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Bite Down Little Whisper
by Don DomanskiFrom a master poet, meditative lines running like veins through the dark grace of being alive. Governor General's Award–winning poet Don Domanski's new collection, Bite Down Little Whisper, delves into the interconnectedness of all life with spiritual gravitas and powerful mindfulness. These are poems brimming with mythological and scientific energies, with a multi-dimensionality that opens itself to both complexity and clarity. Domanski shows us seams and fastenings that unite our longings with the earth itself, with the nonhuman vitality that surrounds us. The heart's need for unity and reverence is present in these poems as a whisper we hear in occasional moments of quietude, when it's possible to perceive the workings of a larger existence.
Bitter English (Phoenix Poets)
by Ahmad AlmallahImagine you are a Palestinian who came to America as a young man, eventually finding yourself caught between the country you live in with your wife and daughter, and the home—and parents—you left behind. Imagine living every day in your nonnative language and becoming estranged from your native tongue, which you use less and less as you become more ensconced in the United States. This is the story told by Ahmad Almallah in Bitter English, an autobiography-in-verse that explores the central role language plays in how we construct our identities and how our cultures construct them for us. Through finely crafted poems that utilize a plainspoken roughness to keep the reader slightly disoriented, Almallah replicates his own verbal and cultural experience of existing between languages and societies. There is a sense of displacement to these poems as Almallah recounts the amusing, sad, and perilous moments of day-to-day living in exile. At the heart of Bitter English is a sense of loss, both of home and of his mother, whose struggle with Alzheimer’s becomes a reflection of his own reality in exile. Filled with wit, humor, and sharp observations of the world, Bitter English brings a fresh poetic voice to the American immigrant experience.
Bitter in the Belly (Hugh MacLennan Poetry Series)
by John Emil VincentThe past grabs back / what it lets us handleBitter in the Belly reckons with suicide’s wreckage. After John Emil Vincent’s best friend descends into depression and hangs himself, fluency and acuity lose their lustre.Vincent sorts through and tries to arrange cosmologies, eloquence, narrative, insight, only to find fatal limitations. He tries to trick tragedy into revealing itself by means of costume, comedy, thought experiment, theatre of the absurd, and Punch and Judy. The poems progress steadily from the erotic and mythic to the lapidary and biblical, relentlessly constructing images, finding any way to bring the world into the light – what there is of light, when the light is on.In his most personal book, Vincent moves from stark innocence through awful events and losses, to something like acceptance without wisdom – Jonah spit back onto the sand with little to report but that he’s home.
Black Aperture: Poems (Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets)
by Matt RasmussenIn his moving debut collection, Matt Rasmussen faces the tragedy of his brother's suicide, refusing to focus on the expected pathos, blurring the edge between grief and humor. In Outgoing, the speaker erases his brother's answering machine message to save his family from the shame of dead you / answering calls. In other poems, once-ordinary objects become dreamlike. A buried light bulb blooms downward, a flower / of smoldering filaments. A refrigerator holds an evening landscape, a tinfoil lake, vegetables / dying in the crisper. Destructive and redemptive, Black Aperture opens to the complicated entanglements of mourning: damage and healing, sorrow and laughter, and torment balanced with moments of relief.
Black Box
by Erin Belieu"Belieu's poems use a vernacular of their own to suggest a noir world of erotic innuendo and red lights waiting to be run."-Neon. Black Box is a raw, intense book, fueled by a devastating infidelity. With her marriage shattered, Erin Belieu sifts the wreckage for the black box, the record of disaster. Propelled by a blistering and clarifying rage, she composed at fever pitch and produced riveting, unforgettable poems, such as the ten-part sequence "In the Red Dress I Wear to Your Funeral": I root through your remains, looking for the black box. Nothing left but glossy chunks, a pimp's platinum tooth clanking inside the urn. I play you over and over, my beloved conspiracy, my personal Zapruder film-look... When Belieu was invited by the Poetry Foundation to keep a public journal on their new website, readers responded to the Black Box poems, calling them "dark, twisted, disturbed, and disturbing" and Belieu a "frightening genius." All true.
Black Boy, Rise
by Brynne BarnesA bold anthem that celebrates the power and potential of young Black boys by the award-winning creative team of author Brynne Barnes and superstar illustrator Bryan Collier.From the celebrated author of Black Girl Rising and Colors of Me and four-time Caldecott Honor recipient and multiple-award-winning illustrator of Trombone Shorty, Rosa, and many more, this is a picture book to read, share, and cherish across generations.Black Boy, Rise combines gorgeous, moving text—filled with lyrical references to poets and writers whose voices have lifted and defined the Black experience, including Langston Hughes, Lucille Clifton, W. E. B. Du Bois, and James Weldon Johnson—with vibrant, beautifully rendered watercolor images that powerfully reflect the soul and gloriousness of Black boys in all their brilliance: the rich legacy of their past, the grit and grace of their present, and the divine promise of their future.BLACK JOY: This dynamic anthem speaks directly to the need of families, educators, and young readers to see the full beauty, richness, and complexity of Black boys’ experiences reflected in thoughtful, empowering children’s literature that positively portrays and celebrates Black boyhood.A GREAT GIFT: From graduation to birthdays to other milestone events, this book makes a perfect present for anyone looking to celebrate, empower, and inspire the men in their lives—whether sons, grandsons, nephews, cousins, or friends.AFRICAN AMERICAN BOOKS FOR KIDS: For fans of All Because You Matter and Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut, Brynne Barnes brings a fresh spin with her rhythmic rhyming text that exhorts readers to “Make beauty. Make joy. Make believe, and pretend. Make wonder. Makes wishes. Make magic begin.”Perfect for:Parents, grandparents, and caregiversTeachers and librarians seeking diverse booksAnyone interested in books about Black joy or Black historyGift-givers looking for a unique and inspiring book for the boys (or men) in their livesReaders who loved Martin’s Big Words, I Am Every Good Thing, and Black Boy Joy
Black Buffalo Woman: An Introduction to the Poetry & Poetics of Lucille Clifton
by Kazim AliThis long-awaited and much-needed volume shines new light on one of America’s most beloved, and profound, poets—Lucille Clifton.Black Buffalo Woman is a deep, comprehensive dive into Clifton’s work through the eyes of celebrated poet and scholar, Kazim Ali. Collecting chapters of Clifton’s early manuscripts, late drafts, and integrating her books of children’s literature, Ali’s meticulously researched volume provides a brilliant and fresh perspective on Clifton’s life and work.Various chapters examine Clifton’s treatment of the body as a site of both joy and danger, spirituality, and interrogation of American history, politics, and popular culture. The result of Ali’s scholarship and care highlights a dazzling array of Clifton’s poetic techniques and forms that will continue to inspire poets for decades to come.
Black California Gold (The Griot Project Book Series)
by Wendy M. ThompsonFor numerous migrants who ventured westward in the twentieth century in search of greater opportunities, the glitter of California often proved to be mere fool’s gold—promising easy riches but frequently resulting in dispossession and displacement. Poet Wendy M. Thompson is descended from two of these migrant waves—post-1965 Chinese immigrants and Black southerners of the Second Great Migration—whose presence has permanently transformed the region. In this arresting debut poetry collection, Thompson traces the past and present of California’s Bay Area, exploring themes of family, migration, girlhood, and identity against a backdrop of urban redevelopment, advanced gentrification, and the erasure of Black communities. Traveling down both familiar highways and obscure side streets, her poems map a region where race, class, and language are just some of the fault lines that divide communities and produce periodic tremors of violence and resistance. Confronting assimilationist myths of the American Dream, Black California Gold depicts a setting that is less a melting pot than a smelting pot, subjecting different ethnic groups to searing trials and extreme pressures that threaten to break them down entirely. Yet, it also celebrates the Black residents of the Bay Area who have struggled to sustain home and hope amid increasingly desperate conditions.
Black Cat Bone: Poems
by John BurnsideWinner of both the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Forward Prize, Black Cat Bone is the first American publication of the poetry of John BurnsideBefore the songs I sang there were the songsthey came from, patent shredsof Babel, and the secretNineveh of back rooms in the dark.Hour after hourthe night trains blundered throughfrom towns so far away and innocentthat everything I knew seemed fictional: —from "Death Room Blues"John Burnside's Black Cat Bone is full of poems of thwarted love and disappointment, raw desire, the stalking beast. One sequence tells of an obsessive lover coming to grief in echoes of the old murder ballads, and another longer poem describes a hunter losing himself in the woods while pursuing an unknown and possibly unknowable quarry. Black Cat Bone introduces American readers to one of the best poets writing across the Atlantic.
Black Celebrity: Contemporary Representations of Postbellum Athletes and Artists (Performing Celebrity)
by Emily Ruth RutterBlack Celebrity examines representations of postbellum black athletes and artist-entertainers by novelists Caryl Phillips and Jeffery Renard Allen and poets Kevin Young, Frank X Walker, Adrian Matejka, and Tyehimba Jess. Inhabiting the perspectives of boxer Jack Johnson and musicians “Blind Tom” Wiggins and Sissieretta Jones, along with several others, these writers retrain readers’ attention away from athletes’ and entertainers’ overdetermined bodies and toward their complex inner lives. Phillips, Allen, Young, Walker, Matejka, and Jess especially plumb the emotional archive of desire, anxiety, pain, and defiance engendered by the racial hypervisibility and depersonalization that has long characterized black stardom. In the process, these novelists and poets and, in turn, the present book revise understandings of black celebrity history while evincing the through-lines between the postbellum era and our own time.
Black Coffee Blues
by Henry RollinsConsidered by many to be the "classic" Rollins book, Black Coffee Blues is a collection of writings by Henry Rollins from 1989-1991. In his inimitable unflinching way, Rollins shares with readers a hard-edge look into his world through poetry, prose and journals,
Black Country
by Liz BerryWINNER OF THE FORWARD PRIZE BEST FIRST COLLECTION 2014*PBS Recommendation 2014*‘When I became a bird, Lord, nothing could not stop me…’In Black Country, Liz Berry takes flight: to Wrens Nest, Gosty Hill, Tipton-on-Cut; to the places of home. The poems move from the magic of childhood – bostin fittle at Nanny’s, summers before school – into deeper, darker territory: sensual love, enchanted weddings, and the promise of new life. In Berry’s hands, the ordinary is transformed: her characters shift shapes, her eye is unusual, her ear attuned to the sounds of the Black Country, with ‘vowels ferrous as nails, consonants / you could lick the coal from.’ Ablaze with energy and full of the rich dialect of the West Midlands, this is an incandescent debut from a poet of dazzling talent and verve.
Black Dog, Black Night: Contemporary Vietnamese Poetry
by Paul Hoover, Nguyen Do&“A monumental contribution to international literature.&” —BLOOMSBURY REVIEWVietnam—the very word raises many associations for Westerners. Yet while the country has been ravaged by a modern history of colonialism and war, its ancient culture is rich and multilayered, and within it poetry has long had a special place.In this groundbreaking anthology, coeditors and translators Nguyen Do and Paul Hoover present a revelatory portrait of contemporary Vietnamese poetry. What emerges from this conversation of outsiders and insiders, Vietnamese and American voices, is a worldly sensibility descended from the geographical and historical crossroads of Vietnam in the modern era. Reflecting influences as diverse as traditional folk stories and American Modernism, the twenty-one poets included in Black Dog, Black Night, many of whom have never before been published in English, introduce readers to a fresh, uncensored, and utterly unique poetic vision.
Black Earth: Selected Poems and Prose
by Osip MandelstamRussia’s foremost modernist master in a major new translation Osip Mandelstam has become an almost mythical figure of modern Russian poetry, his work treasured all over the world for its lyrical beauty and innovative, revolutionary engagement with the dark times of the Stalinist era. While he was exiled in the city of Voronezh, the black earth region of Russia, his work, as Joseph Brodsky wrote, developed into “a poetry of high velocity and exposed nerves, becoming more a song than ever before, not a bardlike but a birdlike song … something like a goldfinch tremolo.” Peter France—who has been brilliantly translating Mandelstam’s work for decades—draws heavily from Mandelstam’s later poetry written in Voronezh, while also including poems across the whole arc of the poet’s tragically short life, from his early, symbolist work to the haunting elegies of old Petersburg to his defiant “Stalin poem.” A selection of Mandelstam’s prose irradiates the poetry with warmth and insight as he thinks back on his Petersburg childhood and contemplates his Jewish heritage, the sunlit qualities of Hellenism, Dante’s Tuscany, and the centrality of poetry in society.
Black Eggs: Poems by Kurihara Sadako (Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies)
by Sadako KuriharaKurihara Sadako was born in Hiroshima in 1913, and she was there on August 6, 1945. Already a poet before she experienced the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, she used her poetic talents to describe the blast and its aftermath. In 1946, despite the censorship of the American Occupation, she published Kuroi tamago (Black Eggs), poems from before, during, and immediately after the war. This volume includes a translation of Kuroi tamago from the complete edition of 1983. But August 6, 1945, was not the end point of Kurihara’s journey. In the years after Kuroi tamago she has broadened her focus—to Japan as a victimizer rather than victim, to the threat of nuclear war, to antiwar movements around the world, and to inhumanity in its many guises. She treats events in Japan such as politics in Hiroshima, Tokyo’s long-term complicity in American policies, and the decision in 1992 to send Japanese troops on U.N. peacekeeping operations. But she also deals with the Vietnam War, Three Mile Island, Kwangju, Greenham Common, and Tiananmen Square. This volume includes a large selection of these later poems. Kurihara sets us all at ground zero, strips us down to our basic humanity, and shows us the world both as it is and as it could be. Her poems are by turns sorrowful and sarcastic, tender and tough. Several of them are famous in Japan today, but even there, few people appreciate the full force and range of her poetry. And few poets in any country—indeed, few artists of any kind—have displayed comparable dedication, consistency, and insight.
Black Flowers: Poems
by Doug RamspeckIn dark, lyrical verse, Black Flowers follows a speaker from childhood into adulthood, as he navigates the animistic world of crows, conjurings, and winter snows. Doug Ramspeck guides readers through the brutality and beauty found in the natural world: the moonlight, “marrow-white, severed, falling bodily / to grass, the hours as permeable as clay” and “dust lifting across the road / as though to form a human shape.” By juxtaposing euphony and clear, startling imagery, Ramspeck’s novelistic new collection molds the landscape to reflect the speaker’s memories and the challenges of growing up in a dysfunctional family. In the tradition of William Wordsworth, Black Flowers brings the flourishes of the Romantics to the grit of the present day.
Black Girl Rising
by Brynne BarnesThis enduring anthem for Black girls celebrates their power, potential, and brilliance—for themselves and for the world.You are a thousand curlsunfurling in your hair.You are a thousand fistsstanding proudly in air.You are the song of swallows,lifting sun as they sing—breaking light with their beaks,breaking sky with their wings . . .Black girlhood is beautiful! In this deeply moving celebration and rallying cry, and in the face of the many messages that still work to convince Black girls that they should shrink themselves, hide their light, know their place, Brynne Barnes and Tatyana Fazlalizadeh reclaim that narrative: A Black girl's place is everywhere, and her selfhood is everything she can dream it to be.With poignant, poetic prose and striking, color-drenched illustrations, this empowering picture book centers the inherent worthiness and radiance of Black girls that is still far too often denied. A love letter to and for Black girls everywhere, Black Girl Rising alchemizes the sorrow and strength of the past into the brilliant gold of the future, sweeping young readers of all backgrounds into a lyrical exploration of what it means to be Black, female, and glorious.EMPOWERS AND INSPIRES SELF-LOVE: This uplifting anthem of Black brilliance shuts out invalidating messages and replaces them with unconditional assertions of Black girls' rights to be loved, to be inspired, and to exist fully in their power. Everything about Black girls deserves to be seen and celebrated—and this picture book provides a welcome opportunity for readers of all ages to do so!MAKES A GREAT GIFT: From graduation to birthdays to other key milestones, this book makes a perfect present for consumers looking to celebrate, empower, and inspire the women in their lives—whether daughters, granddaughters, nieces, cousins, or friends.EXCELLENT READ-ALOUD: Warm, loving sentiments paired with poetic prose and a light rhyme make this picture book a great choice to read aloud together at story time, bedtime, or any time. It's sure to become a fast favorite and inspire countless moments of parent-child connection.Perfect for:• Parents, grandparents, and caregivers• Teachers and librarians• Readers who loved Hair Love and Little Leaders• The vast #WeNeedDiverseBooks community• Anyone seeking books about Black joy, female empowerment, or Black history• Gift-givers looking for a unique and inspiring book for the girls (or women) in their lives
Black Girl You Are Atlas
by Renée WatsonA Coretta Scott King Honor BookWinner of the Walter Dean Myers AwardA thoughtful celebration of Black girlhood by award-winning author and poet Renée Watson.In this semi-autobiographical collection of poems, Renée Watson writesabout her experience growing up as a young Black girl at the intersections of race, class, and gender.Using a variety of poetic forms, from haiku to free verse, Watson shares recollections of her childhood in Portland, tender odes to the Black women in her life, and urgent calls for Black girls to step into their power.Black Girl You Are Atlas encourages young readers to embrace their future with a strong sense of sisterhood and celebration. With full-color art by celebrated fine artist Ekua Holmes throughout, this collection offers guidance and is a gift for anyone who reads it.
Black Girl, Call Home
by Jasmine MansFrom spoken word poet Jasmine Mans comes an unforgettable poetry collection about race, feminism, and queer identity. <P><P>With echoes of Gwendolyn Brooks and Sonia Sanchez, Mans writes to call herself—and us—home. Each poem explores what it means to be a daughter of Newark, and America—and the painful, joyous path to adulthood as a young, queer Black woman. Black Girl, Call Home is a love letter to the wandering Black girl and a vital companion to any woman on a journey to find truth, belonging, and healing. <P><P>A Most Anticipated Book of 2021 by Oprah Magazine • Time • Vulture • Essence • Elle • Cosmopolitan • Real Simple • Marie Claire • Refinery 29 • Shondaland • Pop Sugar • Bustle • Apartment Therapy • The Rumpus • She Reads • The Everygirl • Medium • Career Contessa
Black Gold
by Laura Obuobi"Obuobi pens an origin story that’s at once earthly and impressively cosmic, an ethereal children’s debut that centers a Black child’s beginnings." —Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Lyrical, empowering, and inspiring. An affirmation of the miracle each individual is.” —Yamile Saied Méndez, author of Where Are You From? and What Will You Be?This lyrical picture book is a joyous, poetic, celebration of Black children and a reminder of the Universe’s unconditional love in stunning verse and captivating collage. Perfect for fans of Sulwe!When the Universe decides to create a child, she draws from the earth—rich, dark, and full of everything that gives life, including eyes like black star sapphires and full lips to speak the truth. With help from the Sun and the Moon, they create a child of the Universe: beautiful, powerful, and boundless with the brilliance of Black Gold. Laura Obuobi’s empowering, whimsical text and London Ladd’s lustrous, captivating illustrations will inspire children to love themselves exactly as they are.A Bank Street College of Education’s Children’s Book Committee’s Best Children’s Books of the Year (2023)A Bank Street Books Best Children's Book of the Year for ages 5-9 in Family/School/Community Fiction and noted for outstanding merit (2023)
Black Kripple Delivers Poetry And Lyrics
by Leroy Franklin MoorePoetry. African American Studies. Music. Disability Studies. BLACK KRIPPLE DELIVERS POETRY & LYRICS is straight up an activist/love book of original poems and song lyrics that have been written and collected for almost two decades. Many poems in this book were first published in 1999 in a chapbook by Poor Magazine's Poor Press. Most of the poems and lyrics touch on issues that Black disabled people deal with but only get a little media attention. In this book you will find true stories of discrimination, cases of police brutality, love songs for the Black disabled community and for the author's family. <P><P> "In the tradition of History's word warriors, Leroy Moore pens full frontal confrontations that blast away the last nasty vestiges of Faith-based America's biases against the poor, the disarranged, and the different."—Wanda Coleman
Black Lab
by David YoungDavid Young, the distinguished poet and translator, offers us a gorgeous cycle of poems attuned to the Midwestern seasons—to weather both emotional and actual. A writer of thrilling invention and humanity, Young beckons the reader into an effortless proximity with the fox at the field’s edge, with the chattering crow and the startling first daffodils of spring. In his tour of both exterior and interior landscapes, the poet scatters his father’s ashes and remembers losing his wife, Chloe, to cancer, a loss at times still fresh after several decades; pays homage to the wisdom of the Chinese masters whose aesthetic has helped shape his own; and reflects on the gladdening qualities of a walk in a snowstorm with his black labrador, Nemo: and in this snowfall that I should detest, late March and early April, I’m still rapt to see his coat so constellated, starred, re-starred, making a comic cosmos I can love. Young’s expert shaping of this world in which, as he writes, “We’re never going to get God right. But we / learn to love all our failures on the way,” becomes for the reader a fresh experience of life’s mysterious goodness and of the abundant pleasure of the language that embodies it.
Black Lesbian in White America and Other Writings (Sapphic Classic)
by Anita CornwellBlack lesbian feminist, essayist, journalist, poet, author, and cultural worker, Anita Cornwell wrote extensively about her experiences as a Black lesbian in the United States during the twentieth century exposing the innerworkings of heteropatriarchy, misogyny, racism, the Jim Crow South, and white supremacy. A scholar of Black Lesbian Studies, Cornwell wrote the first collection of essays by a Black lesbian, Black Lesbian in White America, published by Naiad Press in 1983. These essays chronicle her experiences battling against misogyny, homophobia, and racism. Her writing also attends to love and familial loss. This reprint of Cornwell's classic essays on being black and lesbian, include a groundbreaking interview that Cornwell did with Audre Lorde. Black Lesbian in White America and Other Writings also includes previous unpublished poetry by Cornwell and features a revelatory introduction by scholar Briona Simone Jones.
Black Liturgies: Prayers, poems and meditations for staying human
by Cole Arthur RileyIn the summer of 2020, Cole Arthur Riley was desperate for a spirituality she could trust. Amidst ongoing national racial violence, the isolation of the pandemic, and a surge of anti-Black rhetoric in many Christian spaces, she began dreaming of a harbour for a more human, more liberating expression of faith. She went on to create Black Liturgies, a digital project that connects spiritual practice with Black emotion, memory, and the Black body.In this book, she deepens the work of that project, bringing together new prayers, letters, poetry, meditation questions, breath practice, and the writings of Black literary ancestors to offer 43 liturgies that can be practised individually or as a community. With a poet's touch and a sensitivity that has made her one of the most important spiritual voices at work today, Riley invites readers to reflect on their own experiences of wonder, rest, rage, and repair, while also including liturgies for holidays like Lent, Advent and Mother's Day.For those healing from spiritual spaces that were more violent than loving; for those who have escaped the trauma of white Christian nationalism, religious homophobia, and transphobia; for anyone asking what it means to be human in a world of both beauty and terror; Black Liturgies is a work of healing and liberation, and a vision for what might be.