A wonderful and excellent selection of poetry that I hope I can explore with my students in the coming years. It has been such a beautiful read over the past few days and loved the array of styles and voices throughout the anthology.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This is the most definitive African American poetry anthology I have read. The collection contains some familiar and often anthologized poems and poets. It is the not so familiar poems and poets that are within this anthology that are the most intriguing. The anthology is divided into eight sections. Each of the sections covers a time period characterized by the types of poems produced during the era. Editor, Kevin Young explains each of these sections masterfully in the introduction of the anthology. He also describes how each time period influenced or was influenced by other periods. For anyone interested in African American poetry, this is a must have anthology!

I was given the opportunity to review an advanced copy of this book via NetGalley.

Editor Kevin Young has assembled both a breadth and depth of poetry in this volume that represents a range of African American experiences over time. Highly recommended as both a personal and classroom resource, and packed with amazing work.