Black nature: four centuries of African American nature poetry

Cycle one: Just looking. We must be careful / Ed Roberson

Earth is a living thing / Lucille Clifton

Mountains of California, part I / Al Young

Mountain road ends here / G.E. Patterson

Queen Anne's lace / June Jordan

On summer / George Moses Horton

Yellow jacket / Nikki Giovanni

Eclogue at twilight / Yusef Komunyakaa

Ruellia noctiflora / Marilyn Nelson

Evening primrose / Rita Dove

Night-blooming cercus / Robert Hayden

September night / George Marion McClellan

Sweet enough ocean, cotton / Thylias Moss

Metamorphism / Helene Johnson

Brown girl's nature poem: provincetown / Toni Wynn

What more? / Gerald Barrax Sr.

Be careful / Ed Roberson

Watching blackbirds turn to ghosts / Rachel Eliza Griffiths

If winter comes, can spring? / Alvin Aubert

31 words * prose poems [#12] / Rita Shockley.

Cycle two: Nature, be with us. We are not strangers here / Ravi Howard

For a farmer / James A. Emanuel

To waste at trees / Gerald Barrax Sr.

White dog / Carl Phillips

You must walk this lonesome / Evie Shockley

Down from the houses of magic / Cyrus Cassells

Ephemera / George Marion McClellan

Sleepwalker on the mountain / Ruth Ellen Kocher

#543 / Richard Wright

Aphrodite of economy / Mark McMorris

Arachis hypogaea / Marilyn Nelson

In the Rachel Carson Wildlife Refuge, thinking of Rachel Carson / Anthony Walton

language / Camille T. Dungy

For Alice Walker (a summertime tanka) / June Jordan

Generations / Lucille Clifton

Work / Yusef Komunyakaa

Poem to my child, if ever you shall be / Ross Gay

To a certain lady, in her garden / Sterling Brown

Urban nature / Ed Roberson

September songs / Reginald Shepherd.

Cycle three: Dirt on our hands. from 12 million Black voices / Richard Wright

Another April / Anne Spencer

Barriers / Gerald Barrax Sr.

Young peacock / Lenard D. Moore

Urban renewal: XIII / Major Jackson

Bees / Audre Lorde

Carrion / Anthony Walton

Look at the blackbird fall / June Jordan

Flight of the California condor / Wanda Coleman

Since everyone can never be safe / Camille T. Dungy

Won't be but a minute / Patricia Smith

Called / Michael S. Harper

Harvest song / Jean Toomer

Black man talks of reaping / Arna Bontemps

Wood and rain / Melvin Dixon

Joy in the woods / Claude McKay

Sorrow home / Margaret Walker

Blues aubade (or, Reivion of the lean, post-modernist pastorale) / Honoree Fanonne Jeffers

Romance / Ed Roberson

April is on the way / Alice Dunbar-Nelson.

Cycle four: Pests, people too. Boll weevils, coyotes, and the color of nuisance / C.S. Giscombe

Miscarriage in October with ladybugs / Amber Flora Thomas

Man reading in bed by a window with bugs / Gergory Pardio

Pest / Major Jackson

Ambition II: mosquito in the mist / Tim Seibles

#459 /

Richard Wright

Market / Thomas Sayers Ellis

For those who need a true story / Tara Betts

Postcard to an ecologist / Lenard D. Moore

Nature boy / C.S. Giscombe

Plague of starlings / Robert Hayden

O believer / Janice N. Harrington

Brown menace or poem to the survival of roaches / Audre Lorde

Life / Kwame Alexander

What a snakehead discovered in a Maryland pond and a poet in corporate America have in common / Kamilah Aisha Moon

Lost conquistador / Shane Book

Beginning of the end of the world / Lucille Clifton

Carpenter bee / Natasha Trethewey

Yellowjackets / Yusef Komunyakaa.

Cycle five: Forsaken of the earth. Flowers / Alice Walker

On imagination / Phillis Wheatley

For Saundra / Nikki Giovanni

Natural world / G.E. Patterson

Lament for dark peoples / Langston Hughes

White things / Anne Spencer

Parsley / Rita Dove

Haunted oak / Paul Laurence Dunbar

from Rape of Florida, Canto I / Albery Whitman

Swimchant of nigger mer-folk (an aquaboogie set in lapis) / Douglas Kearney

Water USA / Clarence Major

Migration / Major Jackson

February leaving / Ruth Ellen Kocher

Blue horses / Ed Roberson

Sick man looks at flowers / Gwendolyn Brooks

Prodigal / Arna Bontemps

Potters' field / Cynthia Parker-Ohene

Monument / Natasha Trethewey.

Cycle six: Disasters, natural and other. Disasters, nature, and poetry / Mona Lisa Saloy

Floodtide / Askia M. Toure

Children of the Mississippi / Sterling Brown

Emmett Till / James A. Emanuel

Sign post / Devorah Major

Song / Audre Lorde

Sacred history of the earth / G.E. Patterson

Greenness taller than gods / Yusef Komunyakaa

San Francisco, spring 1986 / Patricia Spears Jones

Cure / Carl Phillips

Liturgy /

Natasha Trethewey

Reapers / Jean Toomer

Earthquake blues /

Ishmael Reed

Erasure / Amber Flora Thomas

Floodsong 2: water moccasin's spiritual / Douglas Kearney

Requiem / Anne Spencer

Ice storm / Robert Hayden.

Cycle seven: Talk of the animals. Shepherd's tale / Sean Hill

Beehive / Jean Toomer

Balck-and-white dusk at Limantour Beach / Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Sypathy / Paul Laurence Dunbar

Sea-turtle and the shark / Melvin B. Tolson

#175 / Richard Wright

European folk tale variant / Harryette Mullen

Man raised as chicken / Wendy S. Walters

Far / C.S. Giscombe

Spider speaks / Shara McCallum

Hummingbird / Cyrus Cassells

Herd / Tim Seibles

Speed / Cornelius Eady

Points of view / Ishmael Reed

Requiem for a nest / Wanda Coleman

Surfaces and masks: XXX / Clarence Major

Minks / Toi Derricotte

Possum / Janice N. Harrington

Appaloosa / Afaa Michael Weaver

April lyric/All I know is / G.E. Patterson.

Cycle eight: What the land remembers. April in Eatonton / Honoree Fanonne Jeffers

Locus / Robert Hayden

Jaguaripe / Myronn Hardy

What there was / Janice N. Harrington

Wind talker / Frank X Walker

Mulberry fields / Lucille Clifton

I am black and the trees are green / E. Ethelbert Miller

Maple remains / Amaud Jamaul Johnson

Tallatchie lullaby, baby / Douglas Kearney

Out in the country of my country / June Jordan

Three days of forest, a river, free / Rita Dove

American light / Claudia Rankine

Look ahead, look south: the future / C.S. Giscombe

Southern song / Margaret Walker

Wave / Ed Roberson

Her table mountain / Evie Shockley

from Juneteenth: the bicentennial poem / Sherley Anne Williams

Tap-root / Indigo Moor

Last talk with Ji Hardwick / Marilyn Nelson

History as apple tree / Michael S. Harper.

Cycle nine: Growing out of this land. Writing home / Camille T. Dungy

#559 / Richard Wright

Millpond / Yusef Komunyakaa

Seven pastorals at sixteen / Sean Hill

Before a screen door / Janice N. Harrington

Pull / Indigo Moor

Two directions / C.S. Giscombe

My grandfather walks in the woods / Marilyn Nelson

Mississippi gardens / Stephanie Pruitt

I called them trees / Gerald Barrax Sr.

Beaches, why I don't care for them / Wanda Coleman

At 57, my father learns to grow things / Ruth Ellen Kocher

Suburban noir / Gregory Pardio

Letter to the local police / June Jordan

Homeopathic / Frank X Walker

Root / Terrance Hayes

What my child learns of the sea / Audre Lorde

Ritual of season / Remica L. Bingham

More than once in caves / Mark McMorris

Pachuta, Mississippi/A memoir / Al Young.

Cycle ten: Comes always spring. First skunk of spring / Marilyn Nelson

[Earth, I thank you] / Anne Spencer

Bemidji in spring / Sean Nill

Winter poem / Nikki Giovanni

After the winter / Claude McKay

For Alexis / Joanne V. Gabbin

Thank you / Ross Gay

Spring down / George Marion McClellan

Deep in the quiet wood / James Weldon Johnson

Violets / Alice Dunbar-Nelson

Man, his bown, his raspberries / Claudia Rankine

What to eat, and what to drink, and what to leave for poison / Camille T. Dungy

Earth song / Langston Hughes

Rondeau / Jessie Redmon Fauset

Southern living / Kendra Hamilton

Geraniums / Elizabeth Alexander

My Mississippi spring / Margaret Walker

Fearless / Tim Seibles.