https://digitallis.isg.siue.edu/files/original/97e7e9754096894f727e9f7a4879e1ac.pdf ea36f4028d6ba841eae1db28171e2a9d PDF Text Text ~ ~ I j PREFACE "'i;:r L-- At this perilous juncture in,J'l ack history, on the eve of America's / i jtentennial and a.mid~ a new wave of Third World/ umanism, Drumvoices comes as a partial rebuttal to those who say poetry's impact on ma~ind's conscious i o( 9!::v,...,.v01e._J>.s 't-ness has been insignificant. The thesisAis simple: vthat God's trombones have {: historically lared through or soothed the harsh and stark realities of the Afro= American/ xperience; and that the sources (records) of these blarings and soothl, sayine;5, locked in cultural safe-deposit boxes of drums and the intricate acoustics " of the folk, remain accessible to anyone desiring to tap them. Such source \ spirits ("roots") are what the author has tried to conjure up in Drumvoices, which owes great debts to a lengthening line of marvelous visionaries, ; known and unknown / As a reference work, this text makes a modest attempt to follow in the tradi{-tion of Vernon LogginW ~he Negro Author in America, Benjamin Brawley's Early I Negro American Writers and The Negro Genius, Sterling A. Brown's Negro Poetry and Drama and J. Saunders Redding's To Make ;/ Poet Black . 7 We have also profitt" ed immensely from related works by George Washington Williams, Benjamin E. Mays, - gohn Hope Franklin, Fralz Fanon, Loften Mitchell and Dorothy Porter . A Of the literary historians and critics, only Brown is concerned exclusively with poets /4 th! ough Mrs. Porter's many offerings also include a chect ist of~ lack poets. Loggins' study views .Zlack authors up until 1900; and Reddingi , Brown and Brawley examine them through the mid 1930s. Drumvoices combines all previous ·-~ ventures in the area of the poetryMgiving new interpretations and updating an / exciting history which began with Lucy TerrYi who wrote a poem 229 years ago. Initially conceived as a monologue and later enlarged to its present size, Drumvoices is aimed at students and teachers of)Elack poetry, literature, history and culture . will benefit . However, the author hopes that all who read from these pages The very general thesis stated above is consistent]q implied in �the book's approach . And unlike some recent works, this one does not present a consciously labored construct or aesthetical matrix, · lack/ationalism, /an- Africanism, the /J-ack/esthetic or p..ienation, though none of these alternatives " has been overlooked whenever and whereJver poets or critics have dealt significantly with them. Occasionally chronology is violate~ since any time barrier is, by definition, arbitrary0 (It was impossible to find birth or death dates for some of the early poets . ) Also arbitrary is the author's selection of poets and emphasis on various styles, techniques, themes or periods . Yet the organization of the text is somewhat original since, at the time of this writing, no single work has discussed)3lack poetry from its beginnings into the 1960s and 1970s. ----------- As a history, Drumvoices includes six chapters: I, :Entrodud::::i:on-I3lack Poetry: ~ "" III, Views, Visions, Conflicts; II, The Black and Unknown Bards-t-=Folk ~oo4;.s; L c~) ,.,.,. ,. Africanf oice in Eclipse~ Imitation and Agitation (1746~1865); IV, Jubile~, Jujus and Justices (1865/jJ-910); V, A Long Ways ,,/rom Home (1910~1960); VI, Festivals and Funerals : Black Poetry of the 1960s and 1970s. Finally, there is a / iblio graphical_;/n-dex . a The historical aspect of this two-pronged study (critical and historical) dominates . the rationale being that a text I chronicles the development of the poetry is a prerequisite to sound critical assessment . Also, the author was not unmindful of the fact that most anthologies or studies oFrecent f lack poetry are generally "loaded" and top - heavy with hoi sehold namest but none of them has extended ~ vision to include a representative ("complete" is out of the question) look at the numerous important centers where this poetry is being created. It seemed a worthwhile task, then, simply to suggest the demographic range of the new poetry . ~ ,1,•'"' the author Such is the attempt made in Chapter V~ wl:.e.J:::.e h has purposely decentralized a star-dominated pattern in the new poetry in favor of a more truthful and historical picture of its development . One can pick up �' < a journal or book in practically any library and read glowing praise of the new poetry; hence the aut S has simply referred readers to these comments instead of ret hashiI?,g them here. Unfortunately, significant were not available to the aut~ 9t ~centur;'1-ack poetry while c~ ters on these areas were being written. But Jean Sherman's Invisible Poets: Afro- Americans of the 19th Century and M.r , Richmond's Bid the Vassal Soar: Interpretive Essays on the Life and Poetry of P ~llis Wheatley and George Moses Horton, when finally received, provided additional insight and caused some slight reshuffling of this text. servic~ Of great Early Black American Poets, William Robinson's important anthology (with notes); at this writing, it remains the best such source for the period. The author is also indebted to a number of important works on@ h~century .,..ziack poetry: Jean Wagner's Black Poets of the United States: /rom Paul Laurence Dunbar to Langston Hughes, Arthur P. Davis' From the Dark Tower: Afro-American Writers, 19ooi4196O, Donald Gibson's Modern Black Poets, Blyden Jackson~ and Louis Rubin's Black Poetry in America, George P . Kent's Blackness and the Adventure of Western Culture and Joy Flasch's Mtvin B. Tolson . A book does not just happen1 and the fuel for this one has. been pouring in over a number of years and from a great many sources. Germinating ideas came from various quarters: students, friends, teachers ana..,most importantly, ~ at Southern Illinois University's Experiment in High~ ucation in East St. Louis . The literally hundreds of poets, writers and thinkers (in Watts, New York, Chicago, New Orleans, Atlanta, Detroit, Cleveland, etc.), with whom the author has met and talked through nights and days, now stand faceless and nameless, but they are as much a ~art of this book as the author himself. - Of special significance were the critical readings of sections of this text by Ted Hornback, friend and former teacher; critic Clyde Taylo) who prompted much X �r¢ hinking and ret writinglj\ and Charles Rowel~ who should have been commissioned to write the chapter on folklore. Likewise, for their patience, assistance and great stores of information, debt is ......,0wed to librariaas at California State While a book does not just happen in the mind, neither does it miraculously ,f.A- ;J appear on the page. ,,;v Hours of meticulous and relentless work~ invested by my graduate assistant Julie Blattle:s, who worked ~ bibliographical and tefua1 problems~/ ounger assistants in these matters ±fie~~eith Jefferson and Ronald Tibbs. However, a lion's share of producing this book was assumed by A/ Marie Collins, supervisor of Sacramento's Oak Park School of Afro-American a -1)[; .t.l ,t. <&,,,-...j.;( Thought, who typed criticize~ and oi:/.herwise committed herself to the project. ~ Beverly Williams, CSUS English secretary, also shared a portion of the typing r) load. Finally, my gracious editor, Marie Brown, deserves a huge salute for her encouragement, concern and continued support of the writing-research through to the end. Onward, the FOETS! Eugene B. Redmond ¥arch ,~97~ ...:!!!Y Sacramen , California �:...:,, I , ( (acknowledgements to come { 5 ms pages) .) AC !{)I GVJ i- e;·\ ~&:ftvl t NT S "'-- I \ f I( I �,;,,,.J I'I JvJ DRUMVOICES > I </ I I .'r2 ~ y...,.af - <:_ I /.:), # ., J '-{j-O(;i) � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Eugene B. Redmond Digital Collection Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context EBRWritings_09_03 Title A name given to the resource Editor's proof, Drumvoices: The Mission of Afro-American Poetry: A Critical History, preface, acknowledgments, title page, typed with handwritten edits, p. vii-xvii Description An account of the resource Drumvoices: The Mission of Afro-American Poetry: A Critical History, editor's proof, preface, p. vii-xvii. Page numbering includes five manuscript pages for the Acknowledgements section that had not yet been written but were included in the anticipated page numbering. Relation A related resource Eugene B. 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