Saturday, January 21, 2023

Single-author Books on Black Poetry

Here's a non-exhaustive, checklist of single-author books focusing on Black poetry and poets. 

1976: Drumnvoices: The Mission of Afro-American Poetry: A Critical History by Eugene B. Redmond
1985: The Poetry and Poetics of Amiri Baraka: The Jazz Aesthetic by William J. Harris
1986: The Life of Langston Hughes: Volume I: 1902-1941: I, Too, Sing America by Arnold Rampersad
1988: The Life of Langston Hughes: Volume II: 1941-1967: I Dream a World by Arnold Rampersad
1988: Afro-American Poetics: Revisions of Harlem and the Black Aesthetic by Houston A. Baker, Jr.
1997: Black Chant: Languages of African-American Postmodernism by Aldon Lynn Nielsen
1999: A Nation within a Nation: Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and Black Power Politics by Komozi Woodard
1999: Dudley Randall, Broadside Press and the Black Arts Movement in Detroit, 1960-1995 Julius E. Thompson
1999: Performing the Word: African American Poetry as Vernacular Culture by Patricia Fahamisha Brown
2000: Extraordinary Measures: Afrocentric Modernism and 20th-Century American Poetry by Lorenzo Thomas
2000: Performing Blackness: Enactments of African-American Modernism by Kimberly W. Benston
2004: Afro-Blue: Improvisations in African American Poetry and Culture by Tony Bolden
2004: Wrestling with the Muse: Dudley Randall and the Broadside Press by Melba Joyce Boyd
2004: "After Mecca": Women Poets and the Black Arts Movement by Cheryl Clarke
2004: Integral Music: Languages of African-American Innovation by Aldon Lynn Nielsen
2004: Wild Blessings: The Poetry of Lucille Clifton by Hilary Holladay
2005: The Black Arts Movement: Literary Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s by James Smethurst
2005: Fettered Genius: The African American Bardic Poet from Slavery to Civil Rights by Keith D. Leonard
2006: New Thoughts on the Black Arts Movement ed. b Lisa Gail Collins and Margo Crawford
2006: Understanding Rita Dove by Pat Righelato
2008: Phillis Wheatley's Poetics of Liberation: Backgrounds and Contexts by John C. Shields
2009: The Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop by Adam Bradley
2010: Black Arts West: Culture and Struggle in Postwar Los Angeles by Daniel Widener
2010: Anthems, Sonnets, and Chants: Recovering the African American Poetry of the 1930s by Jon Woodson
2010: Phillis Wheatley and the Romantics by John C. Shields
2010: Slave Songs and the Birth of African American Poetry by Lauri Ramey 
2011: The Black Arts Enterprise by Howard Rambsy II
2011: Renegade Poetics: Black Aesthetics and Formal Innovation in African American Poetry by Evie Shockley
2011: Phills Wheatley: Biography of a Genius in Bondage by Vincent Carretta 
2012: The Muse Is Music Jazz Poetry from the Harlem Renaissance to Spoken Word by Meta Duewa Jones
2012: Jazz Griots: Music as History in the 1960s African American Poem by Jean-Philippe Marcoux 
2013: The Afro-Modernist Epic and Literary History: Tolson, Hughes, and Baraka by Kathy Lou Schultz
2013: Amiri Baraka and Edward Dorn; The Collected Letters ed. by Claudia Moreno Pisano
2013: Visionary Women Writers of Chicago’s Black Arts Movement by Carmen L. Phelps
2013: Nikki Giovanni: A Literary Biography by Virginia C. Fowler
2013: Understanding Etheridge Knight by Michael S. Collins
2014: Visible Man: The Life of Henry Dumas by Jeffrey B. Leak
2015: Imagine the Sound: Experimental African American Literature after Civil Rights by Carter Mathes
2016: The Magic of Juju: An Appreciation of the Black Arts Movement by Kalamu ya Salaam
2017: Black Post-Blackness: The Black Arts Movement and Twenty-First-Century Aesthetic by Margo Natalie Crawford
2017: Killing Poetry: Blackness and the Making of Slam and Spoken Word Communities by Javon Johnson
2018: Robert Hayden in Verse: New Histories of African American Poetry and the Black Arts Era by Derik Smith
2018: The African American Sonnet: A Literary History by Timo Mueller
2019: Building the Black Arts Movement: Hoyt Fuller and the Cultural Politics of the 1960s by Jonathan Fenderson
2019: A Black Arts Poetry Machine Amiri Baraka and the Umbra Poets by David Grundy
2019: A History of African American Poetry by Lauri Scheyer
2020: Brick City Vanguard: Amiri Baraka, Black Music, Black Modernity by James Smethurst
2020: Bad Men: Creative Touchstones of Black Writers by Howard Rambsy II
2021: The Inside Songs of Amiri Baraka by Aldon Nielsen
2021: Behold the Land: The Black Arts Movement in the South by James Smethurst
2022: Paul Laurence Dunbar: The Life and Times of a Caged Bird by Gene Andrew Jarrett

Related:
A checklist of book lists

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