19 Amazing Black Poets Everyone Needs to Know
Countee Cullen
Best-known poems: “Incident” and “Heritage”
Countee Cullen was one of the most significant Black poets of the Harlem Renaissance. A graduate of New York University who went on to get a master’s degree in English from Harvard, Cullen was one of the most famous voices of the early 20th century. His work as a poet, novelist and playwright was exceedingly popular with his contemporaries. Some of his most well-known works at the time were: “Yet Do I Marvel,” “Heritage” and “Incident.” In the 1927 poem “Incident,” Cullen delicately takes the reader on a quick journey to Baltimore, where he’s called a racial epithet by another young boy. The event made an irreparable mark on Cullen and highlights his experience with racism in America.
An excerpt of “Heritage,” which was included in Cullen’s 1927 poetry collection, Caroling Dusk, is a good introduction to the works of this masterful poet:
What is Africa to me:
Copper sun or scarlet sea,
Jungle star or jungle track,
Strong bronzed men, or regal black
Women from whose loins I sprang
When the birds of Eden sang?
One three centuries removed
From the scenes his fathers loved,
Spicy grove, cinnamon tree,
What is Africa to me?
Jean Toomer
Best-known poem: “Blue Meridian”
Jean Toomer was a famous Black poet and novelist whose work impacted the Harlem Renaissance and modernist literary movements. Toomer’s literary work was inspired by the “New Negro” movement in New York, and throughout his personal life and professional work, he resisted racial categorization. His most famous work, a collection of stories and poems titled Cane, was well received by both Black and White critics alike. Prolific writer, author and poet Langston Hughes said of Toomer’s work: “Yet excepting the works of Du Bois, Cane contains the finest prose written by a Negro in America.”
Need a good reason to pore over Cane? This excerpt makes a great case. When you’re done, check out these moving love poems for the woman in your life.
Thunder blossoms gorgeously above our heads,
Great, hollow, bell-like flowers,
Rumbling in the wind,
Stretching clappers to strike our ears . . .
Full-lipped flowers
Bitten by the sun
Bleeding rain
Dripping rain like golden honey—
And the sweet earth flying from the thunder.
Langston Hughes
Best-known poems: “Harlem” and “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”
Langston Hughes isn’t just one of the most well-known Black poets of the early 20th century—he’s one of the most celebrated American poets, period. He’s known as the leader of the Harlem Renaissance movement and is credited with creating jazz poetry. A vibrant life full of exploration and education informed his work, which he deliberately centered on the lives of working-class Black people. Hughes wrote a weekly column for the Chicago Defender from 1942 to 1962, using the space to write extensively about the Civil Rights Movement. Exactly how influential was Hughes? The New York City Preservation Commission named his Harlem residence a landmark, and his ashes were spread beneath the cosmogram of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
Hughes’s “Harlem” is instantly recognizable—there’s a good chance you’ve heard the opening line, “What happens to a dream deferred?”. If you’re still curious about his work, another one of Langston Hughes’s poems is worth a read. He wrote “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” when he was just 17 years old, and you can check out the full text below.
I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
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