The Book of American Negro Poetry

The Harlem Renaissance was an intellectual and cultural revival of African American life centered in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, spanning the 1920s and 1930s. A major aspect of this revival was poetry. Hundreds of poems were written and published by African Americans during the era, which covered a wide variety of themes. The Poetry Foundation wrote that poets in the Harlem Renaissance "explored the beauty and pain of black life and sought to define themselves and their community outside of white stereotypes." Poets such as Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson, and Countee Cullen became well known for their poetry, which was often inspired by jazz. The poetry of the era was published in several different ways, notably in the form of anthologies. The Book of American Negro Poetry (1922), Negro Poets and Their Poems (1923), An Anthology of Verse by American Negroes (1924), and Caroling Dusk (1927) have been cited as four major poetry anthologies of the Harlem Renaissance. == Publishing ==

At the time Johnson edited the anthology, he was executive secretary of the NAACP. The anthology was "the first of its kind ever published", according to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. The first edition was published by Harcourt, Brace, and Company in 1922 and was 217 pages long. There is a forty-seven page preface written by Johnson and the collection ends with a "biographical index" containing information about the poets whose work is included. A second edition, also published by Harcourt, was released in 1931. The second edition included a new preface and nine additional poets. ==Poets==

The Book of American Negro Poetry incorporates works by thirty-one poets, with another nine added in 1931: == Reception ==

The Schomburg Center wrote that the anthology "may be considered his [Johnson's] most important contribution to African American literature." The second edition received a review in Pacific Affairs. The reviewer particularly praised Johnson's preface, and described the anthology as "a splendid piece of writing, valuable to all those interested in race relations." Another review of this edition, published in The Philadelphia Inquirer, considered it to suffer "from not being sufficiently inclusive", but still felt it to be "a valuable" record "of what poetry the Negro has contributed to American letters". ==References==