Author: James Baldwin
Publisher: St Martins Press
ISBN: 9780312051044
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 75

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Book Description
A collection of poetry echoes many of the themes and lyricism of Baldwin's essays and novels

Author: Kevin Young
Publisher: Everyman's Library
ISBN: 0375414584
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Born in African American work songs, field hollers, and the powerful legacy of the spirituals, the blues traveled the country from the Mississippi delta to “Sweet Home Chicago,” forming the backbone of American music. In this anthology–the first devoted exclusively to blues poems–a wide array of poets pay tribute to the form and offer testimony to its lasting power. The blues have left an indelible mark on the work of a diverse range of poets: from “The Weary Blues” by Langston Hughes and “Funeral Blues” by W. H. Auden, to “Blues on Yellow” by Marilyn Chin and “Reservation Blues” by Sherman Alexie. Here are blues-influenced and blues-inflected poems from, among others, Gwendolyn Brooks, Allen Ginsberg, June Jordan, Richard Wright, Nikki Giovanni, Charles Wright, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Cornelius Eady. And here, too, are classic song lyrics–poems in their own right–from Bessie Smith, Robert Johnson, Ma Rainey, and Muddy Waters. The rich emotional palette of the blues is fully represented here in verse that pays tribute to the heart and humor of the music, and in poems that swing with its history and hard-bitten hope.

Author: Kay Shirley
Publisher: Hal Leonard Publishing Corporation
ISBN: 9780793534616
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description

Author: Jimmy Santiago Baca
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 9780811215756
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 116

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Book Description
New poetry by the Champion of the International Poetry Slam and winner of the Before Columbus American Book Award, the International Hispanic Heritage Award, the Pushcart Prize, and the prestigious new International Award.

Author: Michele Elam
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316240096
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
This Companion offers fresh insight into the art and politics of James Baldwin, one of the most important writers and provocative cultural critics of the twentieth century. Black, gay, and gifted, he was hailed as a 'spokesman for the race', although he personally, and controversially, eschewed titles and classifications of all kinds. Individual essays examine his classic novels and nonfiction as well as his work across lesser-examined domains: poetry, music, theatre, sermon, photo-text, children's literature, public media, comedy, and artistic collaboration. In doing so, The Cambridge Companion to James Baldwin captures the power and influence of his work during the civil rights era as well as his relevance in the 'post-race' transnational twenty-first century, when his prescient questioning of the boundaries of race, sex, love, leadership, and country assume new urgency.

Author: Kevin Young
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0375709894
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
In this jaunty and intimate collection, Kevin Young invents a language as shimmying and comic, as low-down and high-hearted, as the music from which he draws inspiration. With titles such as “Stride Piano,” “Gutbucket,” and “Can-Can,” these poems have the sharp completeness of vocalized songs and follow a classic blues trajectory: praising and professing undying devotion (“To watch you walk / cross the room in your black / corduroys is to see / civilization start”), only to end up lamenting the loss of love (“No use driving / like rain, past / where you at”). As Young conquers the sorrow left on his doorstep, the poems broaden to embrace not just the wisdom that comes with heartbreak but the bittersweet wonder of triumphing over adversity at all. Sexy and tart, playfully blending an African American idiom with traditional lyric diction, Young’s voice is pure American: joyous in its individualism and singing of the self at its strongest.

Author: Edwin Markham
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : American poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 146

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Book Description

Author: Sonia Sanchez
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807026522
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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Book Description
Winner Gish Prize for Lifetime Achievement A representative collection of the life work of the much-honored poet and a founder of the Black Arts movement, spanning the 4 decades of her literary career. Gathering highlights from all of Sonia Sanchez’s poetry, this compilation is sure to inspire love and community engagement among her legions of fans. Beginning with her earliest work, including poems from her first volume, Homecoming (1969), through to 2019, the poet has collected her favorite work in all forms of verse, from Haiku to excerpts from book-length narratives. Her lifelong dedication to the causes of Black liberation, social equality, and women’s rights is evident throughout, as is her special attention to youth in poems addressed to children and young adults. As Maya Angelou so aptly put it: “Sonia Sanchez is a lion in literature’s forest. When she writes she roars, and when she sleeps other creatures walk gingerly.”

Author: Patricia Smith
Publisher: Coffee House Press
ISBN: 1566893674
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 128

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Book Description
Winner of 2013 Wheatley Book Award in Poetry Finalist for 2013 William Carlos Williams Award "Patricia Smith is writing some of the best poetry in America today. Ms Smith’s new book, Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah, is just beautiful—and like the America she embodies and represents—dangerously beautiful. Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah is a stunning and transcendent work of art, despite, and perhaps because of, its pain. This book shines." —Sapphire "One of the best poets around and has been for a long time." —Terrance Hayes "Smith's work is direct, colloquial, inclusive, adventuresome." —Gwendolyn Brooks In her newest collection, Patricia Smith explores the second wave of the Great Migration. Shifting from spoken word to free verse to traditional forms, she reveals "that soul beneath the vinyl." Patricia Smith is the author of five volumes of poetry, including Blood Dazzler, a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award, and Teahouse of the Almighty, a National Poetry Series selection. She lives in New Jersey.

Author: Erica L. Crump
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780983769903
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
"Meet sisters Cookie, Victoria, Mya, and Lola. They call themselves "The Dexter Divas" and pride themselves on always being there for each other. Oldest sister Cookie is trying to keep her marriage on track after her husband throws a curveball in their "perfect marriage." Victoria is trying to lose excess weight off her body as well as dead weight in a slacker live-in boyfriend. Mya is determined to get her "married boyfriend" to divorce his wife and finally marry her. At the same time, she is struggling with her explosive mood swings that she can't seem to control. And Lola, the baby of the family, is finally trying to move past the violent death of her son's father and allow love into her life again. But what happens when love, jealousy, betrayal, and unforgiveness explode at the most inopportune time?"--Publisher's description.