Poems About Social Justice/Social Issues

I will continue adding to this list as I find new poems. Please leave any recommendations you have in the comments below so I can add them.

·      Langston Hughes

o   “Harlem” (“Dream Deferred”) – “I, Too” – “Let America Be America Again” - “The Weary Blues” – “Theme for English B” – “Madam and the Charity Child” – “Mother to Son” – “Out of Work” – “The Ballad of the Landlord”

·      Countee Cullen

o   “Incident” – “Thoughts in a Zoo” – “Tableau” – “I Have a Rendezvous With Life” – “Uncle Jim” – “Saturday’s Child”

·      Maya Angelou

o   “Still I Rise” – “In All Ways a Woman” – “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” – “On the Pulse of the Morning”

·      Paul Laurence Dunbar

o   “We Wear the Mask” – “Sympathy”

·      Alfred, Lord Tennyson

o   “The Charge of the Light Brigade”

·      Rudyard Kipling

o   “The Last of the Light Brigade” – “Justice”

·      William Blake

o   “The Chimney Sweeper” (from Songs of Innocence) – “The Chimney Sweeper” (from Songs of Experience)

·      Jacqueline Woodson – various poems from Brown Girl Dreaming

·      Robert Frost

o   “Mending Wall”

·      Yusef Komunyakaa

o   “Ghazal, After Ferguson”

·      Ailish Hopper

o   “Did It Ever Occur to You That Maybe You’re Falling in Love?”

·      Tony Hoagland

o   “America

·      Chase Twichell

o   “Corporate Geese” – “Negligent Worldicide”

·      Robinson Jeffers

o   “The Answer” – “The Purse-Seine”

·      Richard Michelson

o   “Counting to Six Million”

·      Nikki Giovanni

o   “The Song of the Feet”

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