Famous Black Woman Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Black Woman poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous black woman poems. These examples illustrate what a famous black woman poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
...I am a black woman
the music of my song
some sweet arpeggio of tears
is written in a minor key
and I
can be heard humming in the night
Can be heard
humming
in the night
I saw my mate leap screaming to the sea
and I/with these hands/cupped the lifebreath
from my issue in the canebrake
I lost Nat's swinging body in a rain of tears
and heard...Read more of this...
by
Evans, Mari
...d,
About her life with my father,
A strange and sometimes cruel gentleman.
She would tell you about the choices
A young black woman faces.
Is falling in love with some man
A deal with the devil
In blue terms, the tongue we use
When we don't want nuance
To get in the way,
When we need to talk straight.
My mother chooses my father
After choosing a man
Who was, as we sing it,
Of no account.
This man made my father look good,
That's how bad it was.
He made my father seem like an ...Read more of this...
by
Eady, Cornelius
...ense conversations
were you practicing how to tell me
of my twin sisters abandoned
as you had been abandoned
by another Black woman seeking
her fortune Grenada Barbados
Panama Grenada.
New York City.
IV.
You bought old books at auctions
for my unlanguaged world
gave me your idols Marcus Garvey Citizen Kane
and morsels from your dinner plate
when I was seven.
I owe you my Dahomeyan jaw
the free high school for gifted girls
no one else thought I should attend
and the darkness ...Read more of this...
by
Lorde, Audre
...u r the omega of my heart
the foundation of my conception of love
when i think of what a black woman should be
its u that i first think of
u will never fully understand
how deeply my heart feels 4 u
i worry that we'll grow apart
and i'll end up losing u
u bring me 2 climax without sex
and u do it all with regal grace
u r my heart in human form
a friend i could never replace...Read more of this...
by
Shakur, Tupac
...always picked her nose when upset she liked to sit with silence in the dark sadness is not an unusual state for the black woman or writers she took to sneaking drinks a habit which displeased her both for its effects and taste yet eventually sleep would wrestle her in triumph onto the bed ...Read more of this...
by
Giovanni, Nikki
...what to ask (I wasn’t three), and then I did, and
"She’s gone to live in Florida" they said
and I knew she was dead.
A black woman, to whom I wasn’t nice,
was hired to look after me.
Her name was Josephine – and that made twice
I’d heard that name: my grandmother’s park crony
was Josephine. Where was Grandma; where was Gísela ?
she called me to her bench to ask one day.
I say, "She’s gone to live in Florida."...Read more of this...
by
Hacker, Marilyn
...and over.
30 years ago I heard a woman sing
of the motherless child sometimes
she felt like. In a white dress
this black woman with a gardenia
in her hair leaned on the piano
and stared out into the breathing darkness
of unknown men and women needing
her songs. There were those among
us who cried, those who rejoiced
that she was back before us for a time,
a time not to be much longer, for
the voice was going and the habits
slowly becoming all there was of her.
...Read more of this...
by
Levine, Philip
...portraits,
the hotels went up, and the casinos and brothels,
and the empires of tobacco, sugar, and bananas,
until a black woman, shawled like a buzzard,
climbed up the stairs and knocked at the door
of his dream, whispering in the ear of the keyhole:
"Let me in, I'm finished with praying, I'm the Revolution.
I am the darker, the older America."
She was as beautiful as a stone in the sunrise,
her voice had the gutturals of machine guns
across khaki deserts where th...Read more of this...
by
Walcott, Derek
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Black Woman poems.