African American Women Poets...
Phyllis Wheatley
Race and gender have denied many their rightful place in the canon of humanity’s arts.
In today’s world, in the blink of an electronic pulse, words can be transported across continents and peoples and all too easily lost in the ever-growing mass of disposable culture of ‘me-me-me’ and ‘more- more-more’. We can all be ‘woke’ be ‘politically correct’ be outraged at a transgression or even a slight. Everything means something to someone.
But, once again, more modern times miss the reality of what others in previous generations suffered in the battle for equality and recognition. In America, to be black and a woman over the years this volume covers, was to be chattel, to be bartered, sold, trafficked and used for no more than the whims of others.
It was a harsh reality, and yet…., and yet, these women produced verse that sears our souls with the ambition to tell others, to share with us all, what life was like, what was endured and the heartbreak of what their reality was. They could not be overcome; their voice sought to endure and not be smothered.
Words are powerful weapons, they form ideas, they create movements and manifestos that can change the world. Many of the women in this volume added to those words, to that desire that the words of their Constitution would someday include themselves. The fight is not yet wholly won, prejudice and inequality still single them out but the flame of hope, of destiny continues to burn fiercely with their names.
Their poetry is not solely of protest but rich in a range of subjects embracing tenderness, love, family and includes works by Alice Dunbar Nelson, Frances W Harper, Phyllis Wheatley, Zora Neale Hurston, Esther Popel, Clarissa Scott Delany and many others whose voice voices call to us through the years.
01 - African American Women Poets from 1746 to the Harlem Renaissance - An Introduction
02 - Bars Fight by Lucy Terry
03 - On Virtue by Phyllis Wheatley
04 - To a Lady and Her Children on the Death of Her Son and Their Brother by Phyllis Wheatley
05 - An Hymn to the Morning by Phyllis Wheatley
06 - An Hymn to the Evening by Phyllis Wheatley
07 - Bury Me in a Free Land by Frances E W Harper
08 - My Mother's Kiss by Frances E W Harper
09 - The Slave Trade Girl's Address to Her Mother by Sarah Louisa Forten
10 - Burial of Sarah by Frances E W Harper
11 - Reflections, Written On Visiting the Grave of a Venerated Friend by Ann Plato
12 - The Natives of America by Ann Plato
13 - The Angel's Visit by Charlotte L Forten Grimke
14 - Disappointment by May E Tucker
15 - Light In Darkness by Mary E Tucker
16 - Hope by Mary E Tucker
17 - Drifts That Bar My Door by Adah Isaacs Menken
18 - Infelix by Adah Isaacs Menken
19 - Aspiration by Adah Isaacs Menken
20 - The Coming Woman by Mary Weston Fordham
21 - In Memorium. Alphonse Campbell Fordham by Mary Weston Fordham
22 - Aspiration by Henrietta Cordelia Ray
23 - Life by Henrietta Cordelia Ray
24 - Scraps of Time by Charlotte E Linden
25 - Brave Man and Brave Woman by Charlotte E Linden
26 - What Constitutes A Negro by Eva Carter Buckner
27 - Thine Own by Josephine Delphine Henderson Heard
28 - The Black Sampson by Josephine Delphine Henderson Heard
29 - The Singer and the Song (To Paul Laurence Dunbar) by Carrie Williams Clifford
30 - The Widening Light by Carrie Williams Clifford
31 - The Door of Hope by Lizelia Augusta Jenkins Moorer
32 - Negro Heroines by Lizelia Augusta Jenkins Moorer
33 - The Voice of the Negro by Lizelia Augusta Jenkins Moorer
34 - The Angel's Message by Clara Ann Thompson
35 - Not Dead, But Sleeping by Clara Ann Thompson<p
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