Book cover of The Collected Poems of Sterling A. Brown showing a painting of five Black people in colorful robes and straw hats hoeing a field

The Collected Poems of Sterling A. Brown

From the publisher:

Sterling A. Brown [Class of 1922] was renowned for his trenchant poetry and scholarship on African American folklife. A contemporary of Langston Hughes, Claude McKay and Jean Toomer, Brown became the first poet laureate of the District of Columbia. His celebrated works, including Southern Road, address issues of race through collages of narrative and dialect unique to Brown’s unflinching poetic voice.

Edited by the late distinguished poet Michael S. Harper, this classic collection includes a new foreword by award-winning poet Cornelius Eady and the original introduction by Michael S. Harper, as well as introductions to Southern Road by James Weldon Johnson and Sterling Stuckey. The result is a tour de force by one of the most distinctive poets in American letters.