Black Nature is the first anthology to focus on nature writing by African American poets, a genre that until now has not commonly been counted as one in which African American poets have participated.

Black poets have a long tradition of incorporating treatments of the natural world into their work, but it is often read as political, historical, or protest poetry—anything but nature poetry. This is particularly true when the definition of what constitutes nature writing is limited to work about the pastoral or the wild.

Camille T. Dungy has selected 180 poems from 93 poets that provide unique perspectives on American social and literary history to broaden our concept of nature poetry and African American poetics. This collection features major writers such as Phillis Wheatley, Rita Dove, Yusef Komunyakaa, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sterling Brown, Robert Hayden, Wanda Coleman, Natasha Trethewey, and Melvin B. Tolson as well as newer talents such as Douglas Kearney, Major Jackson, and Janice Harrington. Included are poets writing out of slavery, Reconstruction, the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement, and late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century African American poetic movements.

Black Nature brings to the fore a neglected and vital means of considering poetry by African Americans and nature-related poetry as a whole.

A Friends Fund Publication.

Contributions by: Elizabeth Alexander, Alvin Aubert, Gerald Barrax, Remica Bingham, Cyrus Cassells, Estate of Lucille Clifton, Wanda Coleman, Toi Derricotte, Rita Dove, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Cornelius Eady, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Joanne Gabbin, Nikki Giovanni, Kendra Y. Hamilton, Terrance Hayes, Sean Hill, Langston Hughes, Major Jackson, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Douglas Kearney, Yusef Komunyakaa, Clarence Major, Mark McMorris, E. Miller, Kamilah Aisha Moon, Indigo Moor, Lenard Moore, Thylias Moss, Harryette Mullen, Gregory Pardlo, Cynthia Parker-Ohene, Carl Phillips, Stephanie Pruitt, Claudia Rankine, Tim Seibles, Evie Shockley, Patricia Smith, Jean Toomer, Natasha Trethewey, Alice Walker, Frank X Walker, Margaret Walker, Afaa Weaver, Al Young, Kwame Alexander, Tara Betts, Arna Bontemps, Shane Book, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sterling A. Brown, Melvin Dixon, Alice Ruth Moore Dunbar-Nelson, James A. Emanuel, Jessie Redmon Fauset, Ross Gay, C. S. Giscombe, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Myronn Hardy, Michael S. Harper, Janice N. Harrington, Robert Hayden, George Moses Horton, Ravi Howard, Amaud Jamaul Johnson, Helene Johnson, James Weldon Johnson, Patricia Spears Jones, June Jordan, Ruth Ellen Kocher, Audre Lorde, devorah major, Shara McCallum, George Marion McClellan, Claude McKay, Marilyn Nelson, G. E. Patterson, Ishmael Reed, Ed Roberson, Mona Lisa Saloy, Reginald Shepherd, Anne Spencer, Amber Flora Thomas, Melvin B. Tolson, Askia M. Touré, Wendy S. Walters, Anthony Walton, Phillis Wheatley, Albery Whitman, Sherley Anne Williams, Richard Wright, Toni Wynn