Furious flower: seeding the future of African American poetry

Foreword / Rita Dove

Preface / Joanne V. Gabbin and Lauren K. Alleyne

1. Collective power

Communities and Social Movements in Black Poetry / John H. Bracey

I Don't Think for a Second That We Won't Survive This / Abdul Ali

Praise Song for the Table in the Cafeteria Where All the Black Boys Sat Together during a Block, Laughing Too Loudly / Joshua B. Bennett

Preface to a Twenty-Volume Regicide Note / Joshua B. Bennett

Mother / Reginald Dwayne Betts

Fish Fry / Remica Bingham-Risher

for home / Destiny O. Birdsong

Re-Portrait Your Name, Douglas / F. Douglas Brown

The Card Tables / Jericho Brown

Boxing Arethas / Curtis L. Crisler

Knuckle Head / Teri Ellen Cross Davis

self-portrait with no flag / Safia Elhillo

90 poems I didn't write for you / Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Making / Duriel E. Harris

Miz Lucille / DaMaris B. Hill

Bread Pudding Grandmamma / Darrel Alejandro Holnes

Praise Poem for My Leo Self / JP Howard

Gender Reveal / Amanda Johnston

To the Builders / Fred Joiner

A Haiku Love Letter for Gabby Douglas / Yalie Kamara

Cartography as an Act of Remembering / Donika Kelly

We Put So Much Faith in the Power of Doors / Jacqueline Jones LaMon

Conditions for a Southern Gothic / Rickey Laurentiis

which art? what fact? / Nate Marshall

Initiation / Kamilah Aisha Moon

Activism is hot just ask Jason Momoa / Khadijah Queen

prayer for the unseen / Anastacia-Reneé

The Silences / Mahtem Shiferraw

what the cicada said to the black boy / Clint Smith

Bring Back / Samantha Thornhill

2. Black aesthetics

Race, Experiments, and the Black Avant-Garde / Evie Shockley

Night / Reginald Dwayne Betts

Another Clearing of the Land : Epitaph for Hadiyah Pendleton / Tara Betts

The Root / Derrick Weston Brown

Our People I / CM Burroughs

Our People II / CM Burroughs

BBHMM / Tiana Clark

from The Rise and Fall of Music / Michael Collins

Early Death Syndrome / Nandi Comer

Revivalism 101 / Mary-Alice Daniel

#notorious / t'ai freedom ford

When the Therapist Asks You to Recount, You Have to Say It / Aricka Foreman

American Counting Rhyme / Duriel E. Harris

Boogie Nights (Got to Keep On Dancing) / Clemonce Heard

Aeration / Taylor Johnson

If not memory- / Taylor Johnson

what we lose in the fire a blown tire makes us see / Raina J. León

Dew-Drier / Dante Micheaux

Girl with the golden contacts at the Walmart / Opal Moore

Variation on a Theme by Elizabeth Bishop / John Murillo

"Let My Anger Be the Celebration We Were Never Supposed to Have" / Natasha Oladokun

We, the Rubber Men / Iain Haley Pollock

American Religion / Lynne Procope

I Wish You Black Sons / Glenis Redmond

Cathedral / Valencia Robin

Realism: a poetics / Metta Sáma

Candelabra with Heads / Nicole Sealey

For the Dead Homie / Danez Smith

Global Warming Blues / Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie

Ars Poetica / Marcus Wicker

Asterism / Keith S. Wilson

Resurrection Sunday / L. Lamar Wilson

The Fairmount / Ronaldo V. Wilson

uncle shot find(s) out dat aint a brudda sangin I Can't Go For That (No Can Do) / avery r. young

3. Pan-African poetics

Toward a Pan-African Poetics / Kwame Dawes

X / Joshua B. Bennett

my brother asks me what it's like to live in Utah and not be white / Lillian-Yvonne Bertram

When I Think of Tamir Rice While Driving / Reginald Dwayne Betts

After Andy Warhol's "Little Race Riot" / Tara Betts

White Privilege / Tara Betts

Recovery / Destiny O. Birdsong

Found Art / Destiny O. Birdsong

Preacher Crow's Sermon on the Ark of Bones / Dexter L. Booth

Melinated Merman aka Aquabruh Wants to Holler at You / Derrick Weston Brown

Thanks / Derrick Weston Brown

Brown to Browne : : Douglass to Tubman Remix / F. Douglas Brown

Re-Portrait of an Icon / F. Douglas Brown

The Long Way / Jericho Brown

Devotion ("I Am on the Battlefield for My Lord") / Cortney Lamar Charleston

Garden of the Gods / Ama Codjoe

Anarcha Appears Again and Again / Nandi Comer

Say, Divine / DéLana R. A. Dameron

My Resistance Is Black / DéLana R. A. Dameron

Jim on the Raft after His "Dream" / Hayes Davis

Persimmons / Mitchell L. H. Douglas

application for asylum / Safia Elhillo

To the Old Square / Chanda Feldman

Voyage of Kianda : Art Formerly Known as The Sable Venus Speaks Back / Sherese Francis

A Reckoning : Assata in 1980 / DaMaris B. Hill

Consume/d / Fred Joiner

Parable for Refugees / Ladan Osman

A Fruit We Never Tasted / Xandria Phillips

Excerpt from Descent / Lauren Russell

Gnawa Boy, Marrakesh, 1968 / Charif Shanahan

The View from Down Here / Bianca Lynne Spriggs

Cankerworms / Cedric Tillman

4. Renovation

The String of Grace : Renovating New Rhythms in the Present-Future of Black Poetry and Music / Meta DuEwa Jones

the river it shines pure white / Lillian-Yvonne Bertram

Charleston / Cortney Lamar Charleston

Of Being Sick and Tired / Ama Codjoe

if someone should take your picture & make you black / t'ai freedom ford

3037, Time Capsule : Franklin / Krista Franklin

Versal / francine j. harris

Even When Spilling / Marcus Jackson

Sugar Shack / Alan W. King

Sure, You Can Ask Me about Hiphop / Alan W. King

Each Night / Ana-Maurine Lara

White Ferrari / Shayla Lawson

The "S" in I Loves You, Porgy / Nabila Lovelace

How I Wish I Could Be as Happy as Zaytoven Playing Piano for Gucci on NPR, Tiny Desk / Nabila Lovelace

Tapping at Mama's Knees / Cynthia Manick

Loud Looks / Douglas Manuel

Ornate Culmination / David Mills

The Langston Hop / Indigo Moor

Twenty-Seven w/ "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)" / Nkosi Nkululeko

LAMENTATION (Black Jesus Remix) / Julian Randall

How the Body Remembers / darlene anita scott

Upright / Kevin Simmonds

Exit Wound. / Kevin Simmonds

Symphony of Soul / Candice Wiley

Evensong / Korey Williams

5. Writing the body

Queerness and Gender Identities in Black Poetry / Nagueyalti Warren

Our child is not yet ten and we are clearing his closet / Remica Bingham-Risher

After the last flower is trampled / Dexter L. Booth

Why I Don't Call On Cops / Nandi Comer

The Skin That Tells / Krista Franklin

Genesis / Janice N. Harrington

On Reflection / Randall Horton

Featuring Lonette Mckee as Sister / Amaud Jamaul Johnson

See Him / Bettina Judd

Ritual for Unbusying / Natasha Marin

Structural Dilemma / Saretta Morgan

Résumé Names / Shauna M. Morgan

I Always Wanna Fall Asleep When My Momma Does My Hair but She Won't Let Me / Nkosi Nkululeko

Open Season / Justin Phillip Reed

Only for Now, or, Maafa on a Monday Ride through the City in Which I Decided I Should Just Go On & Die Alone / darlene anita scott

Hands / Safiya Sinclair

Aubade / Amber Flora Thomas

Blackberries / Amber Flora Thomas

Loni, with a martini and sapphire balls / Arisa White

Discipline / Phillip B. Williams

6. The collective

Blood in My Eye : The Poetics of Trauma and Memory / Dominique Christina

Homage to My Spiritual Mothers : Audre Lord, Barbara Smith, and Cherrie Moraga / Toi Derricotte

Give Me Some Wobble : On Why I Love Phillis Wheatley's Capacious Little Poem / Camille T. Dungy

How I Wrote "Papa Was a Rolling Stone" / Cornelius Eady

Let Your Engine Be Love / Ross Gay

A Poetics of Practice / Terrance Hayes

Statement on Poetry / Erica Hunt

My Lyrical Self / Major Jackson

Black Poetry : The Collective Experience / Tyehimba Jess

Try to Care about Someone Other Than Yourself : Creating Subtext through Empathy / A. Van Jordan

Poetics as Response to Certain Tropes as Allergens / Douglas Kearney

Aporia and the Poetics of Beauty as Non-Resolution / Ruth Ellen Kocher

Persona Non Grata / Tony Medina

Space Dream Struggle / E. Ethelbert Miller

Black Like Everything / Thylias Moss

As the Crow Flies (A Reorientation) / Mendi Lewis Obadike

Notes on Voice / Gregory Pardlo

On Noticing : Notes on Aesthetic Ambition and the Postcolonial Poet / Matthew Shenoda

We are rapidly running out of ways to write this world / Patricia Smith

Altogether Unlike Itself : The Uses of Metaphor / Tracy K. Smith

Thinking in Words (for Lorenzo Thomas and June Jordan) / Patricia Spears Jones

A Poetics of Empathy / Sharan Strange

Seeing to Be : Daring the Impossible to Make Each Other Possible / Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon

Memory, Research, Imagination, and the Mining of Historical Poetry / Frank X Walker.