Anthologies of African American Writing

Black American Literature: Poetry

"Black American Literature: Poetry" . Ed. Darwin T. Turner. Columbus, OH: Merrill, 1969. xii+132 pp.

Phillis Wheatley -- George Moses Horton -- Paul Laurence Dunbar -- W[illiam] S[tanley] Braithwaite -- James Weldon Johnson -- Georgia Douglas Johnson -- Claude McKay -- Jean Toomer -- Countee Cullen -- Langston Hughes -- Arna Bontemps -- Sterling Brown -- Melvin B. Tolson -- Robert Hayden -- Owen Dodson -- Margaret Walker Alexander -- Gwendolyn Brooks -- Dudley Randall -- Naomi Long Madgett -- Darwin T. Turner -- LeRoi Jones -- Etheridge Knight -- Don L. Lee.

• "This is a very slim, representative collection, offering a competent but general sampling of twenty-three black American poets, spanning three decades with enormous diversity in theme and style. The volume opens with such traditional poets as Phyllis Wheatley and Paul Laurence Dunbar and concludes with more contemporary poets—Don E. Lee and Etheridge Knight; in between are such distinguished favorites as Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Brooks. the eighty-one poems are strong but written with a range of depth and expression. Brief biographical and critical information prefaces each writer. When published, this anthology was a competent record of the black poetic voice, from a conservative beginning that rarely dealt with race to the angry, experimental, acclaimed poetry of the 1960's" ("The Columbia Granger's Guide to Poetry Anthologies". Ed. William Katz, Linda Sternberg Katz, and Esther Crain. 2nd enlarged ed. New York: Columbia UP, 1994. 5)
• Features poets from Phillis Wheatley to Don L. Lee (Kinnamon 1997: 470).

Kinnamon 1997: 470
• Indexed in "The Columbia Granger's Index to African-American Poetry" (1999)

A0091