This was an amazing and in-depth compilation of so much African American poetry and prose. The historical context behind the different poems and poets in addition to the detailed description of the impact on black and American society was well written. I really enjoyed reading this and would recommend it to anyone, especially anyone who loves the variety in African American artists.

Amazing compilation of african american poetry and lives in this read. Recommend to the lovers of poetry.

I would like to thank the publisher of African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Son for providing me with an Advanced Reader Copy through NetGalley.

I don't know much about African American Poetry with the exception of Maya Angelou and Audre Lorde so this anthology is an excellent introduction for readers like me, who are interested in this topic and would like to trace the roots of African American Poetry. I appreciated a lot the introduction in the book, which explained the sections in the book, guiding the reader, as the poetry evolved through the ages.
It's a book I will often revisit to discover more African American Poets.

This is a truly masterful collection of Black poetry, and I'm going to buy a physical copy right now to put on my shelf. A must-have for any poet.

@Thanks NetGalley for giving me the access to read this wonderful story. It was such an emotional journey. I loved every line of this book. I give 5 stars to this wonderful book.

It took me quite a long time to work through this anthology, as it is massive. It's arranged by date and features hundreds of poets whom I never knew and was so glad to be introduced to. Some poems spoke to me more than others and the styles were incredibly diverse. Obviously it covers very raw, devastating subjects and obviously there are many great poets who couldn't be included. I discovered so many poets whose work I plan to seek out. This is a book that every school, library and home should have a copy of. It's tough reading but a fantastic compilation of phenomenal work. The biographies at the end are also really moving, interesting, inspiring, you name it. Highly recommended.

I read a temporary digital ARC of this book for review.

African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song edited by Kevin Young is a compendium like no other, exploring the wide breadth of African American poetry from songs to poems and much more. There are eight sections in this collection and there are the familiar, often anthologized poems we've come to know, but there are also the unfamiliar poets who have been obscured by American culture for far too long. The struggle is real and it continues 250 years later.

Young says the collection contains "poems we memorize, pass around, carry in our memory, and literally inscribe in stone." And I would agree wholeheartedly with that.

This is a collection that should be brought to classrooms as young as elementary schools. These are the poems and truths that need to be taught so that we can learn from the past and move forward as a nation to a brighter future.

Full review posts on Dec. 2, 2020: https://savvyverseandwit.com/2020/12/african-american-poetry-250-years-of-struggle-and-song-edited-by-kevin-young.html

A book of astonishing depth and breadth showcasing the great variety of African-American poetry throughout history. It contains some old well-known names, such as Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Maya Angelou, and Gil Scott-Heron, and introduced me to many new favorites, like Fenton Johnson (whose "Tired" made me catch my breath and demanded multiple re-reads). As with any anthology, especially with an art form as diverse as poetry, not all entries will be to everyone's liking. However, one can usually separate out personal preference from quality when making a judgement on the poems themselves. My only issue was the inclusion of "Black Art" by Amiri Baraka, which contained antisemitic language that felt very out of place.

Thank you to NetGalley and Library of America for providing me with the ARC for this vital addition to the LoA series

https://kansasreflector.com/2020/10/19/why-one-of-the-countrys-brightest-minds-is-thinking-about-black-kansas/

Kevin Young has a lot of things to think about besides Kansas these days, but it’s still on his mind.

Young is a celebrated poet, nonfiction writer and editor who lived in Topeka from fifth grade though his graduation from Topeka West High School in 1988, then went on to become one of the country’s brightest minds.

Since 2016, he has directed the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. In January, he takes over as director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Kansans are proud of their state’s contributions to American history, first and foremost as a free state. But there’s another role that’s been on Young’s mind.

“Telling that history of freedom and enslavement has to go through Kansas,” he says, “but I also would say so does the similar story of Black literature. Some of what I’m writing now is about that, and thinking about Black Kansas and how it influenced people like Langston Hughes.”

Hughes is another one of those poets Kansas can brag about, along with Gwendolyn Brooks, even if their greatness is — let’s be honest with ourselves — associated with other places (Hughes with Harlem, Brooks with Chicago). Still, the Kansas connection is undeniable.

“Even someone like Claude McKay spent time in Kansas — he went to K-State in the nineteen-teens,” Young says of another pillar of the Harlem Renaissance.

McKay grew up in Jamaica but studied agriculture at Kansas State University for a couple of years, starting in 1912.

“I can only imagine coming from Jamaica to Manhattan, Kansas, was probably a big transition for him,” Young says. “So I’m really interested in how Kansas plays into both social history but also literary history.”

Young has made his own contributions to that history with his many books, including 2017’s “Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts & Fake News,” which seems much too of-the-moment.

“When I started it, I was like, ‘Who would care about fakery in American life?’ And now it seems somewhat prescient,” he says. “At the time I was writing it, I would say things like ‘It’s a really dangerous time, it seems to be getting way worse,’ and it’s gotten even worse since the book came out. Now I think there’s a danger of people accusing things that are true of being hoaxes. That’s become hard to see.”

The antidote is in a new anthology he’s edited. “African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song” is an enormous (1,170 pages) contribution that feels like the truest telling of the American story right now.

The first book published by any Black American is older than the country itself: 1773’s “Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral,” by Phillis Wheatley, who had been brought by slavers to America around the age of 7. Young’s anthology starts there and goes all the way up through HBO’s “Def Poetry Jam,” to Pulitzer Prize winners Natasha Trethewey (2007), Tracy K. Smith (2012), Gregory Pardlo (2015), Tyehimba Jess (2017), and Jericho Brown (2020).

Along the way, generations of poets talk to and about each other, their astoundingly beautiful language and rhythms providing us with a clear-eyed, honest and unflinching history of the country, entirely from a Black point of view.

It serves as a literal recording of history that comes at a perfect time, when more white Americans are finally ready to listen to Black people.

“You saw this summer a real desire to understand Black history, Black culture, how we can best understand each other,” Young notes. (That’s one reason the Schomburg Center released the 160-book Black Liberation Reading List.)

To quote from any poem in the new anthology would be an injustice to all the others, but because injustice is part of the larger story here, I’ll go ahead and do it.

The lone entry from Gary Jackson, who like Young and so many others had to leave to make their mark, is the one titled “Kansas.” It concludes with the lines:

Shorn grass & damp dirt:
they’ll put me in the middle.
I kick the ground like tires,
feeling dumb without flowers /
tokens / grief / anything
in my hands. You’ll bring me
back home, won’t you? Stamp
it down, as if the flat earth
could answer sometimes this,
too, is love. You left.

And this, from a Claude McKay poem called “America,” written in 1921, a few years after his short time in Manhattan:

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth.


The best poetry is evergreen, Young says.

“I was finishing the introduction during Juneteenth, and that was in the midst of the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder and the uprisings and the unrest, and I was really struck by how the poets had been talking about this,” he says.

Poets are prophets. Or, as Young puts it: “Poetry is a means to see through things to the true things.”

“a monstrous unnamed baby ... history ... when she is strong enough to travel on her own beware she will” A gorgeous anthology put together by Kevin Young lingers on the pain of our past, lifting up voices who didn’t get their due yet is also uncompromising with the ferocity and joy of the newest generation of young, Black poets. I want to see this anthology in every classroom in the US. Delight in our resilience, sit at our kitchen table, weep with us, drink with us as Kevin Young recounts and rewrites Black histories & futures through verse. Thank you to Netgalley and Library of Congress for the ARC.

This is a beautiful collection of African American voices that have struggled for basic freedoms, human rights and their dreams. The book is organized by time and themes. I felt that it contained both famous authors and many that I hadn't been exposed too, which was a wonderful experience to be introduced to more authors of color.

What is more American than the words of both past and present that watched and shaped our history? Some words drip pain and despair down their verses within these pages. Some words being hope and light. So many other words show the very reality that frames lives of people long since dead and gone.

If you’re looking for a glimpse into history that may not be readily taught in a classroom, this book will give you exactly that via the words and emotions of these poets. The winners may write history books, but the artists and revolutionaries in this anthology write prose that, once read, is not easily forgotten.

<i>African American Poetry</i> encompasses 250 years of poetry from 1770-2020. I am glad I persevered finishing this poetry beast of 1170 pages. The book starts with an in-depth introduction explaining all the parts and highlighting some poets. I thought of giving up sometimes but the poetry collection includes many, many poets that I would find gems and continue. My gems - highlighted sometimes in my page updates - will probably be different than the gems you will find in this poetry collection. Personally, it took me longer to read the older poems since English is not my first language. However, since I read the book 'normally' it became easier for me as I read more poems.

The collection spreads the 250 years over 8 parts:
1. Bury Me in A Free Land 1770-1899
2. Lift Every Voice 1900-1918
3. The Dark Tower 1919-1936
4. Ballads of Remembrance 1936-1959
5. Ideas of Ancestry 1960-1975
6. Blue Light Sutras 1976-1989
7. Praise Songs for the Day 1990-2008
8. After the Hurricane 2009-2020

I would definitely recommend this poetry collection to any poetry lover and advice them to read it how they want to. Start in the middle, skip to the end. However, you like it.

I volunteered to read this book, through netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This book is well written. It gets you in the feelings. It will make you cry, smile, and laugh. The pacing of the poetry in this book is good. But most importantly it makes you think. It is beautifully written. It will be in stores on October 20th for $45.00 (USD).

This book was incredible. It was filled with intricate poetry and prose to sink your teeth into. Kevin Young made an amazing book.

Library of America's African Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song, edited by Kevin Young, is a mammoth piece of work, essential for anyone interested in the ways poets address the issues of their times. At 1,170 pages, it offers an expansive reading experience. One can, of course, work one's way through it chronologically, not just observing changes is perspective, but also in poetic form. But one can also seek out poems from a specific region or on a specific topic. And it's a great title just for flipping through and reading whatever pieces present themselves. This is the kind of book to keep at one's bedside and savored a bit at a time.

This is such a great anthology. I haven't finished it as I'm picking and choosing my way through this collection. I haven't a good background in any poetry, let alone African American, so this has been an education. It's got selections from major and minor poets, and from old to the very recent. I also liked the comprehensive introduction to each section. I've not been reading in order, but I have been reading the introduction to the particular section before I choose to read a poem. It is very enlightening.

<i>Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC</i>.

This is an incredibly thorough, organized, remarkable anthology. The diversity of time period, style, experience, and voice is stunning, and I'm so impressed with how well it's been curated. I know I'm a bit of a weirdo when it comes to anthologies; I read all 1000 pages from cover to cover, and it was an amazing experience. Every library, every classroom, and every poetry lover's bookshelf needs this book.

Kevin Young has done it again. This anthology is essential for any library collection and is an amazing resource for both schools, adult learners and poetry enthusiasts.

I am sorry for the inconvenience but I don’t have the time to read this anymore. I believe that it would benefit your book more if I did not skim your book and write a rushed review. Again, I am sorry for the inconvenience, I believe this book brings important and powerful messages, and I wish I had the time.