Research Catalog

Title

Angles of ascent : a Norton anthology of contemporary African American poetry / edited by Charles Henry Rowell.

Publication

New York : W.W. Norton & Co., c2013.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Rowell, Charles H.

Description

liii, 617 p.; 24 cm.

Summary

"This landmark anthology brings together for the first time more than three hundred poems by over seventy African American poets, including Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Hayden, Ai, Toi Derricotte, Rita Dove, Elizabeth Alexander, Natasha Tretheway, Major Jackson, and Kevin Young. Angles of Ascent looks to the immediate past of contemporary African American poetry, including the influence of Modernism in the 1950's and the Black Arts Movement of the 1960's, before turning toward the current thriving literary sceneand beyond. General readers and specialists alike will treasure this collection for its diverse readings of humanity by modern and contemporary African American poets as well as its comprehensive introductions and commentary."--

Subjects

• American poetry > 21st century
• American poetry > African American authors

Note

• Includes index.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes index.

Contents

• Part 1: Precursors -- Modernists, 1940s to 1960s -- Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000) -- The Sundays of Satin-Legs Smith -- Riot -- Boy breaking glass -- Robert Hayden (1913-1980) -- For a young artist -- Elegies for Paradise Valley -- A letter from Phillis Wheatley -- Melvin B. Tolson (1898-1966) -- from Harlem Gallery -- Chi -- The 1960s and beyond -- The Black arts movement -- Amiri Baraka (1934-) -- Black art -- In memory of radio -- An agony. as now. -- A poem for Black hearts -- AM/TRAK -- Mari Evans (1923-) -- I am a Black woman -- Nikki Giovanni (1943-) -- Nikki-Rosa -- Ego tripping (there may be a reason why) -- Bobb Hamilton (1928-1998) -- Poem to a nigger cop -- David Henderson (1942-) -- Downtown-boy uptown -- Calvin C. Hernton (1932-2001) -- The distant drum -- Haki Madhubuti (1942-) -- But he was cool, or : he even stopped for green lights -- Larry Neal (1937-1981) -- Malcolm X - an autobiography -- Carolyn Rodgers (1940-2010) -- how i got ovah -- Breakthrough -- Sonia Sanchez (1934-) -- Homecoming -- Malcolm -- blk/rhetoric -- A poem for my father -- Poem no. 3 -- Towhomitmayconcern -- A.B. Spellman (1935-) -- I looked & saw history caught -- Edward S. Spriggs (1934-) -- For Brother Malcolm --
• The 1960s and beyond : outside the Black arts movement -- Gerald Barrax (1933-) -- Eagle. Tiger. Whale. -- King : April 4, 1968 -- Lucille Clifton (1936-2010) -- lazarus -- leda 1,2,3 -- far memory -- Jayne Cortez (1936-) -- Solo finger solo -- In the morning -- Michael S. Harper (1938-) -- The yellow dishes -- Yaddo, Mrs. Ames & Black men -- Coliseum pool, 1960 (dream) -- Don't explain : a ballad played by Dexter Gordon -- June Jordan (1936-2002) -- What would I do white? -- Current events -- Adreinne's poem : on the dialectics of the diatonic scale -- Bob Kaufman (1925-1986) -- from Jail poems -- Battle report -- I have folded my sorrows -- Walking Parker home -- African dream -- Etheridge Knight (1931-1991) -- The violent space (or when your sister sleeps around for money) -- The idea of ancestry -- Hard rock returns to prison from the hospital for the criminal insane -- Belly song -- Audre Lorde (1934-1992) -- Coal -- To my daughter the junkie on a train -- Fishing the white water -- Clarence Major (1936-) -- On watching a caterpillar become a butterfly -- The great horned owl -- Clay Bison in a cave -- Territorial claims -- Colleen J. McElroy (1935-) -- Paris subway tango -- Crossing the Rubicon at Seventy -- Ishmael Reed (1938-) -- I am a cowboy in the boat of Ra -- The Pope replies to the Ayatollah Khomeini -- Ed Roberson (1939-) Sit in what city we're in -- Eclogue -- Ntozake Shange (1948-) -- my father is a retired magician -- nappy edges (a cross country sojourn) -- Primus St. John (1939-) -- The cigar maker -- Trap a Congo -- Catch and release -- Lorenzo Thomas (1944-2005) -- Onion bucket -- Downtown boom -- Alice Walker (1944-) -- Revolutionary Petunias -- On stripping bark from myself -- Sherley Anne Williams (1944-1999) -- from letters from a New England Negro -- Mrs. Josiah Harris / August 25, 1867 -- Miss Ann Spencer / August 30, 1867 ; October 22, 1867 ; November 24, 1867 ; February 15, 1868 -- Al Young (1939-) -- The song turning back into itself₃ -- Ravel : Bolero -- A dance for Ma Rainey --
• Part 2: Heirs -- First wave, post-1960s -- Ai (1947-2010) -- Hoover, Edgar J. -- Conversations -- The curious journey of Ulysses Paradeece after a hurricane -- Cyrus Cassells (1957-) -- Sally Hemings to Thomas Jefferson -- Wild Indigo, because -- The white iris beautifies me -- Wanda Coleman (1946-) -- Ars poetica -- Bedtime story -- American Sonnet (17) -- American sonnet (54) -- Toi Derricotte (1941-) -- Holy cross hospital -- The weakness -- Invisible dreams -- The minks -- Melvine Dixon (1950-1992) -- Climbing Montmartre -- Paring potatoes -- Turning forty in the 90's -- Heartbeats -- Rita Dove (1952-) -- Nestor's bathtub -- History -- The fish in the stone -- Daystar -- Heroes -- American smooth -- Hattie McDaniel arrives at the coconut grove -- The bridgetower -- Cornelius Eady (1954-) -- Photo of Miles Davis at Lennies-on-the-Turnpike, 1968 -- Crows in a strong wind -- Christopher Gilbert (1949-2007) -- She -- Absentee landlord -- Touching -- C.S. Giscombe (1950-) -- The northernmost road -- The 1200N road, going East -- Jewelle Gomez (1948-) -- My chakabuku mama (a comic tale) -- El beso -- Angela Jackson (1951-) -- The love of travellers (Doris, Sandra and Sheryl) -- Two trains -- Ida rewrites -- Gayl Jones (1949-) -- Deep song -- Foxes -- Composition with guitar and apples -- Patricia Spears Jones (1951-) -- Wearing my red silk Chinese jacket -- Thanksgiving -- Yusef Komunyakaa (1947-) -- Venus's-flytraps --
• My father's love letters -- "You and I are disappearing" -- Facing it -- Blue light lounge sutra for the performance poets at Harold Park Hotel -- Lingo -- [The jawbone of an ass. a shank] -- The devil comes on horseback -- Requiem -- Nathaniel Mackey (1947-) -- Song of the andoumboulou : 16 -- Glenn on Monk's Mountain -- Sound and severance -- Thylias Moss (1954-) -- The day before Kindergarten : Taluca, Alabama, 1959 -- Timex remembered -- One for all newborns -- Mulberry breath as proof of the wave in form of question -- The culture of near miss -- Me and Bubble went to Memphis -- Harryette Mullen (1953-) -- Unspoken -- All she wrote -- Black Nikes -- [if your complexion is a mess] -- [Of a girl, in white] -- Marilyn Nelson (1946-) -- Mama's promise -- Daughter's, 1900 -- Second wave, post-1960s -- Elizabeth Alexander (1962-) -- The Venus hottentot (1825) -- Boston year -- The blue whale -- Thomas Sayers Ellis (1963-) -- Sticks -- View-master -- Bright moments -- All their stanzas look alike -- Mr. Dynamite splits -- First grade, all over again -- Godzilla's avocado -- Forrest Hammer (1956-) -- Lesson -- In the middle -- from Goldsboro narratives , #4, #7, #28 -- Kendra Hamilton (1958-) -- The science of wearing a dress -- Belle's promenade : Nassau Street, Princeton -- Myronn Hardy (1972-) -- Undertones -- On a beach : my life -- The headless Saints -- Making stars with Jacob Lawrence -- Terrance Hayes (1971-) -- What I am -- At Pegasus -- Derrick poem (the lost world) -- Touch -- Wind in a box -- Major Jackson (1968-) -- Don Pullen at the Zanzibar Blue Jazz Café -- Some kind of crazy -- from Urban renewal : viii. Block party ; xvi. ; xxi. --
• Honorée Fanonne Jeffers (1967-) -- The gospel of barbecue -- Fast skirt blues -- Hagar to Sarai -- The wife of Lot before the fire -- A. Van Jordan (1965-) -- Regina Brown hears voices, kills son week before Christmas, December 18, 1996 -- from -- The Flash reverses time -- Black light -- from thought clouds -- Mixed couple, 1908 -- Discovering the camera -- Carl Phillips (1959-) -- Blue -- X -- Leda, after the swan -- As from a quiver of arrows -- Fretwork -- Speak low -- Civilization -- Reginald Shepherd (1963-2008) -- Orpheus plays the Bronx -- How people disappear -- Skin trade -- Icarus on Fire island -- Homeric interim -- Patricia Smith (1955-) -- Prologue - and then she owns you -- She see what it sees -- Up on the roof -- Don't drink the water -- Sharan Strange (1959-) -- Childhood -- Froggy's class -- Last supper -- Natasha Trethewey (1966-) -- Flounder -- Limen -- Bellocq's Ophelia -- Letter home -- Elegy for the native guards -- Pastoral -- Incident -- Myth -- Kevin Young (1970-) -- Letters from the North Star -- Eddie Priest's barbershop & notary -- The game -- For the Confederate dead -- Crowning -- Third wave, post-1960s -- Jericho Brown (1976-) -- Track 1 : lush life -- Prayer of the backhanded -- Track 4 : reflections -- Track 5 : Summertime -- Michael Sibble Collins (1959-) -- Six sketches : when a soul breaks -- Poetry -- Bryan, Texas procession -- Kyle Dargan (1980-) -- Search for Robert Hayden -- Microphone fiend -- Palinode, once removed -- Man of the family -- Camille T. Dungy (1972-) -- What to eat, and what to drink, and what to leave for poison -- Cleaning --
• To put things right -- Vievee Francis (1963-) -- Amarillo -- Horse in the dark -- Smoke under the bale -- Still life with summer sausage, a blade, and no blood -- Alena Hairston (1974-) -- [The tyranny of pig boys] -- [The fathers worked their hands to meat] -- [Edges in the rhododendron] -- [Their greatgreatgranddaddies] -- [Daughters of four generations] -- [Because we love wrong] -- Janice N. Harrington (1956-) -- The warning comes down -- Falling -- Fire -- Tyehimba Jess (1965-) -- blind lemon taught me -- leadbelly sings to his #1 crew -- martha promise receives leadbelly, 1935 -- mistress stella speaks -- Ruth Ellen Kocher (1965-) -- Meditation on breathing -- The window cleaner writes to the astronaut's husband -- gigan 63 -- Dawn Lundy Martin (1968-) -- Negrotizing in five or how to write a Black poem -- The undress -- The symbolic nature of chaos -- from Discipline -- Constance Merritt (1966-) -- Lying -- The mute swan -- Woman of color -- Self-portrait : Lilith, Eve -- Fred Moten (1962-) -- gayl jones -- johnny cash/rosetta tharp -- ₀ơ₀æ₁ѕ₀Μ₀£₀ð₀æ₀ѫ [Metoike] -- elizabeth cotten/nahum chandler -- frank ramsay/nancy wilson -- John Murillo (1971-) -- Sherman Ave. love poem -- Enter the dragon -- Practicing fade-aways -- Gregory Pardlo (1968-) -- Double Dutch -- Copyright -- Shades of green : envy and enmity in the American cultural imaginary -- Four improvisations on Ursa Corregidora -- Written by himself -- giovanni singleton (1969-) -- el corazón-toward an ars poetica -- from ascension -- Day 33 -- Day 36 -- Day 41 -- Day 48 -- Tracy K. Smith (1972-) -- Drought -- Self-portrait as the letter Y -- Theft -- When Zappa crashes my family reunion -- The nobodies -- Duende -- Amber Flora Thomas (1972-) -- Chore -- Dress --
• Swarm -- The killed rabbit -- Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon (1971-) -- Garden -- Lost -- Bop : the North Star -- Crystal Williams (1970-) -- This parable, this body -- Extinction -- Enlightenment -- Ronaldo Wilson (1970-) -- Brad Pitt, Kevin Bacon, and the Brown Boy's mother -- Serena Williams, whiteness, and the act of writing -- On the C train the Black object ponders Amuzati's family eaten in the Congo.

Call Number

Sc E 13-654

ISBN

• 9780393339406 (pbk.)
• 0393339408 (pbk.)

LCCN

2011042967

OCLC

757510228

Title

Angles of ascent : a Norton anthology of contemporary African American poetry / edited by Charles Henry Rowell.

Imprint

New York : W.W. Norton & Co., c2013.

Edition

1st ed.

Bibliography

Includes index.

Alternate Script for Contents

To put things right -- Vievee Francis (1963-) -- Amarillo -- Horse in the dark -- Smoke under the bale -- Still life with summer sausage, a blade, and no blood -- Alena Hairston (1974-) -- [The tyranny of pig boys] -- [The fathers worked their hands to meat] -- [Edges in the rhododendron] -- [Their greatgreatgranddaddies] -- [Daughters of four generations] -- [Because we love wrong] -- Janice N. Harrington (1956-) -- The warning comes down -- Falling -- Fire -- Tyehimba Jess (1965-) -- blind lemon taught me -- leadbelly sings to his #1 crew -- martha promise receives leadbelly, 1935 -- mistress stella speaks -- Ruth Ellen Kocher (1965-) -- Meditation on breathing -- The window cleaner writes to the astronaut's husband -- gigan 63 -- Dawn Lundy Martin (1968-) -- Negrotizing in five or how to write a Black poem -- The undress -- The symbolic nature of chaos -- from Discipline -- Constance Merritt (1966-) -- Lying -- The mute swan -- Woman of color -- Self-portrait : Lilith, Eve -- Fred Moten (1962-) -- gayl jones -- johnny cash/rosetta tharp -- ₀ơ₀æ₁ѕ₀Μ₀£₀ð₀æ₀ѫ [Metoike] -- elizabeth cotten/nahum chandler -- frank ramsay/nancy wilson -- John Murillo (1971-) -- Sherman Ave. love poem -- Enter the dragon -- Practicing fade-aways -- Gregory Pardlo (1968-) -- Double Dutch -- Copyright -- Shades of green : envy and enmity in the American cultural imaginary -- Four improvisations on Ursa Corregidora -- Written by himself -- giovanni singleton (1969-) -- el corazón-toward an ars poetica -- from ascension -- Day 33 -- Day 36 -- Day 41 -- Day 48 -- Tracy K. Smith (1972-) -- Drought -- Self-portrait as the letter Y -- Theft -- When Zappa crashes my family reunion -- The nobodies -- Duende -- Amber Flora Thomas (1972-) -- Chore -- Dress --

Added Author

Rowell, Charles H.

Research Call Number

Sc E 13-654