Anthologies of African American Writing

In Search of Color Everywhere: A Collection of African-American Poetry

"In Search of Color Everywhere: A Collection of African-American Poetry." Ed. E. Ethelbert Miller. Illus. Terrance Cummings. New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1994. 255 pp.; repr. 1996.

Freedom
● James Weldon Johnson / The Creation
● Henry Dumas / Root Song
● Phillis Wheatley / On Being Brought From Africa to America
● Frances E. W. Harper / The Slave Auction
● Robert Hayden / Runagate Runagate
● Robert Hayden / Frederick Douglass
● Elizabeth Alexander / Passage
● Anon. / Spiritual: Steal Away
● Samuel Allen / Harriet Tubman Aka Moses
● Dolores Kendrick / Sidney, Looking for Her Mother . . .
● Frances E. W. Harper / Bury Me In a Free Land
● Anon. / Spiritual: No More Auction Block
● Ahmos Zu-Bolton / Struggle-Road Dance
● Jean Toomer / Song of the Son
● Anon. / Traditional: Take This Hammer
● Sharyn Jeanne Skeeter / California, 1852
● Sharyn Jeanne Skeeter / Western Trail Cook, 1880
● Sonia Sanchez / Right On: White America
● Claude McKay / The White House
● Primus St. John / Lynching and Burning
● Richard Wright / Between the World and Me
● Sterling A. Brown / An Old Woman Remembers
● Claude McKay / If We Must Die
● E. Ethelbert Miller / Tomorrow
● Sterling A. Brown / Strong Men
● June Jordan / Poem About My Rights
● Audre Lorde / Between Ourselves
● Gil Scott-Heron / Winter in America
● Laini Mataka / Ornithology
● Lucille Clifton / I Am Accused of Tending to the Past
● Michelle Parkerson / Statistic
● Etheridge Knight / To Make a Poem in Prison
● June Jordan / Poem Against the State (Of Things): 1975
● Margaret Walker / For My People
● Public Enemy (Ridenhour/Shocklee/Sadler) / Party for Your Right to Fight
● James Weldon Johnson / Lift Every Voice and Sing

Celebration of Blackness
● Mari Evans / Who Can Be Born Black
● Lance Jeffers / My Blackness is the Beauty of this Land
● Langston Hughes / Dream Variation
● Langston Hughes / The Negro Speaks of Rivers
● William Edward Burghardt Du Bois / The Song of the Smoke
● Bob Kaufman / Untitled
● Nikki Giovanni / Ego Tripping
● Maya Angelou / Still I Rise
● Elouise Loftin / Weeksville Women
● Langston Hughes / Mother to Son
● Melvin E. Brown / Survival Motion: Notice
● Carolyn Rodgers / Poem No. 1
● Colleen J. McElroy / Illusion
● Akasha (Gloria) Hull / Another Rhythm
● Paul Laurence Dunbar / We Wear the Mask
● Weldon J. Irvine Jr. / To Be Young, Gifted, and Black
● Toi Derricotte / A Note On My Son’s Face
● Waring Cuney / No Images
● William J. Harris / A Daddy Poem
● Nancy Travis / Sunbathing
● Jonetta Barras / Peace
● Wanda Coleman / Coffee
● Harriet Jacobs / On Growing Up the Darker Berry
● Dudley Randall / Blackberry Sweet
● Sonia Sanchez / To Anita
● Charlotte Watson Sherman / Roots
● Alvin Aubert / The Opposite of Green
● Mari Evans / I Am a Black Woman
● Audre Lorde / Naturally
● Naomi Long Madgett / Black Woman
● Maya Angelou / Phenomenal Woman
● Gwendolyn Brooks / Primer For Blacks
● James Brown and Alfred Ellis / Say It Loud—I'm Black and I’m Proud
● Lance Jeffers / When I Know the Power of My Black Hand
● Lucille Clifton / Listen Children

Love Poems
● Thulani Davis / Desire 1.
● Countee Cullen / Song In Spite of Myself
● Rita Dove / Adolescence—I
● Rita Dove / Adolescence—II
● Rita Dove / Adolescence—III
● Carolyn Rodgers / Slave Ritual
● Askia M. Toure / The Frontier of Race
● Robert Fleming / For All Unwed Mothers
● George Barlow / 4 ½ Months: Halfway Song (Hey, Baby! What You Know Good?)
● Horace Coleman / Poem for a ‘Divorced’ Daughter
● Eugene B. Redmond / Love Necessities
● Haki R. Madhubuti / The Union of Two
● Nikky Finney / Uncles
● Alice Walker / Did This Happen to Your Mother? Did Your Sister Throw Up A Lot?
● Laini Mataka / Next Door
● Georgia Douglas Johnson / I Want to Die While You Love Me
● Gloria Wade-Gayles / Inquisition
● Ntozake Shange / You Are Sucha Fool
● Greg S. Tate / Tonguing
● Harryette Mullen / Roadmap
● Sonia Sanchez / Haiku
● Sandra Turner Bond / Tuesday Night Affair
● E. Ethelbert Miller / Another Love Affair/Another Poem
● Eugene B. Redmond / My Tongue Paints a Path
● Georgia Douglas Johnson / The Heart of a Woman
● Gloria Wade-Gayles / Loving Again
● James Weldon Johnson / Sence You Went Away
● Pearl Cleage / Confession
● Melvin Dixon / Place, Places
● Etheridge Knight / As You Leave Me
● Ruth Garnett / Dealing Scraps
● Norman Jordan / When A Woman Gets Blue
● Patricia Jones / Song
● Harriet Jacobs / It Is Not Just
● Haki R. Madhubuti / A Poem Looking for a Reader
● Vega / Brothers Loving Brothers
● Haki R. Madhubuti / My Brothers
● Ntozake Shange / Where the Mississippi Meets the Amazon
● June Jordan / Grand Army Plaza
● Primus St. John / Sunday
● Jayne Cortez / Pray for the Lovers

Family Gatherings
● A.B. Spellman / When Black People Are
● Amiri Baraka / Ka’Ba
● Gerald Barrax / Strangers Like Us: Pittsburgh, Raleigh, 1945-1985
● Jay Wright / Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting
● Robert Hayden / Those Winter Sundays
● Michael S. Weaver / The Picnic, An Homage to Civil Rights
● Michael S. Harper / Breaded Meat, Breaded Hands
● Lenard D. Moore / Winter 1967
● Marilyn Nelson Waniek / Sleepless Nights
● Nikki Giovanni / Nikki-Rosa
● Reuben Jackson / Sunday Brunch
● Brian G. Gilmore / Bow to Allah
● Nikki Giovanni / The Women Gather
● Carolyn Rodgers / Group Therapy
● Harryette Mullen / Saturday Afternoon, When Chores Are Done
● Paul Laurence Dunbar / When Malindy Sings
● Safiya Henderson-Holmes / Goodhousekeeping #17 (Kitchen Fable)
● Nancy Travis / Church Ladies
● Cornelius Eady / My Mother is a God Fearing Woman
● Harryette Mullen / Momma Sayings
● Sharan Strange / Barbershop Ritual
● Angela Jackson / Choosing the Blues
● Kevin Young / Eddie Priest’s Barbershop & Notary: Closed Mondays
● Monifa Atungaye Love / Initiation
● Michelle T. Clinton / Eviction
● Yusef Komunyakaa / White Port and Lemon Juice
● Pinkie Gordon Lane / Rain Ditch
● Etheridge Knight / The Idea of Ancestry
● Lamont B. Steptoe / O’Yes
● Cornelius Eady / Success
● Lucille Clifton / Good Times

Healing Poems
● Adesanya Alakoye / Eshu
● Langston Hughes / Feet O’ Jesus
● Thomas A. Dorsey / Take My Hand, Precious Lord
● Owen Dodson / Black Mother Praying
● Michael S. Weaver / Water Song
● Yusef Komunyakaa / My Father’s Loveletters
● Jacquie Jones / Drugs
● E. Ethelbert Miller / Rebecca
● Gwendolyn Brooks / The Mother
● Lucille Clifton / The Lost Baby Poem
● Calvin Forbes / Picture of a Man
● Kenneth Carroll / The Truth About Karen
● James Weldon Johnson / Go Down Death
● Alice Walker / ‘Good Night, Willie Lee, I’ll See You In the Morning’
● Houston A. Baker Jr. / Toward Guinea: For Larry Neal, 1937-1981
● Anon. / Spiritual: When the Saints Go Marching In
● Eugene B. Redmond / Poetic Reflections Enroute To, And During, The Funeral and Burial Of Henry Dumas, Poet
● May Miller / A Closing
● Kalamu ya Salaam / Our World is Less Full Now That Mr. Fuller is Gone
● Sterling A. Brown / Sister Lou
● Jerry W. Ward Jr. / Comfort-Maker
● Bob Kaufman / Private Sadness
● Dudley Randall / Ballad of Birmingham
● June Jordan / The Test of Atlanta 1979—
● Ntozake Shange / About Atlanta
● Michael S. Harper / Alice
● Bell Hooks / The Body Inside the Soul
● Bell Hooks / The Woman’s Mourning Song
● Garth Tate / Last Instructions
● Quincy Troupe / Conjuring Against Alien Spirits
● Ntozake Shange / My Father is a Retired Magician
● Ntozake Shange / I Live in Music
● Bob Kaufman / Battle Report
● Amina Baraka / All is One for Monk
● Michael S. Harper / Dear John, Dear Coltrane
● Larry Neal / Don’t Say Goodbye to the Pork-Pie Hat
● Jayne Cortez / How Long Has Trane Been Gone
● George Barlow / Mingus Speaks: Found Poems
● Sterling A. Brown / Ma Rainey
● Jayne Cortez / So Many Feathers
● Peter Harris / Some Songs Women Sing
● Michael S. Harper / Alone
● Tim Seibles / Who
● Eugene B. Redmond / Dance Bodies #1
● Jayne Cortez / Tapping
● A.B. Spellman / The Twist
● Harryette Mullen / The Dance She Does
● Stephen Caldwell Wright / Out of the Wailing
● Natasha Tarpley / Feel Free
● Cornelius Eady / My Mother, If She Had Won Free Dance Lessons
● Claude McKay / The Harlem Dancer
● Al Young / A Dance for Ma Rainey
● Ishmael Reed / The Black Cock
● Thulani Davis / Zoom (The Commodores)
● Lenard D. Moore / A Bluesman’s Blues
● Langston Hughes / The Weary Blues
● Yusef Komunyakaa / Slam, Dunk & Hook
● Michael S. Harper / Makin’ Jump Shots
● Quincy Troupe / A Poem For ‘Magic’
● George Mosby Jr. / To Josh Gibson (Legendary Slugger of the Old Negro Baseball League)
● Tom Dent / For Cool Papa Bell
● Samuel Allen [Paul Vesey] / To Satch
● Ishmael Reed / White Hope
● Yusef Komunyakaa / Boxing Day
● Reuben Jackson / For Thurman Thomas
● Elizabeth Alexander / Today’s News

● Robert Hayden / American Journal
● Title Index
● Author Index
● Acknowledgements
● Poetry Credits

• n/a

• "Most of the 121 poets included are modern or contemporary, though Wheatley, Frances E. W. Harper, and Dunbar also appear, as well as a traditional work song and some spirituals. This book is not likely to be adopted for classroom use, for it lacks scholarly apparatus and is arranged thematically, not chronologically, but one can hardly think of a better gift book, upbeat in tone, for a favorite relative—or for oneself" (Kinnamon 1997: 471).

Kinnamon 1997: 471]

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