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Learn about James Baldwin, a novelist, essayist, and social critic who wrote about race, identity, and humanity. Read his poems and essays on the Poetry Foundation website.
A poem by James Baldwin about the dilemma of giving and receiving, inspired by his friend Berdis. The poem explores the themes of hope, madness, guilt, and justice in the context of poverty and need.
Read six poems by James Baldwin, an American writer who explored racial, sexual, and class issues in his essays, novels, and plays. Learn about his life, his best-known work, and his quotes on various topics.
- Amen
- Untitled
- Staggerlee Wonders
- Le Sporting-Club de Monte Carlo
- Munich, Winter 1973
- The Giver
No, I don’t feel death coming. I feel death going: having thrown up his hands, for the moment. I feel like I know him better than I did. Those arms held me, for a while, and, when we meet again, there will be that secret knowledge between us. “Amen” is a powerful reflection on love’s transformative potential and its ability to transcend the boundar...
Lord, when you send the rain think about it, please, a little? Do not get carried away by the sound of falling water, the marvelous light on the falling water. I am beneath that water. It falls with great force and the light Blinds me to the light. Baldwin’s “Untitled” works often capture moments of introspection and candid expressions of the self....
I always wonder what they think the n*ggers are doing while they, the pink and alabaster pragmatists, are containing Russia and defining and re-defining and re-aligning China, nobly restraining themselves, meanwhile, from blowing up that earth which they have already blasphemed into dung: the gentle, wide-eyed, cheerful ladies, and their men, nosta...
The lady is a tramp a camp a lamp The lady is a sight a might a light the lady devastated an alley or two reverberated through the valley which leads to me, and you the lady is the apple of God’s eye: He’s cool enough about it but He tends to strut a little when she passes by the lady is a wonder daughter of the thunder smashing cages legistlating ...
In a strange house, a strange bed in a strange town, a very strange me is waiting for you. Now it is very early in the morning. The silence is loud. The baby is walking about with his foaming bottle, making strange sounds and deciding, after all, to be my friend. You arrive tonight. How dull time is! How empty—and yet, since I am sitting here, lyin...
If the hope of giving is to love the living, the giver risks madness in the act of giving. Some such lesson I seemed to see in the faces that surrounded me. Needy and blind, unhopeful, unlifted, what gift would give them the gift to be gifted? The giver is no less adrift than those who are clamouring for the gift. If they cannot claim it, if it is ...
James Baldwin, as poet, never forgot what he had taught me in that seventeen-hundred-and-seventy-six-word essay — to remember where one came from. So many of the poems are dedicated back to someone who perhaps had gone the distance, perhaps had taught him about the rain: for David, for Jefe, for Lena Horne, for Rico, for Berdis, for Y.S. When ...
James Baldwin's poems about race are a testament to his unwavering commitment to justice and equality. Through his evocative verses, Baldwin confronts the harsh realities of racial discrimination and challenges society's complicity in perpetuating these injustices. His poetry serves as a call for empathy, understanding, and a collective effort ...
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Explore the poems and prose of James Baldwin, a celebrated writer and activist who explored themes of race, sexuality, and identity. Read his untitled poem, Jimmy’s Blues and Other Poems, and more.
