The first volume in an anthology series that amplifies the voices of unsung Black poets to paint a more robust picture of our national past, and of the Black literary imagination, with a foreword by Tracy K. Smith

A Penguin Classic

Joshua Bennett and Jesse McCarthy repeatedly found themselves struck by the number of exciting poets they came across in long-out-of-print collections and forgotten journals whose work has been neglected or entirely ignored, even by scholars of Black poetry. Minor Notes is an excavation initiative that recovers and curates archival materials from these understudied, though supremely gifted, African American poets of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and aims to bridge scholarly interest with the growing general audience who reads, writes, and circulates poetry within that tradition. As Minor Notes clarifies, the work of contemporary Black poets is perhaps best understood through the lens of a long-standing tradition of the poet as witness, as prophetic voice, as communal bard, and as scholar of the everyday and the miraculous. The poets featured in Volume 1 are George Moses Horton, Fenton Johnson, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Henrietta Cordelia Ray, David Wadsworth Cannon Jr., Anne Spencer, and Angelina Weld Grimké.

"A new Penguin Classics series that recovers and rediscovers the work of African American poets from the 19th and 20th centuries, curated by Joshua Bennett and Jesse McCarthy. As scholars of African American literature and cultural history, Bennett and McCarthy repeatedly find themselves struck by the number of exciting poets they come across in long-out-of-print collections and forgotten journals, whose work has been neglected and, in some cases, entirely ignored, even by those academic circles devoted to the study of Black poetry. Minor Notes is an excavation initiative that addresses this problem by recovering archival materials from these understudied, though supremely gifted, African American poets of the 19th and 20th centuries. By pairing neglected collections of poetry with prefatory commentary provided by contemporary poets, Minor Notes bridges scholarly interest with the growing audience outside the university that reads, writes, and circulates Black poetry. Minor Notes Vol. 1 features the work of three poets. Published in 1837, Poems by a Slave is one of the lesser-known works by George Moses Horton (1798-1883), once popularly known as the "black bard of North Carolina." Visions of the Dusk (1915) is an American prose poem known for its formal innovation by Fenton Johnson, a poet, essayist, editor, and educator from Chicago. Georgia Douglas Johnson was the most widely read black woman poet in the US during the first three decades of the 20th century. Bronze: A Book of Verse (1922) was introduced with a foreword by W.E.B. Du Bois. Bennett and McCarthy will provide an introduction"--