14 Brilliant and Beautiful Black Poetry Collections
#OnceYouGoBlackOut Vol. 4: Poetry
Okay, so technically this entry is supposed to be about highlighting film and tv adaptations, which is a great category, but we have so many poetry readers and writers around here and not that many movie buffs here so we are sticking to what we know and swapping out the category for POETRY.
This February we’re going all in on black book content. With inspiration from the wonderful people at The Stacks podcast for their #OnceYouGoBlackOut challenge, we’ll be sharing book recommendations all month from black writers.
I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood by Tiana Clark
A breath-taking collection of poetry that probes the psyche of a brilliant writer whose artistic vision has been shaped by her experience as a black woman raised in the American South. (Liv)
Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay
I hate to sound like a trope but for the last year I’ve kept a Gratitude Journal. Most of the time, I fill it with simple things: my partner made me dinner, I took a long walk, the cat was extra cuddly. Now if keeping such a log feels too “Eat Pray Love” for your taste, reading Catalog of Unabashed Catalog will produce the same intoxicating effect: the sense that Life is a garden — abundant, fragrant, awe-inspiring — and that you are the luckiest creature in the whole world to stand at its center. When it comes to celebration, Gay is a master teacher, unafraid to be transparent, clumsy, or, in his own words, “long winded sometimes. / I want so badly to rub the sponge of gratitude / over every last thing, including you, which, yes, awkward, / the suds in your ear and armpit, the little sparkling gems / slipping your eye.” It’s so good to be loved by this book, to follow this real-life gardener through blooms, blooms, and blooms. (Shira)
Kingdom Animalia by Aracelis Girmay
“& isn’t the heart / an ampersand,” writes Aracelis Girmay, my favorite living poet, imploring us to think of love as a task in embracing, always, more. This book is a manual, a meditation, an investigation into kindness & loss & mortality. In that same ode to the ampersand, Girmay writes, “you remind us / of the heart & how / the heart would / rather die than keep / its two dark arms / all to himself.” This book is an embrace I return to. I’m not lying when I say I’ve dog-eared every page. (Shira)
Magic City & Dien Cai Dau by Yusef Komunyakaa
“Poetry,” Yusef Komunyakaa has said, “is a kind of distilled insinuation.” Indeed Komunyakaa’s poems are distilled, essential, sharply in focus, often haunting. Magic City captures his growing up in Bogalusa, Louisiana, and Dien Cai Dau chronicles his experiences during the Vietnam War. (Hannah)
The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde
This iconic poet and thinker is a national treasure and I move to honor her legacy by making her birthday (Feb 18) a national holiday in place of President’s Day. One of the first black, lesbians to share her experiences publicly, her words are powerful and profound, accessible and moving. (Colleen)
My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter by Aja Monet
These poems intimately transcribe the beats of 90’s Brooklyn and South Side Chicago, rendering them into a powerful, feminist lyric/song of survival that celebrates daughters, mothers, and sisters. They are fearless and nurturing — both the poems and the women of the poems — and they challenge the notion of intra(/inter)communal violence as resistance, instead illustrating a vision of the future rooted in liberation through love. This book urges us to ask what it means to fight for freedom through radical care and solidarity. Reading it was both soothing and challenging, but with so many points of entry, I believe most people seeking spiritual upliftment amidst political tumult have a chance to find music here, perhaps even shelter. (Serena)
Magical Negro by Morgan Parker
Morgan Parker is taking her rightful place as Queen of Poetry, on our shelves at least. Her second collection explores themes of performance, identity, ancestral grief, and more as she reclaims the term of the “magical negro” — a trope often portrayed in film as a two-dimensional black character known only in their relation to a white character. Parker is a singular voice of depth and humor and wisdom. (Colleen)
There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyonce by Morgan Parker
In this unapologetic collection, Parker skins the beast that is The Expectations of the Black Woman in America. Then, she wears the hide. The complexities of Black American womanhood are explored in the bath, in her therapist’s office, & with equal Frank O’Hara starkness & tweet-like confidence. Each page is celebratory, mournful, bombastic & smart as hell. (Shira)
I’m So Fine by Khadijah Queen
We’ve all heard “She was asking for it” with regards to women & clothing. Queen takes this misogynist foolishness to task, putting toxic masculinity on blast by cataloguing (& captivatingly critiquing) her run-ins with all manner of men — celebrities, tinder dates, boy bands, etc. This tightly executed prose-poem collection sings like an older sister bursting her gum & your bubble. These pages simultaneously interrogate the casual as violent, the specific as general, & the surreal as forreal. No joke, every time I’ve bought this book I’ve ended up giving it away, like — –here girl, quick, this is yours, this is ours.(Shira)
Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
Groundbreaking book of poetry that also serves as anthropological text and cultural criticism. Investigates Black American experiences, particularly the pervasive nature of racism, highlighting whiteness’ investments in civility and denial. (Shira)
Ordinary Beast by Nicole Sealy
Nicole Sealy’s gripping collection stuns with each line break. Sealy erases and borrows, pokes and prods, questions and answers — every poem is extraordinary. (Danilo)
Don’t Call Us Dead by Danez Smith
This was one of my favorite collections of 2017, and remains the poetry collection that has forced me to look at the realities of how we treat race, masculinity, and sexuality in the US. Danez is smart, funny, and heartbreaking. (Zoey)
Life on Mars by Tracy K. Smith
Never is the connection between the universe and the human life so close as when reading Life on Mars. The scope of the collection is much deeper than its homage to Bowie, but for fans of the dear departed icon, go ahead and read Don’t You Wonder, Sometimes on Page 19. If you can walk out of here afterward without this collection, you are much stronger than I am. (Michael)
The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop edited by Kevin Coval, Quraysh Ali Lansana, Nate Marshall
An essential, electric collection chronicling the ongoing poetic legacies of Hip-Hop. Brilliantly edited by Kevin Coval, Quraysh Ali Lansana, and Nate Marshall, the writers in this anthology expand history, explode canons, and challenge assumptions about what a poem can look like and what poetry can be about. The selections of this volume reject traditional hierarchies and don’t insist on a single style, subject, or relationship to music. Instead, the poems experiment and remix; call and respond. Personal favorites are too many to name, but include Paul Martinez’s “I have a drone,” Jamila Woods’s “Blk Girl Art (after Amiri Baraka),” and Aziza Barnes’s “Juicy (and erasure).” Make sure to check out the vital follow up, The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2: Black Girl Magic, edited by Mahogany L. Browne, Idrissa Simmonds, and Jamila Woods. (Danilo)
To Repel Ghosts: The Remix by Kevin Young
Kevin Young brings brilliance to everything he does and this collection of poems inspired by the words and images of Jean-Michel Basquiat is no exception. Young writes about how Basquiat “stripped / labels, opened & ate / alphabets,” made a “tin thing sing” and, with this collection, he’s doing it, too. (Danilo)
