https://digitallis.isg.siue.edu/files/original/390ce47523ae882bb6204655383b91aa.pdf c0535edd5626c4a351cad7a91ffb0dc1 PDF Text Text B. RE DMOND, a native of East St. Louis, Illinois, is a graduate of Southern Illino~s University and \Vashington Uni\·ersity (St. Loms) _a~d !!as achieved distinction in several areas of wntmg, mcluding poetry, dram3, journalism, and cf.deism. He has published five books of poetry a:1d recorded a:i album reading his own verse to musical accompam· ment. Cofounder and publisher of Black River Writers Press1 Redmond is also literary executor for the estate of the bte poet and fiction writer H e1:ry DnmJs. C urrently Redmond is ~rofessor of ~ngl_1sh and poet-in-residence at California St~te Umvers1ty, Sacramento, and is one of the co-ordmators of the Annual 111ird World \Vriters and 111inkers Sym· posium held on that c;;mpus. He is in deman~ as a speaker, lecturer, reader, and consultant to _vanous workshops, symposia, and conferences, haV1ng ap· peared before audiences at UCLA, . Berkeley, in H arlem, in ·watts, H oward Umvers1ty, Southern University, and many more. EuGF.NE t': uq OTHER ANCHOR PRESS BOOKS OF INTEREST The Poetry of the N egro EDlTED BY LANGSTON HUGHES AND ARNA BONTEMPS How I Got Ovah: N ew and Selected Poems CAROLYN RODGERS The Mission of Afro-American Poet1y The Gospel Sound TONY HEILBUT Black-eyed Susans: Classic Stories by and about Black Women EDITED BY MARY HELEN WASiiINGTON A C'?ITICAL HISTORY BYEUGENEB.REDMOND Morning Yet on Creation Day CHINUA ACHEBE ANCHOR BOOKS The Black Aesthetic A N CEOR PRESS/ D OUBLEDAY EDITED BY ADDISON GAYLE, JR. CA R DEN CITY, NEW YORK ,,,.. v ◄A &fl(&;M'~ 1976 �r' & ♦a®t +tt:-:b enti?t»il wJb 4 1 'M t:::¾11 J I · yg be-:•?t ~ - t:t:1lf 'e tt •i ~,w,ui4:)+,+1:rJli::U,;,,, -lb: DRUMVOICES tablished a ten-year winning streak. Tolson interrupted his work at "\1/iley to pursue an M.A. in English and comparative literature at Columbia University, where he met V. F. Calverton, editor of The Modern Quarterly. Later, in 1935, at Wiley, Tolso:1's career as a debating coach peaked when his team defeated the national champions, University of Southern California, before eleven hundred people. And in 1947, the same year Tolson was appointed poet laureate of Liberia by President V . S. Tubman, he became English and drama professor at Langston University, Langston, Oklahoma, of which city he served as mayor for four terms. At Langston he directed the Dust Bowl Players and dramatized novels by Walter "\1/hite and George Schuyler. A revered and feared teacher and organizer, Tolson became a legend in his own time. Hardly a student at any Deep South black college had not heard of Tolson's ·work as poet, dramatist, debating coach and educator. His column "Cabbages and Caviar" was a regular in the Vlasbington Tribune during the thirties. Tolson published three volumes of poetry: Rendezvous with America ( 1944), Libretto for the .Republic of Liberia (1953), and H arlem Gallery, Book I: The Curator (1965), and wrote a number of unpublished novels and plays. His work appeared in Th.e Modern Quarterly, Atlantic Monthly, Common Ground, Poetry, and other periodicals. He won numerous awards and citations, among them first place (1939) in the National Poetry Contest sponsored by the American Negro Exposition in Chicago (for "Dark Symphony"); the Omega Psi Phi Award for Creative Literature (1945); Poetry magazine's Bess Hokim Award for the long psychological poem "E. & 0.E." ( 1947); honorary doctorate in letters, Lincoln University ( 19 54); permanent Bread Loaf Fellow in poetry and drama (1954); District of Columbia Citation and Award for Cultural Achievement in Fine Arts (1955); first appointment to the Avalon Chair in Humanities at Tuskegee Institute (1965); and the annual poetry award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, including a grant of twenty-five hundred dollars (1966), the same year he died following three operations for abdominal cancer. As a black poet and intellectual in the mid-twentieth _, A LONG WAYS FRO M H O ME century, Tolson assumed the multi-leveled stance of_ his eighteenth- and nineteenth-century pre~ecessors (Pnnce Hall, Benjami-::i Banneker, James "\1/h1tfield, Alexander Crummell, Frances E . W . Harper, and others) who served as teachers, aboli tionists, revolutionists, defenders of what they believed to be decent in the promise of America, and character models for black communities. Tolson's predecessors fought for the right to be called humans; he fought the battle of integration. As Tolson lay dying, other, younger poets were fighting the battle of self-determination-albeit using the same tools employed by poets and intellectuals of the previous two centuri_es. S~ it is in~eed ironic ( and sad!) when a youn~ wnter like Ha~1 R. Madhubuti (Don L. Lee) complams tha~ Tolson 1s ;1ot accessible to the everyday reader ( see review of Kalezd0scope, Negro Digest, January 1968). But Joy Flasch points out (Melvin B. Toison, 1972} that Tolson was aware that he was not writing for the "average" reader but for the "vertical" audience. In "Omega" of Harlem G allery, Tolson asks if a serious artist should "skim the milk of culture" and give those demanding immediacy and relevancy a popular latex brand? __ _ __.__.,lson- dicLna live, as did Hayden, Bro :vn, Redding, and others, to make clcse contact \vith proponents of the - "E ac, aesthetic" of the 1 6os. But som~pp_onents have continue o ra_,e um over the coals of responsibili.._ty. Black oet Sarah Webster Fa io (Negro Dige.st, Decemoer 1 - halleng.ed Karl Shapiro's statement (Introduction to Harlem Gallery)_ that Tolson "writes _ in Ne ro." Hi p tic language is "most certainly not 'Necrro '" she averred noting that i_L!s "a bizarre, pseudoliter~1 1ction" taken from stilted "American maingrearn" RQe ry, '\vhere if rightfully and wrongmindedly · belonged.'' \Vhite critics :md writers joining in the assault onTolson included Laurence Liebennan ~nd Englishman Paul Bremen ( of the Heritage Series). Lieberman takes exception to Shapiro's statement, saying that he teaches black students from all over the world who are steeped in black language bat do not understand Tolson (review of Harlem Galtery, The Hudson Review, Autumn 1965). Yet Tolson's publishers had high hopes that he might get �DRUMVOICES This poignant revelation is made in the end: I raise my downbent kinky head to charlie & shout I'm black. I'm black & I'm from Look Back. ..,Ne think immediately of such titles as Think Black (Lee) and "Say It Loud-I'm Black and I'm Proud" (James Brown) even though this poem preceded them by several years-to say nothing of Joseph Cotter, Jr.'s '·Is It Because I'm Black?" But White can also do light and touching things, as in "Picnic" and "Day Is Done," whic~ places "music in the air" ~s l?repar7s_ for ,?ed a_n~. hr,~ "woman" sets her hair. Hrs iromc, satmcal Inqms1tive displays the range of these poets. The narrator wonders where "Gods" and "buddhas" hide if the earth and sky are both visible to man. · critical attention has been given tl1e__Hm_y- ~ r -grou or any of the otl1er poets writing during this period. uf they are legion, including well-known as well as unfamiliar names : Jolmson Ackerson, Charles _Anderson (1938- ), Eugene Redmond (1937- ), Julian _Bond (19 40- ), John Henrik Clarke (1915- ), Leslie M. Collins ( 1914- ) , Katherine Cuestas ( 1944- ) , Margaret Danner ( 191 5- ) ,. Gl~ria Davis, Durem, :tv;ari Evans, Ivlicki Grant, Julia Fields ( 1938- )_, Gomon Heath, Horne, Ted Joans (192 8- ), Na?~I ~ad~ett (192 3,- ) , James C. Morriss (1920- ), OH1ggms, Iatterson, James Randall (1938- ), Peter T. Rogers, John Sherman Scott, Carmell Simmons, James W. TI1ompson (1935- ), Vesey, Sarah V\Tright \1929- ), Joyce Y71dell (1944- ), Robert Earl Fitzgerald (1935- ), Calvm •, Hernton ·(1932- ), Lula Lowe Weeden (1918- ), l Lillie Mae Carter, Gloria C. Oden, Mose Carl Holman i 1919- ), Alfred Duckett (191 8- ), J.M. G ates, James } Emanuel (1921- ), Lerone Bennett, Jr. (1928- ), 'I _i£_ Sarah Vlebst r ' bio_(.i9~=-),.Jfoyt Fuller (1927- ), ~~ Carl Gardener (1931- ), Ossie Davis (1922- ), Zack ':! Gilbert (1925- ), Herbert Clark JohD;son (1911- ), ) Bette Darcie Latimer (1927- ), _Oliver ~ Crone ( 191 5- ) , Rivers, Bruce McM. Wnght, Pauli ~urray (1910- ), Roy Hill, Sam Cornish (1938- ), 'Yvonne ?e YltSTIYAI.S AND FtTH'f:RJ.LS 319 Gregory (191<;- ), Frank Yerby (1916-), Nanina Alba (1915-68), Frank London Brown (1927-62.), Isabella Maria fhown (1917- ), Catherine Carter (1917- ), Ernest J. -vVilson, Jr. (1920- ), Mary Carter Smith (1924- ), James P. Vaughn (1929- ), Robert J. Abrams (1924- ), Roscoe Lee Browne (1930- ), William Browne (1930- ), Oliver Pitcher (1923- ), Ishmael Reed (1938-- ), Adam David Miller (1922- ), David Henderson (1942- ), Don Johnson (1942- ), 11rnrmond Snyder, A. B. Spellman (1935- ), Mance Williams, Tom Dent, LeRoi Jones (1934- ), Vivian Ayers, Helen Morgan Brooks, Solomon Edwards (1932- ), Ed Roberson, Vilma Howard, George Love, Allen Polite (1932- ), Lloyd Addison (1931), Hart Leroi Bibbs, Durwood Collins ( 1937- ) , Bobb Hamilton, May Miller, Stanley Morris, Jr. ( 1944- ) , Quandra Prettyman. In anthologies this non-exhaustive list was often intermingled witl1 early poets ( as far back as Phillis Wheatley ), elder ones (Johnson, McKay, Dunbar), a.nd spiced ,vith a good offering of post-Harlem Renaissance poets (Walker, Brooks, Tolson, Hayden). Such names as Fuller, Bennett, Jr., Holman, Yerby, Davis, and Clarke fall in the category of part-time poets-most of whom undertook full-time duties as novelists, editors, laivyers, or teachers. Other important movements parallel to this phase were the emergence of literary magazines (Free Lance, Phylon), especially on black college campuses; black newspapers' renewed interest in verse; establishment of poets in residences at southern black colleges; the flowering of regional "movements" or writing collectives.such as those in New York's Greenwich Village (Yungcn, Umbra, etc.) , Cleveland's Karamu House and Free Lance ( Casper Leroy Jordan, Atkins), Howard's Dasein group, the Detroit poets, and Georgia Douglas Johnson's homebased workshops in Washington, D.C.1 Not all these de- ii i l f t \ t ~ fI f ' f I 1 I t• t f l I 1 Development of a black listening oudienco was a control aim In most of th ese activities. For example, on June 16, 1957, young poets Co :vi n H ern :on ond Rcymo~d Potterson read toge ther ct 316 East 6th S:rcat In New York City. A favo rite New York gotherlng place for readi ngs was the lv'~rk6t f'loce Gallery (2305 Seventh Ave nue) , whor e Roscoe l ee Browne was fea tured In th e lo!e fifrios. In July and ! t 4 l • tf i w~ ,. �37° DRUMVOICES Anthology of Black Phi"ladelphi.a Poets ( 1970) , published by the Black History Museum Committee. Harold Franklin's Introduction states: "A BLACK POET IS A KIND OF WARRIOR"-thus linking Philadelphia sentiments to those in New York and Boston. The Black Butterfly, Inc., a cultural center, was one of the several crossroads for various cultural/political activities in Philadelphia. Its founder was Maloney (now Chaka Ta), whose Dimensions of Morning Sky was published in 1964 in Pamplona, Spain. "Good Friday: 2 A.M." celebrates a "sultry brown girl" who "seems a superior animal." T11is "sepia siren" also holds the "semen" of a "vivid passion." Philadelphia poets explore city life and Africa, and exalt blackness. TI1ere is, too, the rage and vehemence often found in New York and Chicago poetry. "Cool Black Nights" (by Traylor, who died at age twenty-two) also captures driving street rhythms and rough rhymes: them hard-looking hard-talking hard-loving Cool black dudes and them fine-looking fine-walking fine-talking fine-loving them fine soul sisters ..•. In Pittsburgh there was born the short-lived Black Lines: a Journal of Black Studies ( 1970). It published such Pittsburgh-area poets as Ed Roberson, August Wilson and Joanne Braxton, as well as such poets from the Midwest as Al Grover Armstrong and Redmond. The University of Pittsburgh Press opened up to black poets that same year, publishing H arper (Dear John, D ear Coltrane, 1970; So ng: Carz I Get a Witness, 1973), Roberson (Vlhen Thy King Is a Boy, 1970, and Etai-Eken, 1975) and Gerald Barrax (Another Kind of Rain, 1970). Roberson's poetry makes use of the gamut of techniques and styles-from neat drama to slanted spacings and slashes. In "mayday" there is an "underside of heaven" and the FESTIVALS AND FUNERALS 371 warning from one misunderstood that he is "armed" to fight the final kindling of your dreaming. "Othello Jones Dresses for Dinner" is a satirical look at the "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" theme. After dating a white woman, the narrator assures her parc:nts that he is "well mannered." Roberson adds his voice to a growing group of Pittsburgh poets that includes Kiik Hall (1 944- ). Poetic talent has always been sired to the south in Washington, D.C., where Sterling Brown continued to teach into i:he early seventies. Howard, by now leading all l ,hck universities in the new consciousness, was the scene of a number of significant disturbances that nudged the school toward a new image. While Howard's poetic histo1y can be traced through the early days of Sterling Brown ( and into the Howard poets), the school has produced a number of younger writers: Clay Goss, Richard ·wesley, E. Ethelbert Miller (Andromeda, 1<)74), and Paula Giddings. Its new image was deepened and broadened by the appointments of Hie Guiancse poet Damas and Stephen Henderson (English chaim1an at More-. house), who heads the Institute for foe Arts and Humanities. However, the Howard drama was staged against a series of developments in the surrounding communities: Federal City College (Scott-Heron), Center for Black Education (Garrett), New Thing in Art and Architecture (Topper Carew), TI1e New School of Afro-American Thought (Gaston Neal), Drum & Spear Bookstore (and Press) and the D.C. Black Repertory (Robert Hooks). In addition to Damas and Henderson, the instit ute has added Madhubuti (Lee), Killens, Goss, Brown, Arthur P. Davis, and Mmos Zu-Bolton. Already, the program's service to poets h as been invaluable. Selected for special honors have been Baraka, Gwendolyn Brooks, Joans, and Dodson. A number of poets were also featured in the institute's First Annual Symposium: Lucille Clifton, Goss, Scott-Heron, Adesanya Alakoye, Miller, and M ari Evans. Toure, Johnston, and Kgositsile were guests for a program examining the African cultural presence in the Americas. Several poets h ave been invited to read and be recorded �D ~ ...,..,4",► 111WScf'c'6et 37.2 DRUMVOIC:,;s for the permanent audio/video library: Jayne Cortct, - -i~IE=--- - - - 'C ~ ro,..ru..-.c.... h,, · • · Harper, Jeffers, JI' Joans, Redmond, Sonia Sanchez, Scott-Heron, Bruce St. Iohn, Margaret Walker, and Jay Wright. In 1968 Gaston Neal said his "philosophy" was "to purge myself of the whiteness v.-ithin me and link completelv with my black brothers in the struggle to destroy the enemy aud rebuild a black nation." He appeared to be working at that task for a while before the Afro-American school closed. In "Today" be said the tone of his life resembled a "growl mingled" with the groan of the past . . . and he lamented the jungies, which had been deflowered by r.apalm. . . • Karl Carter, another D .C. poet, appears in Understanding the New Black Poetry. He evokes the spirits of the "Heroes" of Orangeburg, Jackson, Memphis, New York, and Nashville, recalling that during a riot in Nashville he was Riding somewhere in my mind with Eldridge Cleaver.. .. "Roots" is an unsuccessful attempt to fuse the drama of colloquial black language with a formal English narrative about his grandmother. Other poets living or publishing in the D.C. area during the sixties and seventies were Bernadette G-Olden ( 1949- ) , Helen Quigless ( 194 5- ) and Corrie and Roberta Haines. Beatrice Murphy ( 1908- ) , who over the years has contributed greatly to the growth and development of black poetry, has edited three important anthologies : Negro Voices (19,38), Ebony Rhythm (1947), and Today's Negro Voices ( 1970) . Her own_volumes. of poetry are Love Is a Terrible Thing ( 1945 J and, with Nancy Arnez, The Rocks Cry Out (Broadside, 1969). Her poetry has moved from a traditional meter to a traditional free verse, dealing in the new phase with tensions cause~ by overemphasizing "white" and "bl~c½," and_war. She 1s currently director of the Negro B1bhograph1c and Research Center and serves as managing editor of its publica- 7I J TIYALS AND FUNERALS 'I· I j 373 t.1n Bibliographic Survey: the Negro in Print. Poetry by I).C.-area poets can be found in Transition, a journal of Howard's Afro-American Studies Department. Editors are ~filler, Iris Holiday, Ella Harding, and Veronica Lowe. The Haineses co-authored As I See It (1973). Many D.C. poets are also fo und in Synergy: D .C. Anthology, edited by Zu-Bolton and Ethelbert Miller (Energy Black South Press, 1975). Adjacent i:o the District of Columbia, in Baltimore, more height is added to the black poetry totem. Lucille Clifton ( 1936-- ) , Sam Cornish ( 1938- ) and Yvette Johnson ( 1943- ) have produced poetry that stands with the best contemporary verse. Good Times ( 1969), Good New.~ About the Earth (1972) and An Ordinary \Voman (1974) are volumes by Lucille Clifton, who also writes children's books. She currently teaches at Coppin State College in Baltimore, where she lives with her husband and six children. Even her titles suggest something about her spirit and temperament. In the swamp of depression and bleakness, it is indeed warming to hear someone proclaim G-Ood News! The "Eldridge" of the 1960s is compared to a meat "cleaver" that will not "rust or break." And there are humor, irony and truth in "Lately" in which the "always drunk" delivery man says : "I'm 25 years old and all the white boys my age are younger than me." \Vhile some sing good times in tl1e kitchen, there are also other acknowledgments: "Malcolm," "Eldridge," "Bobby Seale," and student participants in den1011strations at Jackson and Kent states. G-Ood News About the Earth gives black and contemporary settings to biblical stories. Most are unique, like the very womanly "Mary": I this kiss as soft as cotton over my breasts all shiny bright something is in this night oh Lord have mercy on me J �DRUMVOICES tablishes her right to have "caviar" or " shr_iI?Jp souffic" over "gut" o~ "jowl." Som~ mei:ius and political stances are overexoticized by revolut10nanes, sh_e says, and she has "earned" the riaht to do what she,, likes. She has even b . . . . . ,, heard "Mau Maus" screammg and romanbcizmg pam. But she has paid her dues and had enough pressures ~rom both sides of the color line. The subtle dart, but direct power, of Julia Fields suggests a healthy future for black poetry. ·writers C · i k niversit, the most imporn one taking place in the spring of 1967. Hayden, who h ad been at Fisk since the forties, left in 1968 after. a series of brushes with proponents of the black aestl1ebc. The 1967 conference (probably the straw that b:ok~ the camel's back for Hayden) is seen by some as a ma1or Juncture in the new black writing. Gwendolyn Broo~ talked about it in her autobiography, Margaret Walker discussed it with N ikki Giovanni in their published "conversations," and Hoyt Ful1er wrote glowingly of it in B~ck VVorld. Writers attending the conference were David Llorens, Fuller, Ron M ilner, Clarke, Bennett, Margaret Danne:, Nikki Giovanni, Randa11, Lee, Margaret Walker, Son_i::i Sanchez, Jones, and Margaret Burroughs. frob:ibly hel? m the Soui.h for symbolic reasons, the conference provided the first real "new" national dramatic arena for old and youn.,. writers . G wendolyn Brooks (a "Negro" then, she has s~id) recalls being "col~ly :espect~d" after just havinp, flown to Nashville from white white South Dakota. However she was among the first (with Randall and Fuller) to take up the banner of the black aesthetic and the causes of the voung writers. Such action, of course, was displeasing to number of white and black poets, not the least among them Hayden, who refuses to acknowledge the existence of a "separate" aesthetic for Blacks (Kaleidoscope, 1967, and Blacl< World poll, Januar1 a 1968). I l - Although the Fisk example has been followed by dozens of black colleges all ov~r ~he South, M~~'Yest. and ,,East, there is still no monolithic stand on directions, ~ut some writers keep trying to give them anywa~. O~e indication of the healthy diversity among black wnter~ 1s ~he journal Roots, published at Texas Southern Umvers1ty. FESTIVALS AND FUNERALS t ·i Editors are Tommv Guy, Jeffree James, Turner Whorton, and Mance Willia~11S. Lorenzo T110mas is also associated witli the publication. Volume I, number 1 contains essays, art and tl1e works of several poets, most of them Southeners. The poetry, devoid of monotonous theme or style, represents a broad range of interests in linguistics, subjects aP..d fonns. M'lo, in "a love supreme," says, "all my eyes gazed forever backwards." In "she'll never _k now," 11ic~ey Leland writes of various aspects of the social and physical landscape including the "Kinky haired boys" who build "arsenals 'of straw." Clarence Ward notes in "Hanging On" that the rent has gone up, eviction is imminent, faere is no food for the baby, and Hanging on aint easy. . .. I J. ahmad j.'s title "Hard Head Makes a Soft Ass" implies the poem's statement. And far.tasy eternalizes, "like a good high," for Tommy Guy in "Brother." The themes of unity, self-esteem, the African "motherland," and anger remain in the new poetry as the Midwest and West contribute immensely to its brilliance and the controversy. Ohio, for example, represented a uaique gathering of diverse views on the new consciousness, attracting a number of poets to aid the work of Nom1an Jordan (1938- ), Atkins, Jam es Kilgore (all from Cleveland ) and Hernton. Now at Oberlin, Hernton succeeded Redmond as writer-in-residence there a year after Quincy Troupe began a residency at Ohio l!nivers~ty. Sarah Webster Fabio has also taught at Oberlm dunng Hemton's leave of absence. However, Cleveland-area activity was spurred by a long tradition of black writers including Dunbar, Hughes, Chesnutt ( one of the founders of Karamu House ) and Atkins. This continuum produced Jordan and a host of younger poets: Anthony Fudge, Larry Howard, Larr1 \,Vade, Art Nixon, Clint Nelson, Robert Fleming (Ku \Vais magazine), Alan Bell, Roland Forte, T ed Hayes, Elmer Buford, and Bill Russell of the Muntu poets. Ci:J.1er participating writers-artists were Clyde Shy, Ameer Rashid, a:i.d Anetta Jefferson. Support for poets and their activities came from various places: the Cleveland Call and Post, Afro-Set Black Arts Project, United Black Artists. Free Lance, and Karamu House I i �~- . .,...,,.,.,...y);,: d F'ESTIVALS AND FUNERALS DRUMVOIC ES life, love and ancestry. Exceptional pieces are the folksy "Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane," the mystical and mythical "He Sees Through Stone," the genealogical "The Idea of Ancestrv" the innovative haiku sections, and "On Universalism'" which warns against applying "universal laws" to Blacks' "pains" and "chains" in America. His technical abilities are poignantly displayed in haiku "9": i Making jazz swing in Seventeen syllables AIN'T No square poet's job. Knight, who was later rele;;sed from prison, also edited Bl,ack Voi~es from Prison ( 1970) , and in 1973 Broadside Press published Bell)' Song and Other Poems. He loses bis re,a ch when he overintellectualizes in his poetry. And Poems .is not surpassed by Belly Song. The second book has some fine moments, but it sometimes slips into polemics. However, Knight is still stretching out as a poet, currently doing research into oral literature with the aid of a Guggenheim grant. Belly shows him pursning this tradi. tion in "The Bones of My Father," which smile at the moon in Mississippi from the bottom of the Tallahatchie. Fina~ly, a number of poets from this general region of the Mr?west and South are included in a special blackpoetry rss~e of Negro American Literature Forum (spring 1972) edited by Redmond. T:1e Forum is published by Indiana State University School of Education and edited by John Bayliss, an Englishman. It regularly reviews black literature. Chicago is a Midwest heart and has a long tradition of black arts, going back to, and before, Count Basie's opening at the Sunset Club, in 1927. However, some of the more recent forces helping to shape the new poetry movement there are South Side Community Arts Center, the formidable Johnson Publications, Kuumba's Workshop and Root Theater (Francis and Val Ward), the DuSable Museum of African American History (Margaret Burroughs), Organization of Black American Culture, Insti- tute of Positive Education and Third ,vorld Press (Madhubuti), Free Blach Press.• Afro-Arts Theater, Malcolm X College, Oscar Brown, Jr., Muhammad S{Jeal~s (now Bilalian News), Eilis's Bookstores, Chicago Defender, and Philip CohraP. (Artistic Heritage Ensemble). Much of the new poetry scene generates from OBAC and Gwendolyn Brooks. Fuller, former Black \Vorld managing editor, is also adviser to OBAC's Writer's \Vorkshop. In a 1969 (fall) issue of Nommo, the workshop's journal, Fuller said: Black is a way of looking at the world. The poets of OBAC, in revealing their vision, celebrate their blackness. In this moment in history, what might under different circumstances be simply assumed must necessarily be asserted. And the OBAC poets know--if others do not-that pale men out of the West do not define for mankind the perimete1s of art. This they want all black people to know. I In the jourml's winter issue of the same year, Fuller said OBAC members were "seeking" to be "both simple and profound." They display an •'imaginative representation of their experiences," but they also seek "to be revolutionary." In the first quote, Fuller's tone, carrying the battle-baiting phrase "even if others do not," seemed to have been a signal for, among others, Don L. Lee (1942- ) , to continue his own relentless attacks on all fronts. There are no sacred cows, as Lee sees it, and since "others do not" know what the youthful Chicago Blacks presumably did know, Lee's assignment seems to have been to teach them. Gwendolyn Brooks concurred with most of this feeling, embracing as it were a "new" blackness and (unfortunately) engaging in self-deprecation: "It frightens me to realize that, if I had died before the age of fifty, I would have died a 'Negro' fraction." Lee, following the examples of Randall and Baraka, began Third World Press-a valuable vehicle for the new poets-and changed his name in the early seventies to H aki R. Madhubuti. He also established the Institute for Positive Education, which publishes Black Books Bulletin ( with himself as editor). Other poets included in the editorial staff are Sterling Plurnpp ( 1940- ) , Johari Amini (Jewel Latimore) �7 ' 388 1 re tr:aft'➔ 171 •l&'iiloal'1irlm, ·ii,!biri I ttott::::t:4illt - etile'•, -..,_ FESTIVALS AND FUNERALS DRUM VO ICES (1935- ), Emanuel, Sarah r Fabio the late David Llorens (who aunched Lee's national career in Ebony, March 1969), and Dudley Randall. OBAC was founded in 1967; poets of varying temperaments were attracted to it and to Gwendolyn Brooks's workshops : Carolyn . Rodgers (1943- ), Walter Bradford (1937- )~ Carl Clark (1932- ), Mike Cook (1 939- ), James Cunningham (1936- ), Ronda Davis (1940- ), Sam Greenlee, Philip Royster (1943- ), Peggy Kenner ( 1937- ) , Madhubuti, Linyatta (1947- ), Sharon Scott (1951- ), Sigemonde Wimberli (Ebon) (1938- ), and a continuous stream of newly arriving poets. Other Chicago-area poets are Stephany Fuller (1947- ), Eugene Perkins, Irma McLaurin, Lucille Patterson, Jerrod, Zack Gilbert (1925- ), Alicia Johnson (1944- ), Ruwa Chiri, Robert Butler, and Barbara McBain ( 1944- ) . The work of many Chicago-area poets can be found in Nommo, Black Expressions, Black World, Black Writers' News, Muhammad Speaks, and in the anthologies A Broadside Treasury ( 1971 ) and Jump Bad: a New Chicago Anthology ( 1971), both eclited by Gwendolyn Brooks. They can also be found in numerous other nationally distributed anthologies and journals. Black World, as name and concept, was a concession won by Chicago-area artists and activists who protested against the old name, N egro D igest, in tl1e late sixties. Until April of 1976, when Johnson Publishing Company ceased publishing it, Fuller guided Black World's new image through tl1e choppy waters of controversy and change. But many readers have been critjcal of Black World's particularized stands, its lack of "open" forum on some issues, and its tendency to circumscribe individuals and groups. Nevertheless the journal has been an indispensable aid to black poets and writers, printing their work, identifying anthologists,dn?ti£ng ~ books published, and serving as facilitator and con mt or .i prizes and contact. At the same time, however, the Afro- I American community faces the challenge of producing a journal tbat can reflect its new sophistication and thought. Among all new poets, Madhubuti is second only to Nikki Giovanni in the number cf accolades and the com· mercial attention he and his poetry have received. A 1 j I\ •~§i,btie, sampling of critics, poets, and scholars who feel he is one of the greatest of the new poets would have to include St;phen Henderso?, ~uller, Gwendolyn Brooks, Margaret v\ alker, Paula C1ddmgs, Baraka, Mari Evans, Randall, and Gayle. Gwen~olyn Brooks has said he physically rese1:1bl~ Jesus Chnst, and her Introduction to 1ump Bad hai~s him as "the. most significant, inventive, 'and influential black poet m _tl~e country." Overlooking, for the mon;i_ent, th~, prereqmsite. of reading "all" the poetry in the. co~ntr~ before makmg such a statement it is para?Ox:c~l m_ view of the "collective" policy- and the antimdiv1duahst positions-that allegedly £01m the cornerstone of the Chicago poetry scene. Madhub~ti has published five volumes of poetry: Think Black! (1907), Black Pride (1968), Don't Cry, Scream (1_969~, We Walk the Way of the New World ( 1910 ), Dzrectzonscore: _Selected and . New Po~ms ( 1971 ) and The Bo?k of Life (1973). His Dynamite Voices, Vol. I (Broadside Press), publi?h~d in 1971, is a study of four!een black poets of the sixbe~; but, like his other criticism, it reveals that he :s_ a hazy tlunker who lacks discretion and a firm unders~andmg the black poetry tradition. He spend~ an ~tire_ page, ror example, illuminating and apparently ad,ocatmg the use of the word "motherfucker." And any ?ook about the sixties should not come off the press without examining tl1e poetry of LcRoi Jo~es/Imamu Baraka. Madhubuti attributes the fothersl?p of the new black poetry to Baraka but does not ~iscuss th~ man's poetry. T11ere are other, incredible flaws m the book, for which this young poet's mentors must s~are some blame. As a critic, he did not ( could not!) cultivate the "distance" of a Johnson, Brown, Redding, or He_n~erson, and consequently- lacking discipline and ~amm&-could not really see the poetry. The book's :ed~emmg . values, such as they are, possibly reside in its mcidental mformation and bibliography. As a poet, Le~ f~res ~etter, employing ,vit, irony, under. St~te~en!, a~~ sigmficat10n ( e.g., "In the Interest of Black awation : Jesus saves-S&H Green Stamps") But there exc~1_lent _poets in Chicago who have been dwarfed by b~ pohticalT 1:11age (P1umpp, Cunningham, Rodgers, Gil. h~rt, etc.) ,.His themes range from what Artl1ur P. Dr,vis "s called TI1e New Poetry of Black Hate," through love o! ]? ·, t Il II I I �j J DRUMVOICES Washington University in St. Louis, and recently returned to Los Angeles. Jayne Cortez went to New York, where she has lived and wTitten since the late sixties. Her three books are Pissstained Stairs and the Monkey Man's ~.;:vares ( 1969), Festivals and Funerals ( 1971), and Scarifications ( 197 3) . She has also recorded an Lp, Celebrations and Solitudes ( 1974). Her themes and styles are broad, but mostly they embrace music as aspect and form. Africa as stmggle and spirit is also a dominant theme in her poetry. Pissstained is especially rich in its interweavings of music and indexes of struggle. "TI1e Road" is " where another Hank moans" and is Stoney Lonesome. • •• "Lead" describes the kind of hard life that is "cracklin hot at sunrise." Lead, of course, is Leadbelly, whom the "nigguhs" desperately want to hear spit the blues out. Her struggles are more than simple "contrivances" as they chronicle the hardships and good times of Dinah, Bird, Omette, Coltrane, "Fats" Navarro, Clifford Brown, and others-a veritable poetic tapestry of black expression in defiance of death, from one who would ("Hungry Love" ) ••. eat mud to touch the root of you . . . . l' Among other Southern California poets are Robert Bowen (1936Sherley Anne Williams, Arthur Boze (1945- , Kinamo Hodari (1940- ), Dee Dee McNeil ( 1943- , Bill Thompson and Lance Williams. A popular Watts counterpart of The Last Poets of New York are the Prophets of Watts, who have recorded several Lps. Northern California als e_ctsJ:he varied inJ:~rests and backgrounds of black poets and writers. Indeed, a listing of poets and writers from the general San Francisco Bay area reads like a national convention : Gonc;alves (1937- ), Reed, Al Young (1939- ), Harper (1938- ) (now at Brown), Ntozake Shange (1948- ), Conyus ( 1942- ) , Clyde Taylor, Victor Hernandez Cruz (1949- ), Angelo Lewis (1950- ), L. V . Mack (1947- ), Miller, Thulani Nkabinde (1949- ), Lawrence McGaugh ( 1940- ) , Cecil Bro'Nn, El Muhajir (:Marvin X), (1944- ), Leona Welch, Joyce Carol FESTI VALS AND FUNERA LS Thomas (1938- ), Joseph McNair (1948- ), David Henderson ( 1942- ) , Jon Eckels, Glen Myles (1933- ), George Barlow (1948- ), Ernest Gaines, Herman Brown (Muumba), Pat Parker, De Leon Harrison (1941- ), Sarah , r s Fabi 9.z_& William Anderson, Maya Angelou ( 1928- ) and Alli and M~c?ev,:eo Aweusi (Words Never Kill, 197 4) . Bayarea activity m the arts has been heightened and enhanced by the San Francisco Afro-American Historical and Cultural Society, bookstores such as More, Marcus and New Day ( Gon9alves), activities of Black Panthers and similar ~oups, the DEEP Black \Vriters Workshop, tl1e Rainbow Sign cultural center in Berkeley, Nairobi College, and numerous other cultural and literary projects. Poems by many of these bards are included in Miller's Dices or Black Bones ( 1970), Journal of Bl-a.ck Poetry, Yardbird Reader (a semic:nnual edited by Reed, Young, Brnwn and l\:iyles), Umbra Blackworks (Henderson, all issues, especially 1970-71), and other nationally distributed an- \ I i I thologies and periodicals.5 Reed, a strange and original writer, has published tluee volumes of poems: catechism of a neoamerican hoodoo church (1971) , Conjure: Selected Poems, 1963- 1970 (1972), Chattanooga (1973), and four novels. Volumes of poetry an~ more_fiction are forthcoming. His work has drawn a cunous mixture of adjectives from critics: "brilliant/' ,:•cute," "jumbles and puzzles," "important," "bad ~om1c~ and so on. Indeed, Reed writes his poetry themes mto h_1s novels and_ his ~ction themes into his poems, thm revealmg an ~rrestmg literary continuum. In this service, he e1:1~loys d1~lects, Voodoo, the occult, whimsicality, wit, mysticism, satire, which he obviously enjoys, all reinforced by assort~d library information and street expressions. He v10lates time barriers, placing an ancient Greek figure in a contemporary poem, or vice versa. His verse forms are experi_m~n~al, roug~ly recalling the beats and other past stylistic meverenc1es. But a close reading will show him in the tradition sf Dunbar, Toomer, and Tolson. There are no sacred cows for Reed, who sometimes Iambasts black nationalists and white liberals in the same poem. Gener6 1n The works o f many Northern Califo rnia writers con al so be found " A rts & litera ture" issue of Th e Block Scholar, June 1975, ° special t II � 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_39 Title A name given to the resource Copy of excerpts from published Drumvoices: The Mission of Afro-American Poetry: A Critical History with handwritten notes Description An account of the resource Copy of excerpts from published Drumvoices: The Mission of Afro-American Poetry: A Critical History with handwritten notes. Includes title page, p. 248-249, p. 318-319, p. 370-373, p. 380-381, p. 386-389, p. 406-407. Relation A related resource Eugene B. Redmond Digital Collection Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource For digital rights and permissions, see <a href="https://www.siue.edu/lovejoy-library/about/policies.shtml">https://www.siue.edu/lovejoy-library/about/policies.shtml</a> or contact <a href="mailto:library@siue.edu">library@siue.edu</a> for direct inquiries. In copyright. <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Redmond, Eugene B.