The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry

This definitive volume captures, in verse, the history of African American life and culture. A landmark publication for African American literature and a major contribution to American poetry as a whole. * Henry Louis Gates, Jr. *
This anthology of the poetry of a race, imaginatively arranged by themes, announces itself as a comprehensive and necessary gathering * necessary not only to the culture but to every conscientious reader's library.Billy Collins *
The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry gives us a poetry that has reached full maturity. Here is an immensely readable, sometimes scalding, aesthetically diverse x-ray of American life. 'Camerado! This is no book,' as Whitman said: Who touches this touches a man, a woman, a people. * Edward Hirsch *
Includes all the wonderful names you'd expect: Gwendolyn Brooks, Rita Dove, Langston Hughes, Stanley Crouch, and many, many more. * Library Journal *
An invaluable addition to any library, because it so amply demonstrates the richness and depth of three centuries of America's most talented black writers. * ForeWord Magazine *
This is the volume awaited by scholars, teachers, poets and poets-in-training as well as everyday lovers of words set to the music of poetic pulses and colors. Organized without the constraints of setting the historical record straight (for once that job is left to others) but only with the sheer joy of presenting the very best poems in the black American tradition, this lovely book is a godsend. Its mapping of these poems, by theme, serves the pleasure-reader as well as the classroom lesson-planner, teaching a tradition. Familiar poems look new in these new settings; poems we never saw before shimmer on these pages. Kudos to Professor Rampersad, this book's editor whose eloquent and comprehensive introduction opens the bright and shining door to the best single collection of black poetry I have ever seen. * Robert G. O'Meally, Zora Neale Hurston Professor English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University *
Wisely foregoing any predictable attempt at comprehensiveness and jettisoning the convenience of chronology, Arnold Rampersad has structured these selections as interlocking voices in a series of multi-generational conversations that provoke and instruct through fruitful juxtaposition. The end result is a strikingly compelling work of creative scholarship that effectively conveys the extraordinary richness and complexity of the African American poetic tradition. * Richard Yarborough, University of California, Los Angeles, Editor of the University Press of New England's Library of Black Literature series *
Judicious in its selections and creative in its organization, this anthology of African American poetry is definitive yet readily accessible. This volume belongs on the shelves of any reader who considers American poetry and African American literature an important part of our artistic and cultural history. A rare treasure. * Marcellus Blount, Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University *