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| Introduction | |
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| To Make a Poet Black | |
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| Today's News | |
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| when i stand around among poets | |
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| Flame | |
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| Nexus | |
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| To the Pale Poets | |
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| Why Do So Few Blacks Study Creative Writing? | |
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| Puttin' On The Dog (for "Corner Girl") | |
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| "Michaelangelo" the Elder | |
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| For Black Poets Who Think of Suicide | |
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| Bloodbirth | |
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| Incantation (for jonetta) | |
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| Blah-Blah | |
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| Detroit Addendum-(for Philip Levine) | |
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| One sees pictures of Dante | |
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| Poem (for the Blues Singers) | |
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| Not About Poems | |
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| Three Legged Chairs | |
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| What is Africa to Me? | |
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| O Daedalus Fly Away Home | |
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| Afro-American Fragment | |
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| O Africa, where I baked my bread | |
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| African Dream | |
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| 125th Street and Abomey | |
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| Song of the Andoumboulou: 8 | |
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| Outcast | |
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| Gift from Kenya | |
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| Exploring the Dark Content | |
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| My Father's Geography | |
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| The Rocking Loom of History | |
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| Miss Scarlett, Mr. Rhett, and Other Latter-Day Saints | |
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| Three Modes of History and Culture | |
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| Southern Road | |
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| Tour Guide: La Maison des Esclaves | |
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| The House Slave | |
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| Son of Msippi | |
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| (The Recent Past) | |
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| Middle Passage | |
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| Runagate Runagate | |
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| Go Left Out of Shantiville | |
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| A Hambone Gospel | |
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| Song of the Son | |
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| Like Walking Out of Shadow | |
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| In My Father's House | |
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| Return of the Native | |
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| Gordian Knot | |
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| We Have Never Loved | |
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| Blackie Thinks of His Brothers | |
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| Blackbottom | |
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| Sorrow is the Only Faithful One | |
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| Nigger Song: An Odyssey | |
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| Afro-American | |
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| The Wrong Street | |
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| Now | |
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| Alabama Poem | |
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| Tenebris | |
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| The Negro Speaks of Rivers | |
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| My People | |
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| My Blackness Is the Beauty of This Land | |
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| The Bones of My Father | |
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| How I See Things | |
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| The Question of Identity | |
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| The Black Unicorn | |
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| Song of the Andoumboulou: 12 | |
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| Swallow the Lake | |
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| The Griots Who Know Brer Fox | |
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| Black Power | |
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| Blue | |
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| Ballad of Black/Essence (for Joseph Harrison) | |
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| Flounder | |
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| For My People | |
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| If We Must Die | |
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| Poem for Halfwhite College Students | |
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| Beverly Hills, Chicago | |
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| the ISM | |
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| Death of Dr. King | |
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| Is It Because I Am Black? | |
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| Homestead, USA | |
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| A Litany at Atlanta | |
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| America | |
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| We Wear the Mask | |
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| The World I See | |
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| Night, Death, Mississippi | |
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| The Mob | |
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| Dream Boogie | |
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| Tired | |
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| If We Must Die | |
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| Watts | |
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| Walk Like Freedom | |
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| A Poem for Players | |
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| This Man Shall Be Remembered | |
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| Robeson at Rutgers | |
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| American Gothic/To Satch | |
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| For Malcolm: After Mecca | |
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| Music for Martyrs | |
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| Malcolm X | |
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| harriet | |
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| Harriet Tubman | |
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| In Mr. Turner's Fields | |
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| Banneker | |
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| David Walker (1785-1830) | |
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| Saba | |
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| Frederick Douglass | |
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| Fired Up!! (for Judy Rollins) | |
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| The Old Mongoose-for Mac | |
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| For Beautiful Mary Brown: Chicago Rent Strike Leader | |
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| For Etheridge Knight | |
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| For Malcolm X | |
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| For Mary McLeod Bethune | |
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| A Dance for Ma Rainey | |
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| A Rock Against the Wind | |
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| So Long | |
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| If I Were Earth | |
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| Seduction | |
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| The Anti-Semanticist | |
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| Desire | |
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| Echo | |
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| Woman with Flower | |
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| She Is Flat On Her Back (for K.F.) | |
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| Omnivore | |
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| The Joy | |
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| Pretty Piece of Tail | |
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| (For Poki) | |
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| Levitation | |
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| Highflown: Love | |
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| answer to yo / question of am I not yo / woman even if u went on shit again | |
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| The Source of the Singing | |
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| Is She Our Sister? | |
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| Whispers in a Country Church | |
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| The Mother | |
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| Jessie Mitchell's Mother | |
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| Virginia Portrait | |
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| the lost baby poem | |
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| song at midnight | |
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| Grinding Vibrato | |
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| On the Turning Up of Unidentified Black Females Corpses | |
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| Canary (for Michael S. Harper) | |
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| ...And the Old Women Gathered (The Gospel Singers) | |
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| Black Queen Blues (Finale) | |
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| She (for Carolyn Grace) | |
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| Soft Targets (for Black Girls) | |
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| Stations | |
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| The Old Women | |
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| 1915 Interior | |
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| Illusion | |
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| The Circus of the City | |
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| Lessons from a Mirror | |
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| Anatomy | |
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| Eyes in the Back of Her Head | |
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| Tune for a Teenage Niece (for Jeanine Spencer) | |
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| Feminism | |
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| There Is a House | |
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| Old Black Ladies Standing on Bus Stop Corners #2 | |
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| Mama I Remember | |
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| Don't It Make You Want to Cry? | |
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| Blood to Blood | |
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| Young Soul | |
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| We Real Cool | |
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| Strong Men | |
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| those boys that ran together | |
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| Portraiture | |
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| Knees of a Natural Man (for Jay Wright) | |
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| Gifts | |
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| San Diego Goodbye-1944, Jacksaw Arena | |
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| Sonnet to a Negro in Harlem | |
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| Losses | |
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| When Loneliness Is a Man | |
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| At 102, Romance Comes Once a Year (for Joseph Johnson, Seattle) | |
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| Father (Part 1) | |
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| Father's Day | |
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| Epigrams for My Father (John Henry Redmond, Sr.) | |
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| To the Father of Me | |
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| Amateur Fighter (for my father) | |
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| Reflections on Growing Older | |
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| Poem for My Father (for Quincy Trouppe, Sr.) | |
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| Baby Boy | |
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| Anatomy | |
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| Whose Children Are These? | |
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| Whose Children Are These? | |
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| the children of the poor (1) | |
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| photograph | |
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| The Furious Boy | |
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| After Reading Mickey in the Night Kitchen for the Third Time Before Bed | |
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| Fourteen | |
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| Nikki-Rosa | |
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| Black Cryptogram | |
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| My Children | |
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| Motherhood | |
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| Circling the Daughter | |
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| Little Man Around the House | |
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| Now That I Am Forever with Child | |
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| Offspring | |
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| Accessible Heaven | |
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| They Are All of Me | |
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| Why Didnt He Tell Me the Truth | |
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| In My Father's House | |
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| Kitchenette Building | |
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| Cousin Mary | |
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| Family Secrets | |
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| Touching/Not Touching: My Mother | |
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| Taking in Wash | |
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| Abraham Got All the Stars n the Sand | |
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| Mothers | |
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| Knoxville, Tennessee | |
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| Camp Story | |
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| Kin 2 | |
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| Those Winter Sundays | |
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| Big Zeb Johnson | |
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| The Idea of Ancestry | |
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| My Father's Loveletters | |
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| Black Mother Woman | |
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| Under the Oak Table | |
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| Ruth | |
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| Jasmine | |
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| One for All Newborns | |
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| Saturday Afternoon, When Chores Are Done | |
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| a poem for my father | |
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| Little Girl Talk | |
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| If he let us go now | |
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| The Boiling | |
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| Oh, Singing Tree! | |
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| Ma Rainey | |
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| Hell Hound Blues | |
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| Brother John | |
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| Homage to the Empress of the Blues | |
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| Jazzonia | |
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| Walking Parker Home | |
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| Copacetic Mingus | |
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| Glenn on Monk's Mountain | |
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| Lamda | |
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| Dancers | |
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| The Art of Benny Carter | |
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| Oh, My Soul Is in the Whirlwind! | |
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| Nocturne at Bethesda | |
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| good friday | |
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| Simon the Cyrenian Speaks | |
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| Madam and the Minister | |
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| Song of the Whirlwind | |
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| The Creation | |
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| Calvary Way | |
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| Holy Days | |
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| mama's God | |
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| A New Nephilim | |
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| Myself When I Am Real | |
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| Revival | |
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| Gray Day in January in La Jolla | |
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| Dear Lovely Death | |
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| The Scuba Diver Recovers the Body of a Drowned Child | |
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| The House of Falling Leaves | |
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| The Rites for Cousin Vit | |
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| In Honor of David Anderson Brooks, My Father | |
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| the death of thelma sayles | |
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| The Charm | |
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| A Death Song | |
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| Wedding | |
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| We Assume: On The Death of Our Son, Reuben Masai Harper | |
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| Nightmare Begins Responsibility | |
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| Song for a Suicide | |
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| Wake | |
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| Suicide's Note | |
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| Aunt Jane Allen | |
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| Go Down Death (A Funeral Sermon) | |
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| Awe | |
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| A Poem of Attrition | |
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| Another Poem for Me (after Recovering from an O.D.) | |
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| Please | |
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| My Mother | |
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| Going Under | |
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| Annie Pearl Smith Discovers Moonlight | |
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| The Old People Speak of Death (for Grandmother Leona Smith) | |
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| Solace | |
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| Wake | |
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| I Dream a World | |
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| Family Affairs | |
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| Rhinemaiden | |
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| Open Letter | |
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| Paradiso | |
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| Walking Down Park | |
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| Dream Variation | |
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| I Dream a World | |
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| For Russell and Rowena Jelliffe | |
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| Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing | |
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| The Gods Wrote | |
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| I Have a Dream | |
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| Daybreak | |
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| Now | |
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| In C. W.'s Closet | |
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| The Song Turning Back Into Itself 2 | |
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| Biographies | |
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| Credits | |
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| Index | |