death of his brother.

Denzel Washington’s film adaptation received nominations for awards from the Academy Awards, African-American Film Critics Association, American Film Institute, Critics' Choice Movie Awards, Golden Globe Awards, and NAACP Image Awards, among others. His second play, Fences , won numerous awards for best play of the year, 1987, including the Tony Award, the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, the Drama Desk Award, and the Pulitzer Prize.

Moments after Lisbeth is born, she’s taken from her mother and handed over to an enslaved wet nurse, Mattie, a young mother separated from her own infant son in order to care for her tiny charge. It's a must-read for anyone whoenjoys Antebellum historical fiction or is looking for a compellingstory to add to their book club reading list." Then the image of Lisbeth, a white baby, breastfeeding in the loving arms of Mattie, an enslaved wetnurse came to me in a flash. Then I imagined what the experience would be like for Miss Anne, the birth mother, to have her own child twist away from her to get into Mattie's arms.

When his allegiance to his roots puts his job in jeopardy, he travels up Highway 59 to the small town of Lark, where two murders--a black lawyer from Chicago and a local white woman--have stirred up a hornet's nest of resentment. Darren must solve the crimes--and save himself in the process--before Lark's long-simmering racial fault lines erupt. A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. Best book of the year from Vulture, The Strand Magazine, Southern Living, Bolo Books, Publisher's Weekly, Book Riot, The Guardian , Lit Hub , The Boston Globe , Dallas News , Milwaukee Journal Sentinel , Minnesota Public Radio, Texas Monthly, The Daily Beast , and the South Florida Sun Sentinel. "Locke writes in a blues-infused idiom that lends a strain of melancholy and a sense of loss to her lyrical style. "― Marilyn Stasio , New York Times Book Review. A rich sense of place and relentless feeling of dread permeate Attica Locke's heartbreakingly resonant new novel about race and justice in America. It rises above "left and right" and "black and white" and follows the threads that inevitably bind us together, even as we rip them apart. This is a layered portrait of a black man confronting his own racial ambivalence and ambition told with a pointed and poignant bluesy lyricism. a story told with Locke's crystal-clear vision and pleasurably elemental prose. Ranger Darren Mathews is tough, honor-bound, and profoundly alive in corrupt world. "Few contemporary writers have portrayed black Southern life with as much wit and heart-pounding drama as Attica Locke. A dazzling work of rural noir that throws into question whether justice can be equally served on both sides of the race line. "Locke pens a poignant love letter to the lazy red-dirt roads and Piney Woods that serve as a backdrop to a noir thriller as murky as the bayous and bloodlines that thread through the region. She is adept at crafting characters who don't easily fit the archetypes of good and evil, but exist in the thick grayness of humanness, the knotty demands of loyalties and the baseness of survival. Locke holds up the mirror of the racial debate in America and shows us how the light bends and fractures what is right, wrong and what simply is the way it is--but perhaps not as it should be.