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In honor of Black History Month, The Crimson’s Arts Board reflected on some of their favorite poems written by Black authors. Whether discovered as an online post or as part of a course, these poems reflect on both personal and social experiences, attempting to make sense of the world in verse.

‘self-portrait with a yellow dress’ by Safia Elhillo

One of the first articles I wrote for The Crimson was about Safia Elhillo. This poem is the reason. I found it four years ago, scrolling through the r/Poetry subreddit. I don’t remember what I was looking for, but I know that I found myself in tears. I read it so many times that I memorized it, reciting lines under my breath for days. The alliteration, the enjambment, the weight behind each word was all so precious to me. I don’t use Reddit all that much anymore, but every now and then I open the app just to read this poem again. For me, “self-portrait with a yellow dress” is more than a beautiful piece of work or a string of words I used to mutter like some kind of teenage prayer — it’s a reminder. A reminder that “all our dead in the ground make this land ours.” A reminder to “laugh with all my teeth.” A reminder of when “my brother opens his mouth / to laugh & the light pours in through the gap in his teeth.” And maybe, sometimes, it still is a prayer. “Remember me this way / & when they come for me play the song i love / into the space i leave behind.”

—Staff writer Najya S. Gause can be reached at najya.gause@thecrimson.com.

‘English Lit’ by Pat Parker

I stumbled upon Pat Parker’s poems in high school one day, scrolling through YouTube listening to June Jordan’s poems. As a kid trying to figure out my way in the world, I looked to words as a form of expression to grapple with growing up Black in Mississippi. Parker is also from the South, growing up in Houston, Texas, before moving to Los Angeles. When I heard Parker’s poem “English Lit” read out loud for the first time, a spark lit up in my mind. The poem starts in an English class and unsettles the literary canon, with Parker describing how she was taught that writer Franz Kafka, known for his absurd, surrealistic, and frightening stories like “The Metamorphosis,” invoked nightmares incomparable to anyone. In the second half of the poem, Parker flips that assessment, relating it to the problem of the police system and the trauma that it causes Black people. Parker’s poem spans 15 seconds yet encapsulates lifetimes of history. Her words cut through my ears like a knife — short and with accurate precision.

—Staff writer Christian A. Gines can be reached at christian.gines@thecrimson.com.

‘Those Winter Sundays’ by Robert Hayden

Robert Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays” is one of the first poems I remember analyzing for a creative writing workshop years ago, as an example of masterful poetry. It is, in my opinion, one of the best love poems ever written — an enduring and eternally beautiful testament to the devotion and dedication of a father. Immediately noticeable is the exceptional lyricism of the piece — the harsh, consonant-driven language of “blueblack,” “cracked,” and “banked”

give way to stanzas of poetically described scenes of warmth and domesticity, ending with a question that leaves one breathless: “What did I know, what did I know / of love’s austere and lonely offices?” “Those Winter Sundays” is not just a poem about a son’s love for his hard-working father — it is also a profound meditation on gratitude and on the importance of noticing our loved ones and the actions they do for us that are perhaps unappreciated and undervalued.

—Staff writer Caroline J. Rubin can be reached at caroline.rubin@thecrimson.com.

‘Born. Living. Will. Die.’ by Camonghne Felix

The first line of Camonghne Felix’s ars poetica — a poem about poetry — doesn’t even need to mention politics. “Sometimes I think I’m never going to write a poem / again,” Felix writes.

Why write poetry? It’s the question poetry — often deeply political, often politically powerless — has always struggled with. Felix, a previous speechwriter for Andrew Cuomo and strategist for Elizabeth Warren whose writing engages with sexual assault, abortion, and the Black Lives Matter movement, would know the feeling.

Yet she reaches the need for poetry in a line that falls softly, wholly: “and then there’s a full moon.” It’s a transient justification, not one that will settle one’s doubts, yet unmistakably alluring — and inevitable. Poetry insists on its own existence in an inherently poetic world, even if it never fulfills the poet’s striving for practical power. Forming harmony out of this friction, “Born. Living. Will. Die.” is crafted with light and simple vocabulary, graceful clauses paced and balanced perfectly, and a suspension between tender love and aching resignation.

—Staff writer Isabelle A. Lu can be reached at isabelle.lu@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @IsabelleALu.

‘Upstream’ by Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze

Sometimes poetry is better heard than read. There’s something special about feeling the verses reverberate through the stage, and there’s something special about Jean “Binta” Breeze’s poem “Upstream,” and her performance of it.

Born in 1956, Breeze was a Jamaican poet and storyteller, acknowledged as the first woman to write and perform dub poetry, a form of performance poetry that combines reggae rhythms with politically and socially conscious lyrics. In Breeze’s recordings, the synergy between her voice and the accompanying music is encompassing and moving, balanced between outbursts of powerful emotion and quiet moments of yearning and longing.

In “Upstream,” Breeze is demanding, asking the listener to “give [her]” a moment in time, a song, a glimpse of dawn, or even a walk. With her anaphora and repetition, she gathers the gifts to encompass the audience and announce, “somedays the marching drumbeat / to wake the nuclear fears.” Though her verses carry weight, the determined echo of her voice instills a shared feeling of hope and resolve.

Breeze reappropriates the stream-of-consciousness narrative technique and personifies it with “a laughing river,” aching for the listener to hear “the drumbeats on [her] mind.” As the end of her performance nears, I hold my breath and our thoughts become one, carried up the stream.

—Staff writer Erlisa Demneri can be reached at erlisa.demneri@thecrimson.com.