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- Lynnette Nicholas
- Poets are interpreters. There are many types of poetry in the world, from love poems that will make you swoon to nature poems and protest poems that examine the world around us in very different ways.
- Countee Cullen. Best-known poems: “Incident” and “Heritage” Countee Cullen was one of the most significant Black poets of the Harlem Renaissance. A graduate of New York University who went on to get a master’s degree in English from Harvard, Cullen was one of the most famous voices of the early 20th century.
- Jean Toomer. Best-known poem: “Blue Meridian” Jean Toomer was a famous Black poet and novelist whose work impacted the Harlem Renaissance and modernist literary movements.
- Langston Hughes. Best-known poems: “Harlem” and “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” Langston Hughes isn’t just one of the most well-known Black poets of the early 20th century—he’s one of the most celebrated American poets, period.
- Tyehimba Jess on "We Real Cool" by Gwendolyn Brooks. "We Real Cool" is the poem so many of us know from grade school: the Seven (that sacred number of the seeker, the thinker, the mysterious) at the Golden Shovel (the shovel be golden but be ready to dig your grave).
- Safiya Sinclair on "won't you celebrate with me" by Lucille Clifton. What a balm and a blessing this poem has been to me. I have carried this sonnet—both an ode to the self and also an act of resistance—inside me like gospel, like armor.
- Rickey Laurentiis on "Heartbeats" by Melvin Dixon. “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off,” said Dickinson, “I know that is poetry.”
- Rowan Ricardo Phillips on "American History" by Michael S. Harper. Michael S. Harper’s “American History” is one of the great poems of our or any other language.
People also ask
What is African American Poetry?
What does 250 years of struggle and song say about African American Poetry?
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What is 200 years of Afro-American Poetry?
- “Hello Dolly” by Louis Armstrong. “Hello Dolly” is the title song of the popular 1964 musical of the same name, originally recorded by Carol Channing.
- “I Got You (I Feel Good)” by James Brown. “As I always said, if people wanted to know who James Brown is, all they have to do is listen to my music.”
- “I Got A Woman” by Ray Charles. “I Got A Woman,” released in 1954, combined the blues of greats like Guitar Slim with the sounds of gospel. This recording would make Ray Charles famous and mark the beginning of a new genre, “soul.”
- “The Christmas Song” by Nat King Cole. What’s Christmas without Nat King Cole? Recorded in 1946, “The Christmas Song” began Cole’s evolution into a sentimental singer.
Feb 25, 2021 · From the days of slavery through the Civil Rights Era to the BLM movement, Black music has emboldened American protests with songs so intertwined with events that they've become part of the...
African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song shows “all those who have the audacity to breathe while Black—has only given Black poetry, intimate with struggle, more urgency to sing...
Classic African-American Ballads is a sampling of an important, historic, and engaging slice of America's Black music heritage. The heyday of the Black ballad tradition (1890-1920) left a lasting strain of creativity and a monument to African American life of the time.
Poet and writer Langston Hughes stood at the center of the Harlem renaissance, and advocated the preservation and communication of African American traditions across the genres of music, poetry, and theater.
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