Poetry has always played a pivotal role in the Black experience in America. A powerful medium for Black writers to express their truths when their voices were ignored.
From Phyllis Wheatley in 1773 to Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes during the New Negro Renaissance, and on to revolutionaries like Nikki Giovanni and her peers in the Black Arts Movement, poetry has always given Black people the space to share their stories in the most beautiful way they can.
In honor of National Poetry Month this April, the Voice & Viewpoint highlights four Black poets who are continuing this legacy today.
Tracy K. Smith
Smith is a Pulitzer-winning poet, memoirist, and editor. She was appointed Poet Laureate of the United States from 2017-2019. Smith is the author of five poetry collections and has won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer for her 2012 book, Life on Mars.
In her poem, “Wade in the Water” she shares:
I love you in the water
Where they pretended to wade,
Singing that old blood-deep song
That dragged us to those banks
And cast us in. I love you,
Jericho Brown
Brown won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his 2019 collection, The Tradition. He is currently the director of the Creative Writing Program and a professor at Emory University. Across Brown’s four published books, his poems often explore themes of masculinity, spirituality, family, and identity.
An excerpt from the titular poem, “The Tradition”:
On this planet than when our dead fathers
Wiped sweat from their necks. Cosmos. Baby’s Breath.
Men like me and my brothers filmed what we
Planted for proof we existed before
Too late, sped the video to see blossoms
Brought in seconds, colors you expect in poems
Where the world ends, everything cut down.
Morgan Parker
Parker is a poet, essayist, and novelist. Her third poetry collection, Magical Negro, won the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award. A recipient of the National Endowment Arts Literature Fellowship, Parker’s writing examines Black womanhood and pop culture with deep complexity and a bit of humor.
In the opening poem of Magical Negro titled “I Feel Most Colored When I Am Thrown Against A Sharp White Background,” Parker writes:
“Or, I feel sharp white.
Or, colored against.
Or, I am thrown. I am against.
Or, when white.
Sharp. Color. Quiet. Forgetting.
My country is a boat.
I feel most colored when I swear to god.”
Amanda Gorman
At 22 years old, Gorman became the youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history when she read her poem “The Hill We Climb” at Joe Biden’s 2020 inauguration. She was also the first-ever National Youth Poet Laureate. She has published two children’s books and two poetry books.
In “The Hill We Climb” she writes:
“We did not feel prepared to be the heirs
of such a terrifying hour,
but within it, we found the power
to author a new chapter.”
