Happy Black History Month! Throughout February, organizations in the U.S. and Canada celebrate the legacy of Black activists, scholars, leaders, and families. At Poetry Daily, we hope to join this collective chorus by highlighting the continued impact Black poets have on literature.
Today, Poetry Daily commemorates this year's Black History Month by featuring several works by Black poets from our archives. We also encourage you to explore the work of our colleagues at Cave Canem,The Furious Flower Poetry Center, and the Wright/Hurston Foundation in supporting Black poets' voices.
between the night & its shadow is the music between the music & the night is the song between the song & the music is the voice between the voice & the music is the self between the self & its song is the mind between the mind & the song is the melody
A rose, single, silent, and soft, opens— red petals tender, innocent, fragrant. What beauty! How holy! Peace, unbroken in the rose’s solid stem. O, ancient wonder, rose of unsullied joy, I sing to the majesty of your sun-loved face—
Blackness is the ceaselessly miraculous demonstration that there is no black and white, just sun and shade. This insight is serial, over and over, all over the place, as an irreducible element of art consciousness’s remedial education, registering the condition that is without remedy.
