Collected Black Women's Poetry Volume 1

These four volumes collect the poetic works of eleven African-Americanwomen writing in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Volume 1presents two collections by Mary E. Tucker Lambert--Loew's Bridge, A Broadway Idyl, a poet's-eye view of lower Manhattan just fterthe Civil War, and Poems--and Infelicia, a dramatic work by the notorious AdahIsaacs Menken. Volumes 2, 3, and 4 contain works by nine other poets, all ofwhich were were published between 1895 and 1910, a particularly brutal era forblacks. But, surprisingly, only one of these women (Lizelia Moorer) proteststhe treatment of her race during this period of social upheaval and injustice.The remaining poets all conformed to the ethos of most black writers of thetime, "whitewashing" their art while educating and uplifting their people.Their themes are traditional--love, nature, death, Christian idealism andmorality, and family--and are for the most part couched in conventional formsand language. As interesting for the subjects that they address as for thosethat they ignore, these selections offer a unique smapling of poetic voicesthat, until now, have gone largely unheard.