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This was a small (ish--there were 44 poems from 39 writers) yet impactful collection of poems by Black writers (primarily African American) from the last few centuries, from Phillis Wheatley to Audre Lord to Ashley Woodfolk, from Claude McKay to James Baldwin to Danez Smith. As the editors acknowledge several times both in the Introduction and in the small "outros" accompanying each poem, it would be nearly impossible to assemble a collection of poems that truly captures the breadth and depth and variety of Black experiences, it showed as much variance as it could. I especially liked that the poems were organized by loose categories to help put different writers and perspectives "in conversation" with one another, regardless of when the poems were first written. Some of my fave poems included (in order of appearance) "Power" by Audre Lorde; "won't you celebrate with me" by Lucille Clifton; "20/20" by Simone Liggins; "Hottentot Girl Summer" by Ibi Zoboi; "New Curriculum on Water" by Taylor Byas; "A Fable" by Etheridge Knight; "why the mosquito buzzes in your ear" by Danez Smith; and "Black Mythology" by Jonny Teklit.

At the end of each poem, there was an "outro" provided by the editors, which served to provide additional context to the poem, provide snippets from the poets directly on their intention(s), and/or parse meaning out of complex lines. While I liked this idea in theory--especially when a poet provided their own outro for the editors--I often found the outros counterintuitive to their intended purpose. Many of the outros felt like they were prescribing meaning(s) to the poems, and, intentionally or not, this made me read some of the poems with less... "care" doesn't feel like the right word... maybe just with less of a critical lens? Not that I wanted to critique every poem per se, but I didn't "need" to engage as critically because the outro would tell me what I was "supposed to get out of" the poem anyway, I guess, according to the editors' reading(s). There's even one outro for a poem by one of the editors that was left entirely in first-person, even though all the other outros are either in third-person or denote that the writer's words are being quoted by the editors.