A comprehensive collection featuring over 150 poems, including works that explore joy, love, origin, race, resistance, and praise.

The language of joy.Quilting the black-eyed pea (we're going to Mars) / Nikki Giovanni -- The language of joy / Jacqueline Allen Trimble -- Garden of the gods / Ama Codjoe -- Labor / Jericho Brown -- Black boys / Tony Medina -- Navel / Robin Coste Lewis -- A parable of sorts / Malika S. Booker -- Boxing lessons / LeRonn Brooks -- On voting for Barack Obama with a Nat Turner t-shirt on / Reginald Dwayne Betts -- After people stop asking about me / Kyle Dargan -- Your dream is / Jason Reynolds -- A new day dawns / Nikky Finney -- Carolina prayer / Justin Phillip Reed -- Inescapable country / Mark McMorris -- Blood memory / Ronda Taylor -- The nightflies / Sheree Renée Thomas -- Healing / Lolita Stewart-White -- This is the honey / Mahogany L. Browne -- That's my heart right there. This is an incomprehensive list of all the reasons I know I married the right person / Clint Brown -- That's my heart right there / Willie Perdomo -- Refractions / Alan King -- I wish my love was here / Kurtis Lamkin -- tripping / Van G. Garrett -- Fruitful / Evie Shockley -- Poem that begins w/a tweet about Gwendolyn Brooks / Mitchell L.H. Douglas -- Love poem / Cameron Awkward-Rich -- May perpetual light shine / Patricia Spears Jones -- Forcing it / Antoinette Brim-Bell -- In my rush / Jonterri Gadson -- Characteristics of life / Camille T. Dungy -- As serious as a heart attack / Kalamu ya Salaam -- The talk / Gayle Danley -- Crows in a strong wind / Cornelius Eady -- How we made you / Kwame Alexander -- Weathering out / Rita Dove -- Want could kill me / Xan Forest Phillips -- When Macnolia greases my hair / A. Van Jordan -- "[love letter to self] / Warsan Shire -- a poem about you and me and the new country / Anis Mojgani -- Patience / Ross Gay -- Figurative language / A$iahMae -- hello / Sean Hill -- Delores Jepps / Tim Seibles -- The ear is an organ made for love / E. Ethelbert Miller -- Love for a song / J. Drew Lanham -- Most beautiful accident: a single parent's ode / Samantha Thornhill -- How to get emotional distance when voodoo is not an option / Pamela L. Taylor -- distant lover #1 [my michigan bed remix--for ellen g] / Brian Gilmore -- Where I'm from. Butter / Elizabeth Alexander -- Our people II / CM Burroughs -- The blue dress / Saeed Jones -- Owed to the plastic on your grandmother's couch / Joshua Bennett -- On Mother's Day / Frank X Walker -- A twice named family / Traci Dant -- Another homecoming / Jarita Davis -- Magnitude and bond / Nicole Terez Dutton -- (Twigi) / Gary Jackson -- For the healing / Marlanda Dekine -- Inheritance / Tyree Daye -- Mule / Sharan Strange -- Hanging laundry / Maritza Rivera -- The painter / Opal Palmer Adisa -- Beloved, or If you are murdered tomorrow / Elizabeth Acevedo -- "Harold's Chicken Shack #35" / Nate Marshall -- On Rampart & Canal / Nadir Lasana Bomani -- Where I'm from / Nikki Grimes -- Inundated / Hayes Davis -- The Black girl comes to dinner / Taylor Byas -- oh didn't they tell us we would all have new names when we decided to convert? / Nikia Chaney -- Richard Pryor and me / Curtis L. Crisler -- In my extremity / Mary Moore Easter -- Ode to Sudanese-Americans / Safia Elhillo -- Demonstration / Chanda Feldman -- R&B facts / Nicholas Goodly -- Dear future ones / Jacqueline Woodson -- Back to the past / Amanda Gorman -- Stand / Ruth Forman -- Reunion / Reginald Harris -- Blue magic / Niki Herd -- Antebellum / Gregory Pardlo -- Pastoral / Natasha Trethewey -- Southern history / Natasha Trethewey -- Nelsons (on the road 1957) / Marilyn Nelson -- Accents (after Denise Frohman) / Yvette R. Murray -- The mystery man in the black hat speaks / Quincy Troupe -- The I Be tree / truth thomas -- We not crazy, we feeling irie / Arisa White -- Devotions. His presence / Kwame Dawes -- You are not Christ / Rickey Laurentiis -- Conjecture on the stained-glass image of white Christ at Ebenezer Baptist Church / Marcus Wicker -- Condition: if the Garden of Eden was in Africa / DéLana R.A. Dameron -- Offertory / Chris Abani -- grief / toni blackman -- sallie ledbetter: a mother's hymn / Tyehimba Jess -- My father's geography / Afaa Michael Weaver -- Sunday poem / Joel Dias-Porter -- I could eat collard greens indefinitely / Alice Walker -- The gray mare / Afaa Michael Weaver -- The Easter prayer, 2020 A.C. / Frank X Walker -- Tell them what you want / Jabari Asim -- Devotions / Derrick L. Austin -- Wanderlust / Remica Bingham-Risher -- Race raise rage: the blackened alphabet. To racism / Lucinda Roy -- The blackened alphabet / Nikky Finney -- "I'm rooting for everybody Black" / Cortney Lamar Charleston -- The blue Seuss / Terrance Hayes -- Dear barbershop, / Chris Slaughter -- Before I fire her, the therapist asks What IS it like to be a Black woman HERE / Aricka Foreman -- A piece of tail / Teri Ellen Cross Davis -- Why I can dance down a Soul-Train line in public and still be a Muslim / Aisha Sharif -- Fuck/time / Inua Ellams -- Beyoncé on the line for Gaga / Morgan Parker -- Contemplating "Mistress," Sally in 2017 / Chet'la Sebree -- Mussels / Lucinda Roy -- 5 South 43rd Street, Floor 2 / Yolanda Wisher -- Unrest in Baton Rouge / Tracy K. Smith -- Quare / L. Lamar Wilson -- Some young kings / Roger Reeves -- We are not responsible / Harryette Mullen -- Carl's Barbershop / Abdul Ali -- On being called the N-word in Atlanta, 2016: a southern ghazal / teri elam -- The president has never said the word Black / Morgan Parker -- [this is to say I am more terrified of capitalism than any wildlife encounter] / Jasmine Elizabeth Smith -- In the event of / Shane McCrae -- Happy / Kevin Powell -- Holla / Evie Shockley -- When I see the stars: praise poems. A prayer for workers / Yusef Komunyakaa -- Heaven: for Nikki Giovanni's 80th birthday / Renée Watson -- The origins of the artist: Natalie Cole / Toi Derricotte -- Elegy for Chadwick Boseman / Len Lawson -- When I see the stars in the night sky / Joy Priest -- Hip hop analogies / Tara Betts -- For ben harper (7:42pm 1-18-02) / Jessica Care Moore -- My poems / Joanna Crowell -- Aubade to Langston / Rachel Eliza Griffiths -- What women are made of / Bianca Lynne Spriggs -- ruth (for a sister poet) / Michael Datcher -- Black gold redux (for Nina Simone) / Jacqueline Johnson -- for Duke Ellington / Reuben Jackson -- Don't let me be lonely [Mahalia Jackson is a genius] / Claudia Rankine -- For John Lewis, who loved to dance / Pearl Cleage -- Soul Train / Allison Joseph -- for allison joseph / Van G. Garrett -- I, master (for David Drake, enslaved potter-poet) / Glenis Redmond -- San Diego and Matisse / Clarence Major -- Ashe / Kevin Young -- Queen Bess / Kimberly A. Collins -- The ragged and the beautiful / Safiya Sinclair -- brown-eyed girls / Gerald L. Coleman -- Zebra (for my son) / January Gill O'Neil -- Quality: Gwendolyn Brooks at 73 / Haki R. Madhubuti -- A love poem written for Sterling Brown / Sonia Sanchez -- Whispers on the wave / Dr. Tonya Maria Matthews -- Praise / Angelo Geter. Introduction -- The language of joy -- That's my heart right there -- Where I'm from -- Devotions -- Race raise rage : the blackened alphabet -- When I see the stars : praise poems -- About the poets.