Although the Poetry Center library has now been closed to the public for eleven months, we have continued to buy new books, looking forward to the day when we can welcome you back to enjoy them. And what a year it's been for publishing, with presses persisting, continuing to put out the important new poetry that writers have worked so hard to create.    

To celebrate Black History Month, we're sharing a list of eighteen titles by Black poets that we have added to the Poetry Center's collection this month. You'll notice a number of titles from Button Poetry, which we picked up through their Black History Month bundles. Truly, we can't wait to share these and many other books with you!

• African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song, edited by Kevin Young (Library of America, 2020)
• You Are My Joy and Pain: Love Poems by Naomi Long Madgett (Wayne State University Press, 2020)
• Sometimes I Never Suffered by Shane McCrae (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2020)
• You Don't Have to Go to Mars for Love by Yona Harvey (Four Way Books, 2020)
• Funeral Diva by Pamela Sneed (City Lights Books, 2020)
• Burning Sugar by Cicely Belle Blain (VS. Books, 2020)
• Still Can't Do My Daughter's Hair by William Evans (Button Poetry, 2017)
• Patricide by Dave Harris (Button Poetry, 2019)
• Black Case Volume I & II: Return from Exile by Joseph Jarman (Blank Forms Editions/After : Still, 2019)
• Uses of My Body by Simone Savannah (Barrow Street Press, 2020)
• Ain't Never Not Been Black by Javon Johnson (Button Poetry, 2020)
• Even the Saints Audition by Raych Jackson (Button Poetry, 2019)
• We Were All Someone Else Yesterday by Omar Holmon (Button Poetry, 2020)
• Knees of a Natural Man: The Selected Poetry of Henry Dumas, edited by Eugene B. Redmond (Flood Editions, 2020)
• When My Body Was a Clinched Fist by Enzo Silon Surin (Black Lawrence Press, 2020)
• I'll Fly Away by Rudy Francisco (Button Poetry, 2020)
• Sana Sana by Ariana Brown (Game Over Books, 2020)
• Grimoire by Cherene Sherrard (Autumn House Press, 2020)