Black Poetry at the Strand Bookstore

Poetry section at Strand Bookstore

A couple of weeks ago while in New York City, I visited the Strand Bookstore--one of my favorite places to check out used books. I spent most of my time in the "Poetry Section," trying to see what titles they had by African American poets. It's always cool, too, seeing how black poetry books mix with the general population, so the speak, of volumes of verse.

I would have liked to have seen more titles, but I can't say I was surprised by the numbers and authors that were represented. That's not a knock on the Strand either. Poetry, in general, does not draw a whole lot of interest in the larger scheme of bookstores at least, and so volumes by African Americans tend not to receive much attention. 

Oh well...here are the following books that I saw in the Poetry Section at the Strand Bookstore:

Volumes:
● Gwendolyn Brook's Selected Poems
● Lucille Clifton's Quilting: Poems 1987–1990.
● Rita Dove's Mother Love 
● Rita Dove's Selected Poems
● Rita Dove's Sonata Mulattica 
● Nikky Finney's Head Off & Split 
● Nikki Giovanni's Blues for All Changes 
● Nikki Giovanni's Collected Poetry 1968-1998
● Major Jackson's Holding Company 
● Major Jackson's Hoops 
● Ntozake Shange's nappy edges
● Ntozake Shange's For colored girls who have considered suicide, when the rainbow is enuf: a choreopoem 
● Derek Walcott White Egrets
● Jay Wright's Polynomials and Pollen (2008)
● Kevin Young's Ardency 
● Kevin Young's Dear Darkness
● Kevin Young's jelly roll
● Kevin Young's For the Confederate Dead

Anthologies
● American Negro Poetry edited by Arna Bontemps
● From Totems to Hip-Hop: A Multicultural Anthology of Poetry Across the Americas 1900-2002 edited by Ishmael Reed
● The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry edited by Arnold Rampersad and Hilary Herbold
● The Vintage Book of African American Poetry by Michael S. Harper and Anthony Walton