Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry
This spirited and substantial anthology confirms an inadequately appreciated literary phenomenon: African American poetry is flourishing. As Rowell asserts in his informative opening commentary, there is profound depth, imagination, hard truths, beauty, a vital spectrum of feelings, and “linguistic energy and agility” to be found in the work of the 86 distinct, groundbreaking poets showcased here. Organized chronologically, the collection begins with such “precursors” as Gwendolyn Brooks and Robert Hayden, black arts movement poets, including Nikki Giovanni and Haki Madhubuti, and such pillars as Lucille Clifton, June Jordan, and Yusef Komunyakaa. Rowell then rolls out the “Heirs” in three successive waves of poets writing in the 1980s up to the present, netting such stars as Elizabeth Alexander, Kevin Young, Natasha Trethewey, and Terrance Hayes along with incandescent emerging writers. Illuminating poet statements enhance the resonance of this magnificent gathering of poems subtle and declarative, intense and mischievous in their response to questions of inheritance and independence, community and self, life bitter and sweet. Poems, in which, as Tracy K. Smith writes, “each word is a wish.” --Donna Seaman