This is the honey : an anthology of contemporary Black poets / edited with an introduction by Kwame Alexander (2024)

Availability

Finding items...

Contents:

The language of joy. Quilting the black-eyed pea (we're going to Mars) / Nikki Giovanni -- The language of joy / Jacqueline Allen Trimble -- Garden of the gods / Ama Codjoe -- Labor / Jericho Brown -- Black boys / Tony Medina -- Navel / Robin Coste Lewis -- A parable of sorts / Malika S. Booker -- Boxing lessons / LeRonn Brooks -- On voting for Barack Obama with a Nat Turner t-shirt on / Reginald Dwayne Betts -- After people stop asking about me / Kyle Dargan -- Your dream is / Jason Reynolds -- A new day dawns / Nikky Finney -- Carolina prayer / Justin Phillip Reed -- Inescapable country / Mark McMorris -- Blood memory / Ronda Taylor -- The nightflies / Sheree Renée Thomas -- Healing / Lolita Stewart-White -- This is the honey / Mahogany L. Browne -- That's my heart right there. This is an incomprehensive list of all the reasons I know I married the right person / Clint Brown -- That's my heart right there / Willie Perdomo -- Refractions / Alan King -- I wish my love was here / Kurtis Lamkin -- tripping / Van G. Garrett -- Fruitful / Evie Shockley -- Poem that begins w/a tweet about Gwendolyn Brooks / Mitchell L.H. Douglas -- Love poem / Cameron Awkward-Rich -- May perpetual light shine / Patricia Spears Jones -- Forcing it / Antoinette Brim-Bell -- In my rush / Jonterri Gadson -- Characteristics of life / Camille T. Dungy -- As serious as a heart attack / Kalamu ya Salaam -- The talk / Gayle Danley -- Crows in a strong wind / Cornelius Eady -- How we made you / Kwame Alexander -- Weathering out / Rita Dove -- Want could kill me / Xan Forest Phillips -- When Macnolia greases my hair / A. Van Jordan -- "[love letter to self] / Warsan Shire -- a poem about you and me and the new country / Anis Mojgani -- Patience / Ross Gay -- Figurative language / A$iahMae -- hello / Sean Hill -- Delores Jepps / Tim Seibles -- The ear is an organ made for love / E. Ethelbert Miller -- Love for a song / J. Drew Lanham -- Most beautiful accident: a single parent's ode / Samantha Thornhill -- How to get emotional distance when voodoo is not an option / Pamela L. Taylor -- distant lover #1 [my michigan bed remix--for ellen g] / Brian Gilmore -- Where I'm from. Butter / Elizabeth Alexander -- Our people II / CM Burroughs -- The blue dress / Saeed Jones -- Owed to the plastic on your grandmother's couch / Joshua Bennett -- On Mother's Day / Frank X Walker -- A twice named family / Traci Dant -- Another homecoming / Jarita Davis -- Magnitude and bond / Nicole Terez Dutton -- (Twigi) / Gary Jackson -- For the healing / Marlanda Dekine -- Inheritance / Tyree Daye -- Mule / Sharan Strange -- Hanging laundry / Maritza Rivera -- The painter / Opal Palmer Adisa -- Beloved, or If you are murdered tomorrow / Elizabeth Acevedo -- "Harold's Chicken Shack #35" / Nate Marshall -- On Rampart & Canal / Nadir Lasana Bomani -- Where I'm from / Nikki Grimes -- Inundated / Hayes Davis -- The Black girl comes to dinner / Taylor Byas -- oh didn't they tell us we would all have new names when we decided to convert? / Nikia Chaney -- Richard Pryor and me / Curtis L. Crisler -- In my extremity / Mary Moore Easter -- Ode to Sudanese-Americans / Safia Elhillo -- Demonstration / Chanda Feldman -- R&B facts / Nicholas Goodly -- Dear future ones / Jacqueline Woodson -- Back to the past / Amanda Gorman -- Stand / Ruth Forman -- Reunion / Reginald Harris -- Blue magic / Niki Herd -- Antebellum / Gregory Pardlo -- Pastoral / Natasha Trethewey -- Southern history / Natasha Trethewey -- Nelsons (on the road 1957) / Marilyn Nelson -- Accents (after Denise Frohman) / Yvette R. Murray -- The mystery man in the black hat speaks / Quincy Troupe -- The I Be tree / truth thomas -- We not crazy, we feeling irie / Arisa White -- Devotions. His presence / Kwame Dawes -- You are not Christ / Rickey Laurentiis -- Conjecture on the stained-glass image of white Christ at Ebenezer Baptist Church / Marcus Wicker -- Condition: if the Garden of Eden was in Africa / DéLana R.A. Dameron -- Offertory / Chris Abani -- grief / toni blackman -- sallie ledbetter: a mother's hymn / Tyehimba Jess -- My father's geography / Afaa Michael Weaver -- Sunday poem / Joel Dias-Porter -- I could eat collard greens indefinitely / Alice Walker -- The gray mare / Afaa Michael Weaver -- The Easter prayer, 2020 A.C. / Frank X Walker -- Tell them what you want / Jabari Asim -- Devotions / Derrick L. Austin -- Wanderlust / Remica Bingham-Risher -- Race raise rage: the blackened alphabet. To racism / Lucinda Roy -- The blackened alphabet / Nikky Finney -- "I'm rooting for everybody Black" / Cortney Lamar Charleston -- The blue Seuss / Terrance Hayes -- Dear barbershop, / Chris Slaughter -- Before I fire her, the therapist asks What IS it like to be a Black woman HERE / Aricka Foreman -- A piece of tail / Teri Ellen Cross Davis -- Why I can dance down a Soul-Train line in public and still be a Muslim / Aisha Sharif -- f*ck/time / Inua Ellams -- Beyoncé on the line for Gaga / Morgan Parker -- Contemplating "Mistress," Sally in 2017 / Chet'la Sebree -- Mussels / Lucinda Roy -- 5 South 43rd Street, Floor 2 / Yolanda Wisher -- Unrest in Baton Rouge / Tracy K. Smith -- Quare / L. Lamar Wilson -- Some young kings / Roger Reeves -- We are not responsible / Harryette Mullen -- Carl's Barbershop / Abdul Ali -- On being called the N-word in Atlanta, 2016: a southern ghazal / teri elam -- The president has never said the word Black / Morgan Parker -- [this is to say I am more terrified of capitalism than any wildlife encounter] / Jasmine Elizabeth Smith -- In the event of / Shane McCrae -- Happy / Kevin Powell -- Holla / Evie Shockley -- When I see the stars: praise poems. A prayer for workers / Yusef Komunyakaa -- Heaven: for Nikki Giovanni's 80th birthday / Renée Watson -- The origins of the artist: Natalie Cole / Toi Derricotte -- Elegy for Chadwick Boseman / Len Lawson -- When I see the stars in the night sky / Joy Priest -- Hip hop analogies / Tara Betts -- For ben harper (7:42pm 1-18-02) / Jessica Care Moore -- My poems / Joanna Crowell -- Aubade to Langston / Rachel Eliza Griffiths -- What women are made of / Bianca Lynne Spriggs -- ruth (for a sister poet) / Michael Datcher -- Black gold redux (for Nina Simone) / Jacqueline Johnson -- for Duke Ellington / Reuben Jackson -- Don't let me be lonely [Mahalia Jackson is a genius] / Claudia Rankine -- For John Lewis, who loved to dance / Pearl Cleage -- Soul Train / Allison Joseph -- for allison joseph / Van G. Garrett -- I, master (for David Drake, enslaved potter-poet) / Glenis Redmond -- San Diego and Matisse / Clarence Major -- Ashe / Kevin Young -- Queen Bess / Kimberly A. Collins -- The ragged and the beautiful / Safiya Sinclair -- brown-eyed girls / Gerald L. Coleman -- Zebra (for my son) / January Gill O'Neil -- Quality: Gwendolyn Brooks at 73 / Haki R. Madhubuti -- A love poem written for Sterling Brown / Sonia Sanchez -- Whispers on the wave / Dr. Tonya Maria Matthews -- Praise / Angelo Geter. and Introduction -- The language of joy -- That's my heart right there -- Where I'm from -- Devotions -- Race raise rage : the blackened alphabet -- When I see the stars : praise poems -- About the poets.

Summary:

A comprehensive collection featuring over 150 poems, including works that explore joy, love, origin, race, resistance, and praise.
In this comprehensive and vibrant poetry anthology, bestselling author and poet Kwame Alexander curates a collection of contemporary anthems at turns tender and piercing and deeply inspiring throughout. Featuring work from well-loved poets such as Rita Dove, Jericho Brown, Warsan Shire, Ross Gay, Tracy K. Smith, Terrance Hayes, Morgan Parker, and Nikki Giovanni, This Is the Honey is a rich and abundant offering of language from the poets giving voice to generations of resilient joy, "Beach incantation," as Mahogany L. Browne puts it in her titular poem, is "Ba jubilee of a people dreaming wildly." This essential collection, in the tradition of Dudley Randall's The Black Poets and E. Ethelbert Miller's In Search of Color Everywhere, contains poems exploring joy, love, origin, race, resistance, and praise. Jacqueline A. Trimble likens "Black woman joy" to indigo, tassels, foxes, and peaco*ck plumes. Tyree Daye, Nate Marshall, and Elizabeth Acevedo reflect on the meaning of "home" through food, from Cuban rice and beans to fried chicken gizzards. Clint Smith and Cameron Awkward-Rich enfold us in their intimate musings on love and devotion. From a "jewel in the hand" (Patricia Spears Jones) to "butter melting in small pools" (Elizabeth Alexander), This Is the Honey drips with poignant and delightful imagery, music, and raised fists. Fresh, memorable, and deeply moving, this definitive collection a must-have for any lover of language and a gift for our time. --

Subject(s):

• African Americans—Poetry
• American poetry—African American authors
• Poetry—Black authors
• Noirs américains—Poésie
• Poésie américaine—Auteurs noirs américains
• Poésie—Auteurs noirs
• POETRY / Anthologies (multiple authors)
• American poetry

Genre(s):

• Poetry
• poetry

ISBN:

9780316417525 (hardcover)
0316417521 (hardcover)

Form of work:

Book

Bibliography Note:

Includes bibliographical references.