Cover
Title
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgments
Chronology
Introduction: Weaving Jagged Words into Song
Note on the Text
Black Man’s Verse (1935)
Introduction
Chicago’s Congo
Only My Words
What Do You Want America?
I Sing No New Songs
Lynched
Rain
Gary, Indiana
Jazz Band
Mojo Mike’s Beer Garden
Cabaret
Returned
Five Portraits of Chicago at Night
Hands of a Brown Woman
Creation
Which One?
Lullaby
death
Georgia’s Atlanta
Portrait of an Old Woman
South State Street Profile
III. Query
VI. Failure
VIII. April Night
I. Tryst
II. To You
III. Love Notes at Night
IV. The Story Ends
V. Realization
II. Goldie Blackwell
V. Arthur Ridgewood, M.D.
VII. Giles Johnson, Ph.D.
VIII. Roosevelt Smith
I Am the American Negro (1937)
I Am the American Negro
Dancing Gal
Flowers of Darkness
They All Had Grand Ideas
Christ Is a Dixie Nigger
Washington Park, Chicago
Note Left by a Suicide
To One Who Would Leave Me
’Mancipation Day
Notes on a Summer Night
Awakening
Come to Me
Modern Man—the Superman
Two Women
Midsummer Morn
II. Sam Jackson
IV. Cleo and Sarah Greeley
VI. Nicodemus Perry
VII. Mrs. Clifton Townsend
VIII. Editor Ralph Williamson
IX. Frank Marshall Davis: Writer
47th Street: Poems (1948)
Foreword
47th Street
Snapshots of the Cotton South
Pattern for Conquest
Black Weariness
Egotistic Runt
Chicago Skyscrapers
Tenement Room
Four Glimpses of Night
To Those Who Sing America
Peace Quiz for America
For All Common People
War Zone
Nothing Can Stop the People
I Bring Proven Gifts
Lines to a Summer Love
To One Forever Gone
To Lorelei
Life Is a Woman
You Are All
Coincidence
Man of Science
Adam Smothers
Spinster: Old
I Have Talked with Death
Self Portrait
Peace Is a Fragile Cup
Uncollected and Unpublished Poems, 1948–84
To the Red Army
Creed for Hedonists
Ours Is a Modern God
Little and Big
Give Us Our Freedom Now!
Finality
To Those Seeking Fame
Black American
Three Average Americans
Miss Samantha Wilson
To a Young Man
Billie Holiday
Duke Ellington
Charlie Parker
Louis Armstrong
Lady Day
“Swing It Brother Swing”
This Is Paradise
Moonlight at Kahana Bay
Tale of Two Dogs
Pacific Invasion
1. Lani
3. Mamie
6. Mary
7. Mrs. ———
9. Eloise
12. Betty
15. Agnes
18. Flo
20. Wilma
22. Hannah
23. Charity
25. Trudy
27. Rita
30. Jean
31. Patty
33. Olive
35. Josephine
36. Verna
37. Essie Mae
To Helen
[In What Strange Place]
To My Own
She
Alpha-Omega
The Search Ends
Alone
War Quiz for America
Notes to the Poems
Blank Page
Index of Titles