Black nature : four centuries of African American nature poetry / edited by Camille T. Dungy.
2009
PS591.N4 B49 2009
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Details
Title
Black nature : four centuries of African American nature poetry / edited by Camille T. Dungy.
ISBN
9780820332772 (cloth : alk. paper)
0820332771 (cloth : alk. paper)
9780820334318 (pbk. : alk. paper)
0820334316 (pbk. : alk. paper)
0820332771 (cloth : alk. paper)
9780820334318 (pbk. : alk. paper)
0820334316 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Imprint
Athens : University of Georgia Press, c2009.
Language
English
Description
xxxv, 387 p. ; 23 cm.
Call Number
PS591.N4 B49 2009
System Control No.
(OCoLC)318869620
Summary
This book is the first anthology to focus on nature writing by African American poets, a genre that until now has not commonly been counted as one in which African American poets have participated. Black poets have a long tradition of incorporating treatments of the natural world into their work, but it is often read as political, historical, or protest poetry, anything but nature poetry. This is particularly true when the definition of what constitutes nature writing is limited to work about the pastoral or the wild. The author has selected 180 poems from 93 poets that provide unique perspectives on American social and literary history to broaden our concept of nature poetry and African American poetics. This collection features major writers such as Phillis Wheatley, Rita Dove, Yusef Komunyakaa, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sterling Brown, Robert Hayden, Wanda Coleman, Natasha Trethewey, and Melvin B. Tolson as well as newer talents such as Douglas Kearney, Major Jackson, and Janice Harrington. Included are poets writing out of slavery, Reconstruction, the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement, and late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century African American poetic movements. It also brings to the fore a neglected and vital means of considering poetry by African Americans and nature-related poetry as a whole.
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
Formatted Contents Note
Cycle one: Just looking. We must be careful / Ed Roberson
Earth is a living thing / Lucille Clifton
Mountains of California, part I / Al Young
Mountain road ends here / G.E. Patterson
Queen Anne's lace / June Jordan
On summer / George Moses Horton
Yellow jacket / Nikki Giovanni
Eclogue at twilight / Yusef Komunyakaa
Ruellia noctiflora / Marilyn Nelson
Evening primrose / Rita Dove
Night-blooming cereus / Robert Hayden
September night / George Marion McClellan
Sweet enough ocean, cotton / Thylias Moss
Metamorphism / Helene Johnson
Brown girl's nature poem: provincetown / Toni Wynn
What more? / Gerald Barrax Sr.
Be careful / Ed Roberson
Watching blackbirds turn to ghosts / Rachel Eliza Griffiths
If winter comes, can spring? / Alvin Aubert
31 words * prose poems [#12] / Rita Shockley.
Cycle two: Nature, be with us. We are not strangers here / Ravi Howard
For a farmer / James A. Emanuel
To waste at trees / Gerald Barrax Sr.
White dog / Carl Phillips
You must walk this lonesome / Evie Shockley
Down from the houses of magic / Cyrus Cassells
Ephemera / George Marion McClellan
Sleepwalker on the mountain / Ruth Ellen Kocher
#543 / Richard Wright
Aphrodite of economy / Mark McMorris
Arachis hypogaea / Marilyn Nelson
In the Rachel Carson Wildlife Refuge, thinking of Rachel Carson / Anthony Walton
language / Camille T. Dungy
For Alice Walker (a summertime tanka) / June Jordan
Generations / Lucille Clifton
Work / Yusef Komunyakaa
Poem to my child, if ever you shall be / Ross Gay
To a certain lady, in her garden / Sterling Brown
Urban nature / Ed Roberson
September songs / Reginald Shepherd.
Cycle three: Dirt on our hands. from 12 million Black voices / Richard Wright
Another April / Anne Spencer
Barriers / Gerald Barrax Sr.
Young peacock / Lenard D. Moore
Urban renewal: XIII / Major Jackson
Bees / Audre Lorde
Carrion / Anthony Walton
Look at the blackbird fall / June Jordan
Flight of the California condor / Wanda Coleman
Since everyone can never be safe / Camille T. Dungy
Won't be but a minute / Patricia Smith
Called / Michael S. Harper
Harvest song / Jean Toomer
Black man talks of reaping / Arna Bontemps
Wood and rain / Melvin Dixon
Joy in the woods / Claude McKay
Sorrow home / Margaret Walker
Blues aubade (or, Revision of the lean, post-modernist pastorale) / Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
Romance / Ed Roberson
April is on the way / Alice Dunbar-Nelson.
Cycle four: Pests, people too. Boll weevils, coyotes, and the color of nuisance / C.S. Giscombe
Miscarriage in October with ladybugs / Amber Flora Thomas
Man reading in bed by a window with bugs / Gregory Pardlo
Pest / Major Jackson
Ambition II: mosquito in the mist / Tim Seibles
#459 / Richard Wright
Market / Thomas Sayers Ellis
For those who need a true story / Tara Betts
Postcard to an ecologist / Lenard D. Moore
Nature boy / C.S. Giscombe
Plague of starlings / Robert Hayden
O believer / Janice N. Harrington
Brown menace or poem to the survival of roaches / Audre Lorde
Life / Kwame Alexander
What a snakehead discovered in a Maryland pond and a poet in corporate America have in common / Kamilah Aisha Moon
Lost conquistador / Shane Book
Beginning of the end of the world / Lucille Clifton
Carpenter bee / Natasha Trethewey
Yellowjackets / Yusef Komunyakaa.
Cycle five: Forsaken of the earth. Flowers / Alice Walker
On imagination / Phillis Wheatley
For Saundra / Nikki Giovanni
Natural world / G.E. Patterson
Lament for dark peoples / Langston Hughes
White things / Anne Spencer
Parsley / Rita Dove
Haunted oak / Paul Laurence Dunbar
from Rape of Florida, Canto I / Albery Whitman
Swimchant of nigger mer-folk (an aquaboogie set in lapis) / Douglas Kearney
Water USA / Clarence Major
Migration / Major Jackson
February leaving / Ruth Ellen Kocher
Blue horses / Ed Roberson
Sick man looks at flowers / Gwendolyn Brooks
Prodigal / Arna Bontemps
Potters' field / Cynthia Parker-Ohene
Monument / Natasha Trethewey.
Cycle six: Disasters, natural and other. Disasters, nature, and poetry / Mona Lisa Saloy
Floodtide / Askia M. Touré
Children of the Mississippi / Sterling Brown
Emmett Till / James A. Emanuel
Sign post / Devorah Major
Song / Audre Lorde
Sacred history of the earth / G.E. Patterson
Greenness taller than gods / Yusef Komunyakaa
San Francisco, spring 1986 / Patricia Spears Jones
Cure / Carl Phillips
Liturgy / Natasha Trethewey
Reapers / Jean Toomer
Earthquake blues / Ishmael Reed
Erasure / Amber Flora Thomas
Floodsong 2: water moccasin's spiritual / Douglas Kearney
Requiem / Anne Spencer
Ice storm / Robert Hayden.
Cycle seven: Talk of the animals. Shepherd's tale / Sean Hill
Beehive / Jean Toomer
Black-and-white dusk at Limantour Beach / Rachel Eliza Griffiths
Sympathy / Paul Laurence Dunbar
Sea-turtle and the shark / Melvin B. Tolson
#175 / Richard Wright
European folk tale variant / Harryette Mullen
Man raised as chicken / Wendy S. Walters
Far / C. S. Giscombe
Spider speaks / Shara McCallum
Hummingbird / Cyrus Cassells
Herd / Tim Seibles
Speed / Cornelius Eady
Points of view / Ishmael Reed
Requiem for a nest / Wanda Coleman
Surfaces and masks: XXX / Clarence Major
Minks / Toi Derricotte
Possum / Janice N. Harrington
Appaloosa / Afaa Michael Weaver
April lyric/All I know is / G.E. Patterson.
Cycle eight: What the land remembers. April in Eatonton / Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
Locus / Robert Hayden
Jaguaripe / Myronn Hardy
What there was / Janice N. Harrington
Wind talker / Frank X Walker
Mulberry fields / Lucille Clifton
I am black and the trees are green / E. Ethelbert Miller
Maple remains / Amaud Jamaul Johnson
Tallahatchie lullaby, baby / Douglas Kearney
Out in the country of my country / June Jordan
Three days of forest, a river, free / Rita Dove
American light / Claudia Rankine
Look ahead, look south: the future / C. S. Giscombe
Southern song / Margaret Walker
Wave / Ed Roberson
Her table mountain / Evie Shockley
from Juneteenth: the bicentennial poem / Sherley Anne Williams
Tap-root / Indigo Moor
Last talk with Jim Hardwick / Marilyn Nelson
History as apple tree / Michael S. Harper.
Cycle nine: Growing out of this land. Writing home / Camille T. Dungy
#559 / Richard Wright
Millpond / Yusef Komunyakaa
Seven pastorals at sixteen / Sean Hill
Before a screen door / Janice N. Harrington
Pull / Indigo Moor
Two directions / C. S. Giscombe
My grandfather walks in the woods / Marilyn Nelson
Mississippi gardens / Stephanie Pruitt
I called them trees / Gerald Barrax Sr.
Beaches, why I don't care for them / Wanda Coleman
At 57, my father learns to grow things / Ruth Ellen Kocher
Suburban noir / Gregory Pardlo
Letter to the local police / June Jordan
Homeopathic / Frank X Walker
Root / Terrance Hayes
What my child learns of the sea / Audre Lorde
Ritual of season / Remica L. Bingham
More than once in caves / Mark McMorris
Pachuta, Mississippi/A memoir / Al Young.
Cycle ten: Comes always spring. First skunk of spring / Marilyn Nelson
[Earth, I thank you] / Anne Spencer
Bemidji in spring / Sean Hill
Winter poem / Nikki Giovanni
After the winter / Claude McKay
For Alexis / Joanne V. Gabbin
Thank you / Ross Gay
Spring down / George Marion McClellan
Deep in the quiet wood / James Weldon Johnson
Violets / Alice Dunbar-Nelson
Man, his bowl, his raspberries / Claudia Rankine
What to eat, and what to drink, and what to leave for poison / Camille T. Dungy
Earth song / Langston Hughes
Rondeau / Jessie Redmon Fauset
Southern living / Kendra Hamilton
Geraniums / Elizabeth Alexander
My Mississippi spring / Margaret Walker
Fearless / Tim Seibles.
Earth is a living thing / Lucille Clifton
Mountains of California, part I / Al Young
Mountain road ends here / G.E. Patterson
Queen Anne's lace / June Jordan
On summer / George Moses Horton
Yellow jacket / Nikki Giovanni
Eclogue at twilight / Yusef Komunyakaa
Ruellia noctiflora / Marilyn Nelson
Evening primrose / Rita Dove
Night-blooming cereus / Robert Hayden
September night / George Marion McClellan
Sweet enough ocean, cotton / Thylias Moss
Metamorphism / Helene Johnson
Brown girl's nature poem: provincetown / Toni Wynn
What more? / Gerald Barrax Sr.
Be careful / Ed Roberson
Watching blackbirds turn to ghosts / Rachel Eliza Griffiths
If winter comes, can spring? / Alvin Aubert
31 words * prose poems [#12] / Rita Shockley.
Cycle two: Nature, be with us. We are not strangers here / Ravi Howard
For a farmer / James A. Emanuel
To waste at trees / Gerald Barrax Sr.
White dog / Carl Phillips
You must walk this lonesome / Evie Shockley
Down from the houses of magic / Cyrus Cassells
Ephemera / George Marion McClellan
Sleepwalker on the mountain / Ruth Ellen Kocher
#543 / Richard Wright
Aphrodite of economy / Mark McMorris
Arachis hypogaea / Marilyn Nelson
In the Rachel Carson Wildlife Refuge, thinking of Rachel Carson / Anthony Walton
language / Camille T. Dungy
For Alice Walker (a summertime tanka) / June Jordan
Generations / Lucille Clifton
Work / Yusef Komunyakaa
Poem to my child, if ever you shall be / Ross Gay
To a certain lady, in her garden / Sterling Brown
Urban nature / Ed Roberson
September songs / Reginald Shepherd.
Cycle three: Dirt on our hands. from 12 million Black voices / Richard Wright
Another April / Anne Spencer
Barriers / Gerald Barrax Sr.
Young peacock / Lenard D. Moore
Urban renewal: XIII / Major Jackson
Bees / Audre Lorde
Carrion / Anthony Walton
Look at the blackbird fall / June Jordan
Flight of the California condor / Wanda Coleman
Since everyone can never be safe / Camille T. Dungy
Won't be but a minute / Patricia Smith
Called / Michael S. Harper
Harvest song / Jean Toomer
Black man talks of reaping / Arna Bontemps
Wood and rain / Melvin Dixon
Joy in the woods / Claude McKay
Sorrow home / Margaret Walker
Blues aubade (or, Revision of the lean, post-modernist pastorale) / Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
Romance / Ed Roberson
April is on the way / Alice Dunbar-Nelson.
Cycle four: Pests, people too. Boll weevils, coyotes, and the color of nuisance / C.S. Giscombe
Miscarriage in October with ladybugs / Amber Flora Thomas
Man reading in bed by a window with bugs / Gregory Pardlo
Pest / Major Jackson
Ambition II: mosquito in the mist / Tim Seibles
#459 / Richard Wright
Market / Thomas Sayers Ellis
For those who need a true story / Tara Betts
Postcard to an ecologist / Lenard D. Moore
Nature boy / C.S. Giscombe
Plague of starlings / Robert Hayden
O believer / Janice N. Harrington
Brown menace or poem to the survival of roaches / Audre Lorde
Life / Kwame Alexander
What a snakehead discovered in a Maryland pond and a poet in corporate America have in common / Kamilah Aisha Moon
Lost conquistador / Shane Book
Beginning of the end of the world / Lucille Clifton
Carpenter bee / Natasha Trethewey
Yellowjackets / Yusef Komunyakaa.
Cycle five: Forsaken of the earth. Flowers / Alice Walker
On imagination / Phillis Wheatley
For Saundra / Nikki Giovanni
Natural world / G.E. Patterson
Lament for dark peoples / Langston Hughes
White things / Anne Spencer
Parsley / Rita Dove
Haunted oak / Paul Laurence Dunbar
from Rape of Florida, Canto I / Albery Whitman
Swimchant of nigger mer-folk (an aquaboogie set in lapis) / Douglas Kearney
Water USA / Clarence Major
Migration / Major Jackson
February leaving / Ruth Ellen Kocher
Blue horses / Ed Roberson
Sick man looks at flowers / Gwendolyn Brooks
Prodigal / Arna Bontemps
Potters' field / Cynthia Parker-Ohene
Monument / Natasha Trethewey.
Cycle six: Disasters, natural and other. Disasters, nature, and poetry / Mona Lisa Saloy
Floodtide / Askia M. Touré
Children of the Mississippi / Sterling Brown
Emmett Till / James A. Emanuel
Sign post / Devorah Major
Song / Audre Lorde
Sacred history of the earth / G.E. Patterson
Greenness taller than gods / Yusef Komunyakaa
San Francisco, spring 1986 / Patricia Spears Jones
Cure / Carl Phillips
Liturgy / Natasha Trethewey
Reapers / Jean Toomer
Earthquake blues / Ishmael Reed
Erasure / Amber Flora Thomas
Floodsong 2: water moccasin's spiritual / Douglas Kearney
Requiem / Anne Spencer
Ice storm / Robert Hayden.
Cycle seven: Talk of the animals. Shepherd's tale / Sean Hill
Beehive / Jean Toomer
Black-and-white dusk at Limantour Beach / Rachel Eliza Griffiths
Sympathy / Paul Laurence Dunbar
Sea-turtle and the shark / Melvin B. Tolson
#175 / Richard Wright
European folk tale variant / Harryette Mullen
Man raised as chicken / Wendy S. Walters
Far / C. S. Giscombe
Spider speaks / Shara McCallum
Hummingbird / Cyrus Cassells
Herd / Tim Seibles
Speed / Cornelius Eady
Points of view / Ishmael Reed
Requiem for a nest / Wanda Coleman
Surfaces and masks: XXX / Clarence Major
Minks / Toi Derricotte
Possum / Janice N. Harrington
Appaloosa / Afaa Michael Weaver
April lyric/All I know is / G.E. Patterson.
Cycle eight: What the land remembers. April in Eatonton / Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
Locus / Robert Hayden
Jaguaripe / Myronn Hardy
What there was / Janice N. Harrington
Wind talker / Frank X Walker
Mulberry fields / Lucille Clifton
I am black and the trees are green / E. Ethelbert Miller
Maple remains / Amaud Jamaul Johnson
Tallahatchie lullaby, baby / Douglas Kearney
Out in the country of my country / June Jordan
Three days of forest, a river, free / Rita Dove
American light / Claudia Rankine
Look ahead, look south: the future / C. S. Giscombe
Southern song / Margaret Walker
Wave / Ed Roberson
Her table mountain / Evie Shockley
from Juneteenth: the bicentennial poem / Sherley Anne Williams
Tap-root / Indigo Moor
Last talk with Jim Hardwick / Marilyn Nelson
History as apple tree / Michael S. Harper.
Cycle nine: Growing out of this land. Writing home / Camille T. Dungy
#559 / Richard Wright
Millpond / Yusef Komunyakaa
Seven pastorals at sixteen / Sean Hill
Before a screen door / Janice N. Harrington
Pull / Indigo Moor
Two directions / C. S. Giscombe
My grandfather walks in the woods / Marilyn Nelson
Mississippi gardens / Stephanie Pruitt
I called them trees / Gerald Barrax Sr.
Beaches, why I don't care for them / Wanda Coleman
At 57, my father learns to grow things / Ruth Ellen Kocher
Suburban noir / Gregory Pardlo
Letter to the local police / June Jordan
Homeopathic / Frank X Walker
Root / Terrance Hayes
What my child learns of the sea / Audre Lorde
Ritual of season / Remica L. Bingham
More than once in caves / Mark McMorris
Pachuta, Mississippi/A memoir / Al Young.
Cycle ten: Comes always spring. First skunk of spring / Marilyn Nelson
[Earth, I thank you] / Anne Spencer
Bemidji in spring / Sean Hill
Winter poem / Nikki Giovanni
After the winter / Claude McKay
For Alexis / Joanne V. Gabbin
Thank you / Ross Gay
Spring down / George Marion McClellan
Deep in the quiet wood / James Weldon Johnson
Violets / Alice Dunbar-Nelson
Man, his bowl, his raspberries / Claudia Rankine
What to eat, and what to drink, and what to leave for poison / Camille T. Dungy
Earth song / Langston Hughes
Rondeau / Jessie Redmon Fauset
Southern living / Kendra Hamilton
Geraniums / Elizabeth Alexander
My Mississippi spring / Margaret Walker
Fearless / Tim Seibles.
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