African American Poetry: A Digital Anthology

African American Sonnets: A Collection (faster loading page)

The sonnet is one of the most persistent and popular European poetic forms. Traditionally, sonnets have fourteen lines, fixed meter (often ten syllables to a line in English sonnets and Iambic Pentameter), and a fixed rhyme scheme. Since the early modern period – and perhaps due in part to the popularity of Shakespeare’s sonnets, the sonnet form has also been associated with expressions of romantic love or desire. The most common English sonnet form has fourteen lines, grouped into three rhyming groups of four lines (quatrains) and a final two lines (couplet); this is also called the Elizabethan sonnet, as it was favored by Shakespeare. Alongside the Elizabethan sonnet, many poets use the Petrarchan sonnet format, which consists of a group of eight lines and six lines, with a somewhat different rhyme scheme. 

Some sonnets in the African American tradition do follow these patterns, but others break the pattern in various  ways. One important innovation in African American poetry is the frequent use of the sonnet form in poems focused on social justice and racial justice themes. Black poets from this period used this very conventional -- but also flexible -- European form to celebrate revolutionary and militant figures like Toussaint L'Ouverture or John Brown, or to condemn racialized violcence. 

The two most famous writers of sonnets from this period are probably Paul Laurence Dunbar and Claude McKay. McKay's most influential sonnet is "If We Must Die," widely interpreted as a response to the racialized violence of the "Red Summer" of 1919. With Dunbar, a good sonnet to start with might be "Slow Through the Dark," though others might be of interest as well. 

A good place to learn more about African American sonnets is Hollis Robbins' 2020 book Forms of Contention: Influence and the African American Sonnet Tradition. In her book, Robbins charts the emergence of the African American sonnet tradition, from early writers like Phillis Wheatley and George Moses Horton, to contemporary practitioners like Natasha Tretheway and June Jordan. Robbins has chapters that cover the primary period for this Digital Anthology, with close readings of Dunbar and McKay as well as a host of other writers, including Georgia Douglas Johnson, Leslie Pinckney Hill, H. Cordelia Ray, James Corrothers, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Lucian B. Watkins, and Joseph S. Cotter, Jr. 

As of October 2025, we have identified and tagged about 130 poems in the Digital Anthology as sonnets. There are likely more poems in the collection yet to be tagged. -AS