Book excerpt: The haunting refrain of the anonymous spiritual "Were You Dere?," the classic rhymes of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper's "Bury Me in a Free Land," the jazz beat of Maya Angelou's "Times-Square-Shoeshine-Composition," and the exquisite balance of Etheridge Knight's haikus-the entire rich and varied tradition of African-American poetry appears in this superb anthology, unified throughout by the authenticity of experiences wrung straight from the soul.Trouble the Water, the first collection to cover close to 300 years of poetic achievement in 400 important works by African-American writers, features women as half the contributors and includes nearly 50 poems from the 1980s and 1990s.