June Jordan

The Essential June Jordan honors the enduring legacy of a poet fiercely dedicated to building a better world. In this definitive volume, introduced by Pulitzer Prize winner Jericho Brown, June Jordan's generous body of poetry is distilled and curated to represent the very best of her works. Written over the span of several decades--from Some Changes in 1971 to Last Poems in 2001---Jordan's poems are at once of their era and tragically current, with subject matter including racist police brutality, violence against women, and the opportunity for global solidarity amongst people who are marginalized or outside of the norm. In these poems of great immediacy and radical kindness, humor and embodied candor, readers will (re)discover a voice that has inspired generations of contemporary poets to write their truths. June Jordan is a powerful voice of the time-honored movement for justice, a poet for the ages.

The Essential June Jordan

Elizabeth Alexander

Alvin Aubert

Gerald Barrax

Remica Bingham

Cyrus Cassells

Estate of Lucille Clifton

Wanda Coleman

Toi Derricotte

Rita Dove

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Cornelius Eady

Thomas Sayers Ellis

Joanne Gabbin

Nikki Giovanni

Kendra Yvette Hamilton

Terrance Hayes

Sean Hill

Langston Hughes

Jackson

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

Douglas Kearney

Yusef Komunyakaa

Mark McMorris

E. Miller

Kamilah Aisha Moon

Indigo Moor

Lenard Moore

Thylias Moss

Harryette Mullen

Gregory Pardlo

Cynthia Parker-Ohene

Carl Phillips

Stephanie Pruitt

Claudia Rankine

Tim Seibles

Evie Shockley

Patricia Smith

Jean Toomer

Natasha Trethewey

Alice Walker

Frank X. Walker

Margaret Walker

Afaa Weaver

Al Young

Kwame Alexander

Tara Betts

Arna Bontemps

Shane Book

Gwendolyn Brooks

Sterling A. Brown

Melvin Dixon

Alice Ruth Moore Dunbar-Nelson

James A. Emanuel

Jessie Redmon Fauset

Ross Gay

C. S. Giscombe

Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Myronn Hardy

Michael S. Harper

Janice N. Harrington

Robert Hayden

George Moses Horton

Ravi Howard

Amaud Jamaul Johnson

Helene Johnson

James Weldon Johnson

Patricia Spears Jones

Ruth Ellen Kocher

Audre. Lorde

Shara McCallum

George Marion McClellan

Claude McKay

Marilyn Nelson

G. E. Patterson

Ishmael Reed

Ed Roberson

Mona Lisa Saloy

Reginald Shepherd

Anne Spencer

Amber Flora Thomas

Melvin B. Tolson

Askia M. Touré

Wendy S. Walters

Anthony Walton

Phillis Wheatley

Albery Whitman

Sherley Anne Williams

Richard Wright

Toni Wynn

Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry

This book presents the natural world seen through the eyes of black poets. ""Black Nature"" is the first anthology to focus on nature writing by African American poets, a genre that until now has not commonly been counted as one in which African American poets have participated. Black poets have a long tradition of incorporating treatments of the natural world into their work, but it is often read as political, historical, or protest poetry - anything but nature poetry. This is particularly true when the definition of what constitutes nature writing is limited to work about the pastoral or the wild. Camille T. Dungy has selected 180 poems from 93 poets that provide unique perspectives on American social and literary history to broaden our concept of nature poetry and African American poetics. This collection features major writers, such as Phillis Wheatley, Rita Dove, Yusef Komunyakaa, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sterling Brown, Robert Hayden, Wanda Coleman, Natasha Trethewey, and Melvin B. Tolson, as well as newer talents, such as Douglas Kearney, Major Jackson, and Janice Harrington. Included are poets writing out of slavery, Reconstruction, the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement, and late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century African American poetic movements. ""Black Nature"" brings to the fore a neglected and vital means of considering poetry by African Americans and nature-related poetry as a whole.

Black Nature

Nicole Sealy

After decades out of print, Passion--one of June Jordan's most important collections--has returned to readers. Originally entitled, passion: new poems, 1977-1980, this volume holds key works including "Poem About My Rights," "Poem About Police Violence," "Free Flight," and an essay by the poet, "For the Sake of the People's Poetry: Walt Whitman and the Rest of Us." June Jordan was a fierce advocate for the safety and humanity of women and Black people, and for the freedom of all people--and Barack Obama made a line from this book famous: "We are the ones we have been waiting for." With love and humor, via lyrics and rants, she calls for nothing less than radical compassion. This new edition includes a foreword by Nicole Sealey.

Passion

The Collected Poems of June Jordan

"Directed by Desire . . . is a powerful addition to the entire canon of American poetry."--Booklist Now in paperback, Directed by Desire is the definitive overview of June Jordan's -poetry. Collecting the finest work from Jordan's ten volumes, as well as dozens of "last poems" that were never published in Jordan's lifetime, these more than six hundred pages overflow with intimate lyricism, elegance, fury, meditative solos, and dazzling vernacular riffs. As Adrienne Rich writes in her introduction, June Jordan "wanted her readers, listeners, students, to feel their own latent power--of the word, the deed, of their own beauty and intrinsic value." From "These Poems": These poems they are things that I do in the dark reaching for you whoever you are and are you ready? The cloth edition of Directed by Desire was selected as a Library Journal Poetry Book of the Year and received the Lambda Book Award for Lesbian Poetry. June Jordan taught at UC Berkeley for many years and founded Poetry for the People. Her twenty-eight books include poetry, essays, fiction, and children's books. She was a regular columnist for The Progressive and a prolific writer whose articles appeared in The Village Voice, The New York Times, Ms. Magazine, and The Nation. After her death in 2002, a school in the San Francisco School District was renamed in her honor.

Directed by Desire

Maya Angelou

Bell Hooks

Sonia Sanchez

Black Women Write about Mothers and Daughters

Double Stitch

Haruko/Love Poems

Booker T. Washington

Charles W. Chesnutt

W. E. B. Du Bois

Lillian Smith

Erskine Caldwell

Ralph Ellison

Eudora Welty

James Baldwin

Flannery O'Connor

Haki Madhubuti

Constance Curry

Anthony Grooms

Frances E. W. Harper

Mary Burrill

Angelina Weld Grimké

Dudley Randall

Martin Luther King

Howard Sackler

Eldridge Cleaver

David Hernandez

Bebe Moore Campbell

Patricia J. Williams

Walter Mosley

Amiri Baraka

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

Florida

American Literature from Jim Crow to Reconciliation

This title offers perspectives on civil rights not found in history books. This anthology of drama, essays, fiction, and poetry presents a thoughtful, classroom-tested selection of the best literature for learning about the long civil rights movement. Unique in its focus on creative writing, the volume also ranges beyond a familiar 1954-1968 chronology to include works from the 1890s to the present. The civil rights movement was a complex, ongoing process of defining national values such as freedom, justice, and equality. In ways that historical documents cannot, these collected writings show how Americans negotiated this process - politically, philosophically, emotionally, spiritually, and creatively.Gathered here are works by some of the most influential writers to engage issues of race and social justice in America, including James Baldwin, Flannery O'Connor, Amiri Baraka, and Nikki Giovanni. The volume begins with works from the post-Reconstruction period when racial segregation became legally sanctioned and institutionalized. This section, titled 'The Rise of Jim Crow,' spans the period from Frances E. W. Harper's Iola Leroy to Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. In the second section, 'The Fall of Jim Crow,' Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'Letter from Birmingham Jail' and a chapter from ""The Autobiography of Malcolm X"" appear alongside poems by Robert Hayden, June Jordan, and others who responded to these key figures and to the events of the time.'Reflections and Continuing Struggles,' the last section, includes works by such current authors as Rita Dove, Anthony Grooms, and Patricia J. Williams. These diverse perspectives on the struggle for civil rights can promote the kinds of conversations that we, as a nation, still need to initiate.

June Jordan

The Essential June Jordan

Elizabeth Alexander

Black Nature

June Jordan

Passion

June Jordan

Directed by Desire

Maya Angelou

Double Stitch

June Jordan

Haruko/Love Poems

Booker T. Washington

The Civil Rights Reader

June Jordan

Kimako's Story

June Jordan

Haruko/Love Poems

Browse by categories

June Jordan

The Essential June Jordan

Elizabeth Alexander

Black Nature

June Jordan

Passion

June Jordan

Directed by Desire

Maya Angelou

Double Stitch

June Jordan

Haruko/Love Poems

Booker T. Washington

The Civil Rights Reader

June Jordan

Kimako's Story

June Jordan

Haruko/Love Poems