For over two centuries, black poets have captured the sorrows, joys, and triumphs of the African-American experience. Reflecting their visions and styles, this anthology offers nothing less than a definitive literary portrait of a people.

For over two centuries, black poets have captured the sorrows, joys, and triumphs of the African-American experience. Reflecting their visions and styles, this anthology offers nothing less than a definitive literary portrait of a people. Here are poems by writers as different as Paul Laurence Dunbar and W.E.B. Du Bois; Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes; Gwendolyn Brooks and Amiri Baraka; Rita Dove and Harryette Mullen; Yusef Komunyakaa and Nathaniel Mackey. Editor Arnold Rampersad groups these poems as meditations on key issues in black culture, including the idea of Africa; the South; slavery; protest and resistance; the black man, woman, and child; sexuality and love; music and religion; spirituality; death and transcendence.

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.