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Poems

These contemporary American poems (published since 1950) reflect cultural backgrounds, socioeconomic realities, gender identities, sexual orientations, or experiences of oppression, violence, abuse, illness, or loss, underrepresented - and sometimes silent - in standard literature anthologies and history textbooks. 

Invite these poets into your imagination with the whole kaleidoscope of identities, affinities, and experiences which inform their art. 


Some poems focus on silenced experiences or facets of identity, while others explore experiences shared across many identities, such as  love, and diversify the voices addressing such topics.

I check these links periodically (usually over winter and summer break) but if you find one that's broken, please let me know by emailing wendy [at] poetryriver.org.

Tracy K. Smith reading Seamus Heaney's "Digging" and an original poem, "My God, It's Full of Stars," from her Pulitzer-winning collection Life on Mars. Part of the Poets on Poetry video series.


Multicultural currents

Elizabeth Alexander - Ladders and Praise Song for the Day

Maya Angelou - Still I Rise 

Jimmy Santiago Baca - Ancestor

Richard Blanco - America

Gwendolyn Brooks - a song in the front yard, A Sunset of the City, and Gay Chaps at the Bar

Jericho Brown - N’em

Rafael Campo - The Chart

Cyrus Cassells - More Than Peace and Cypresses

Marilyn Chin - The Floral Apron (video)

Tiana Clark - Equilibrium

Lucille Clifton - blessing the boats and homage to my hips 

Kwame Dawes - Talk 

Toi Derricotte - Blackbottom (video) and Passing

Rita Dove - Banneker and Flirtation 

Camille Dungy - Characteristics of Life and First Fire

Cornelius Eady - I'm a Fool to Love You

Thomas Sayers Ellis - Sticks

Martin Espada - The Sign in My Father's Hands
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Tarfia Faizullah - Elegy with Her Red-Tipped Fingers

Nikky Finney - The Afterbirth, 1931 and Left

Ruth Forman - May Peace Come

Sarah Gambito - Hunger and a postcard poem

Ross Gay - Burial and To the Fig Tree on 9th and Christian

Nikki Giovanni - In Praise of a Teacher and Knoxville, Tennessee

Aracelis Girmay - Elegy and Ode to the Little “R”

Suheir Hammad - What I Will and break (video)

Terrance Hayes - Touch and The Golden Shovel

Major Jackson - Letter to Brooks: Spring Garden and Urban Renewal XVIII

Ha Jin - Missed Time and Ways of Talking 

June Jordan - A Song for Soweto and 1977: Poem for Mrs. Fannie Lou-Hamer

Mohja Kahf - Fayetteville as in Fate (video) and My Grandmother Washes Her Feet in the Sink of the Bathroom at Sears

Suji Kwock Kim - Leaving Chinatown and Slant 

Etheridge Knight - For Malcolm, A Year After

Kurtis Lamkin - jump mama (text and video)

Li Young Lee - Early in the Morning and This Room and Everything in It

Joseph O. Legaspi - At the Bridal Shop and The Red Sweater 

Shirley Geok-lin Lim - Learning to Love America

Nancy Chen Long - A Fine Meal

Janice Gould - Tribal History
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Audre Lorde - Hanging Fire and Who Said It Was Simple

Dunya Mikhail - Tablets

Joseph Millar - American Wedding

Lenelle Moise - quaking conversation

Pat Mora - Fences

Marilyn Nelson - Lonely Eagles and Minor Miracle

Aimee Nezhukumatathil - Kottayam Morning and Two Moths

nila northSun - walmart

Tim Seibles - Ode to My Hands, Each Letter, First Kiss, and Late Shift

Naomi Shihab Nye - Blood and The Words Under the Words
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Marge Piercy - Three poems from The Art of Blessing the Day

Adrienne Rich - Yom Kippur, 1984

Danez Smith -  Dinosaurs in the Hood and From “summer, somewhere”

Patricia Smith - Buried and Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah

Tracy K. Smith - Interrogative and Sci-Fi

Mary Tallmountain - The Last Wolf

Venus Thrash - Gunpowder Lives

Mark Turcotte - Battlefield and Indian Boys 

Kevin Young - Aunties (video), Eddie Priest's Barbershop & Notary, and For the Confederate Dead
The working life and economic struggle

Gwendolyn Brooks - kitchenette building and The Lovers of the Poor 

Jimmy Santiago Baca - I Am Offering this Poem

Josh Bontrager - My Father Worked Piece-Rate at the Schult Mobile Home Plant

Toi Derricotte - Christmas Eve: My Mother Dressing

Martin Espada - Alabanza: In Praise of Local 100 and Who Burns for the Perfection of Paper

Jim Harrison - Debtors and Easter Morning 

Garrett Hongo - The Legend 

Dorianne Laux - Antilamentation, The Shipfitter's Wife, and Staff Sgt. Metz

Philip Levine - Detroit, Tomorrow, The Mercy, An Extraordinary Morning, and What Work Is

Nancy Chen Long - Reunion: Day 3

Thomas Lux - Refrigerator, 1957 (video) and Tarantulas on the Lifebuoy

Joseph Millar - Telephone Repairman

Robert Morgan - Squatting and Working in the Rain

Mark Nowak - ACT/SEVEN

Minnie Bruce Pratt - The  Blue Cup, Breakfast, and Walking Back Up Depot Street

Natasha Trethewey - Domestic Work, 1937

Mark Turcotte - Recognize Stepfather

LGBTQ currents

Ellen Bass - Gate C22, The Thing Is, and After Our Daughter's Wedding

Frank Bidart - Queer 

Richard Blanco - El Florida Room

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Jericho Brown - Like Father and Runaway

Rafael Campo - Love Song for Love Songs , The Distant Moon, and Maddona and Child

Cyrus Cassells - Beautiful Signor

Staceyann Chin - Feminist or Womanist (video)

Henri Cole - Gravity and Center and A Half-Life 

Mark Doty - A Green Crab's Shell and The Embrace

Julie R. Enszer - four poems in Beltway Poetry Quarterly

Nikky Finney - Cattails and Heirloom

Janice Gould - Gacela of Bamboo and Plum Blossoms
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Benjamin Grossberg - God on the Treadmill

Marilyn Hacker - Nearly a Valedictorian 

Joan Larkin - Inventory and Secret Song

Joseph O. Legaspi - Whom You Love 

Audre Lorde - Movement Song and Recreation

Mary Oliver - Wild Geese (video)

Carl Phillips - Civilization and Porcelain

Adrienne Rich - excerpts from Twenty-One Love Poems(audio) and What Kind of Times Are These 

Jose Antonio Rodriguez - Sunflowers

Kay Ryan - A Certain Kind of Eden and Surfaces

Danez Smith - poem where I be & you just might and Five poems on PEN America

Venus Thrash - Uncivil and Ritual

Stacey Waite - Newark International Airport (video)

Resilience
Read the blog post that describes this current of Poetry River.

Laure-Anne Bosselaar - Rat Trinity

Traci Brimhall - How to Write a Love Poem, illustrated by comic artist Eryn Cruft

Lucille Clifton - won't you celebrate with me 

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni - Indigo

Vievee Francis - Say It, Say It Anyway You Can

Sherine Gilmour - Insanity

Jennifer Schomburg Kanke - I Am Not Worth $8.50

Dorianne Laux - Family Stories and  Music in the Morning

Pat Mora - Curandera

Dana Robbins - Stop

Patricia Smith - Building Nicole's Mama (also in video) and Buried

Gary Soto - Evening on the Lawn

by Wendy DeGroat
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