The Vintage Book of African American Poetry

There has been wealth of poetry written by African-Americans in the last 200 years, a flowering of the tradition established in the late 18th century by such poets as Jupiter Hammon, Lucy Terry, and Phyllis Wheatley. This burgeoning literature has encompassed many different styles and visions, ranging from the plangent and wistful lyricism of Paul Laurence Dunbar to the rigorous and elegant wisdom of Gwendolyn Brooks, from the chiseled and layered modernism of Robert Hayden to the expansive narrative tales of Rita Dove. What this work has in common is its high quality, its origins in African American life and culture, and the fact that, until now, the best of it has been unavailable in one volume.The Vintage Book of African American Poetry fills this gap. The collection, a sampling from the work of the entire grand tradition of black poets, will be the authoritative volume, presenting the best poetry that has been written by an American ethnic group with a long, unique, and storied literarytradition. Incorporating poems from the last 200 years the 52 poets included provide a rich and varied overview of the kind of work African-AmerThe Vintage Book of African American Poetry, with ISBN 9780606224475 and ISBN 0606224475.