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As Langston Hughes pointed out in his famous essay “200 Years of American Negro Poetry,” “Poets and versifiers of African descent have been publishing poetry on American shores since the year 1746 when a slave woman named Lucy Terry penned a rhymed description of an Indian attack on the town of Deerfield, Massachusetts.”

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He went on to write, “art is to be an intensification or enlargement of life, or to give adequate comment on what living is like in the poet’s own time.” Here are ten poets, from Gwendolyn Brooks and Hughes himself, to contemporary writers like Kevin Young and Tyehimba Jess, who intensify life with every line:

“Ode,” Elizabeth Alexander 

“Women Writers’ Workshop,” Tara Betts

“Old Mary,” Gwendolyn Brooks 

“Peach Picking,” Kwame Dawes

“The First Book,” Rita Dove

“After Birth,” Camille T. Dungy

“Do any black children grow up casual?,” Harmony Holiday 

“Blues on a Box,” Langston Hughes

“Blind Boone’s Pianola Blues,” Tyehimba Jess

“I Hope It Rains at My Funeral,” Kevin Young

 

More poetry available for free PDF download:

Winter Poems
Flower Poems
Love Poems
Nature Poems
Sylvia Plath Poems 

African AmericansBlack HistoryBlack American Literature ForumBOMBCallalooHarvard ReviewPoetryThe Georgia ReviewTransitionWomen's Studies Quarterly

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200 Years of American Negro Poetry
By: Langston Hughes
Transition, No. 75/76, The Anniversary Issue: Selections from Transition, 1961-1976 (1997), pp. 90-96
Indiana University Press on behalf of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University
Ode
By: Elizabeth Alexander
Black American Literature Forum, Vol. 23, No. 3, Poetry Issue (Autumn, 1989), p. 495
African American Review (St. Louis University)
Women Writers' Workshop
By: Tara Betts
Women's Studies Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 3/4, Women, Crime, and the Criminal Justice System (Fall - Winter, 2004), pp. 285-287
The Feminist Press at the City University of New York
Old Mary
By: Gwendolyn Brooks
Poetry, Vol. 94, No. 6 (Sep., 1959), p. 373
Poetry Foundation
Peach Picking
By: Kwame Dawes
The Georgia Review, Vol. 59, No. 1 (SPRING 2005), p. 49
Georgia Review
The First Book
By: Rita Dove
Callaloo, Vol. 31, No. 3 (Summer, 2008), p. 753
The Johns Hopkins University Press
After Birth
By: Camille T. Dungy
Callaloo, Vol. 34, No. 3 (Summer, 2011), p. 788
The Johns Hopkins University Press
Do any black children grow up casual?
By: Harmony Holiday
Poetry, Vol. 203, No. 2 (NOVEMBER 2013), p. 157
Poetry Foundation
Blues on a Box
By: Langston Hughes
Poetry, Vol. 69, No. 5 (Feb., 1947), pp. 248-249
Poetry Foundation
Blind Boone's Pianola Blues
By: Tyehimba Jess
BOMB, No. 133 (Fall 2015), p. 77
New Art Publications
I Hope It Rains at My Funeral
By: Kevin Young
Harvard Review, No. 35 (2008), pp. 158-159
Harvard Review