https://digitallis.isg.siue.edu/files/original/3291346c8a525ff5222ea19940bc3363.pdf 8a75d024e0b246b5df1aaa5ddc4931b4 PDF Text Text D. THE EXTENDED RENAISSANCE: JO's, '.i O's, SO's Some critics say the Harlerr. ~enal ssance was simply the peak of nearly a century-long Afro-American push in ar c , belles lettres and consciousness-raising. And, as observed earlier, there is a ls o diver gent opinion over whether an actual "Renaissance" occurred. But, ar gume n ts aside, the stock market crash of 1929 is generally viewed as the official end of the designated Renaissance--since white patronage ended and the writers had n o t developed followings among the Black grass roots. Important here also are positions : a ken by two important critics 11 of the era: Sterling Brown and J. S,i unders Reddin g . Both feel the Harlem move- ment was primarily a fad; Brown referred to Harlem as a "show-window" and Redding claimed the writers mistook Harlem f e r real Black life: First of all, Ne gro writerE, both poets and novelists, centered their attentions so exclusjvely upon life in the great urban centers that the city, especially tBrl en, became an obsession with them. Now Harlem life is far fron1 typ~cal of Negro life; indeed, life there is lived on a theatrtcal rlane that is as far from true of He g ro life elsewhere as life in the Latin Quarter is from the truth of life in Picarcly. 1'he Negro writers' mistake lay in the assumption that what th saw was Negro life, when in reality it was just Harlem life . purposes anyway, Harlem be1:ame or ganism . Very shortly, f o r literary ,1 sort of disease in the American (To Ma ke /\ Poet ~ ) ny way of parallel, it is ins t r11 c tiv 1• to note that a leading contemporary Black 7 c ritic, Addison Cayle, Jr., a cc 11ses 1: la ck writers of t h ~ o f being similarly remiss . In th e Sept~nber, 1974, issue of Black World, Gayle discusses /1 �i "The Black Aesthetic: 10 Yea rs Lat e r' 1 and attempts to lay out a blue-print for "Reclaiming th e South e rn Experi e n ~e." Gayle ' s claim that hardly any of the new Black literature is rooted in th e South shows him to be less familiar with recent !Hack writing than he should b ~. (See , for example, the works of Dumas, Alice Walker, Pinki e Lane, J\rth e nia BJt e s , Alvin Aubert, and others.) But , generally, hi s thesis, J e rived fro m J :J hn Oliver Kil l e ns's statement, ·"we are a Southern people," is solid and \\ell- t ak en. The works o f !Hack po e ts in th e three decades followin g the 1920s represented a combination of Re na iss .:i nce- .:i nJ American-inspired technical and thematic ,I interests. The Gr eat De pressi c n waf:1 f elt world-wid e , among Blacks, whites, poor and rich. The drou ghts , r e f e rred t o i n Cuney's "Hard Time Blues," the ravages of th e Boll ~Je e vil, t he plight ~ f th o sha recroppers, the drive of all workers toward unioniza tion, anJ the att racnon of th e Communist Party (with its cl40 of racial unity anJ e qu a l i ty), ;: 11 i ns pired and informed Afro-American poetry of the thirti e s, forties and fifties , So did lynching, unemployment, Black history and cultur a l recl a mat i or1 and protest; but the tendency, in general, was > to seek the deliveranc e o f "all men. •t McKay, Hughes and ·others (in the twenties a nd thirties) t e asing ly ex pl or ed th e pot e nt i alities of Communism. ) Desperately seeking to ~ uf ( er th e Jehumaniz .ng ti roe~ of r a ci s m in artists, int e l le ctua l s a nd wriL1 :r s h~<l no t only become Communists, but int e gr a ti onist s , Pa n-A f r ica nist:. or c edi ca ted s ee kers o f the Ame rican Dream as civil s c rv ,rnt s or mode l c iti ,:e n;;. F1 w of th e writers, however, followed the example of Richard \fri ght o r W.l i . B. J1uilols w\ joined the Party. 7 But whatever the stances, th e y G a s t agai nst 1: he p,, nor ama o fj the Depres s ion in the thirties , WWII in th e fortie s , and Ko r e a ,1nc.l M1 .Carthyi s m in th e fifties. Comp a red to th e f ir s t thrc1! dec 11 Jes of the century, relatively little Black ( J) �poetry was publishcJ in book fo~m bc1 ween 1930 and 1960. In a 1935 article in Opportunity Alain Locke lamented the low quality and quantity of post-Renaissance poetry. With the exception of llughe 1, and Cullen, most of the pens were silent durin g the thirties. Severi.11 y1JUn gej' poets, however, made their debuts. Harchall Davis (1905-- ) and Ster inc A. Brown (1901-- and then were not heard from nf : er t\1e decade. Frank ) made major splashes ) Robert Hayden (1913-- Melvin B. Tolson (1900-1%6) an.J Mnq ,nret Walker (1915-- , ) also made first appearances in the thirti es but they sustained lengthy and productive careers. Fiction writer Richard Wri ght (L908- .960) was an occasional poet who joined the thirties 1.;roup. A second wave df ro 1:ts, some oc ca sional and all "transitional," appeared in the forties, f.iftie, anc..1 early sixties: Dudley Randall (1914- (1915-- (1915- ) , Gw~ndol :rn Brooks (1917-- ), Pauli Murray (191J-- O' Higgins (1918-- Long Madgett (1923-Lance Jeffers (1919-- ), Myron ), Hruce McM. Wright (191 8-- ) , Ray Durem ), Gloria C. Oden (1923-- ), Naomi ), May :1ille·, llelen Johnson Collins (1918-) , Russell ,1tkins (1926-- ) , James C . Morriss (192 0,-- Sarah E. Wrl1;ht (1929-- ) to nam · !H>mc. ), ), Margaret Danner ), Samuel Allep (also Paul Vesey, 1917-- ) , M. Carl llolman (1919- (1929-- Owen Dodson (1914-- ) , ), Raymond Patterson ), Oliver Pitcher (1923-- ), and Most of thls transitional group did not get a real hearin g until tlw six: ies; they will be looked at as a group in Chapter Vl. Dozens others published or wrote occasionally, Of the poets writing in the thirties, Brown separates then into "new realists" and "romantics." The word "romantic" seems t o be anala~;ou; to "library;" and both are used to speak somewhat disparagingly of poets thus cate~orized. The "realists" and writers of protest included Well>orn Victor J~nkins (Trumpet in the New Moon, 1934), Frank Marshall IJav iH and \-Jri i.; ht. Those co ,ccrne<l with "romantic escapes" were "Z ...,J �Alpheus Butler (Make Way for llappin c ~~ • 1932), J. llarvey L. Baxter (That Which Concerneth Me, 1934; Sonnets for th e Ethiopians and Other Poems, 1936), Eve Lynn (No Alabaster Box), Marion Cuth~ e rt (April Grasses, 1936) and Mae Cowdery (Lift Our Voices). The romantics wr q te about nature, delicacy, love, quaintness and their work reflects a more "bookish" learning than anything else. Brown said that Jenkins' work de s erve, , "an o ri g inal place in Negro poetry" .but Trumpet in The New Moon is out of print; a n~ Jenkins' poetry is absent from every anthology I of Afro-American poetry. llis pc.,etic sketches of the Black life encompass prac- tically every important fa c et. Thou gh owing much to Whitman and Sandburg, Jenkins' work is still important enough (o he Ireissued as well as anthologized. Wright, often called the fc.th e r of the modern Black novel, was a poet in his own right. No other Americ;an writer's personal oddyssey has been so bleak and difficult as Wright's. Fror11 pov Qrty, orphanhood, educational deprivation and racism, he emerged as one oi tl1e most influential and dominant forces in American literature. Not only c,id a so-called "Wright School" of Black writers result from his efforts, but co~1ntl eq s white writers also imitated Wright. His most discussed novel, Na t i v ~l (19 110), was a Book-of-the-Month selection. It summed up the emotional anJ psy~,holo ~ical history of Black urban America over the preceding 20 years. His autobio n rapl1ical lilack Boy (1945), published five years later in 1945, reveals hi ~. (an ~ the race's) miRration to the northern United Stat e s and chronicles tli(, hop us (a nd later disillus i onments) of Blacks "Northboun'" to seek th e Promisrd La11 d. Wright also publi.she<l numerous other collections of short stori e s, m,,vel s , and journalistic writings. As a po e t, however, Wri ght 1de se tves more than a passing interest. the Communist Party in the tltirt ie s c1 nd remained a member until 1944. lle joined His poetry, containing protest coupled with call ~ for unity among Blacks and wl1ites, was �published in va rious journals ant newq organs of the period: Literature, New Masses, A~v il, Mj_dLrntl, and Left. International Much of his poetry is quoted in Dan McCall's 'l'he Example of R~char1 Wright (1969) and his poems appear in The Norton Anthology of Modern Pc ,etry (Ellman and O'Clair), The Negro Caravan, The Poetry of Black Anwr le a , Ame1~ 1':egro Poetry and other anthologies . Wright was born near Natchez, Mississip11i, ard experienced an erratic educational and home-life pattern. By the time he ra1 away from home at 15, he had lived in nearly a doz e n different cities. Fln,lly moving to Chicago, he worked for the Federal Writers' Project during 1: he D1 ,pression (becoming a friend to Davis, Margaret Walker and others). Possessing 11n un1 .uenchable thirst for both reading and writing, Wright continued a mental <1nc.l pli:1sica world. journey which carried him all over the lie tllc-tl in 1960 in l'arls wl1erp hf' had settled (at the suggestion of Gertrude Stein) and Joined the Edsteptlalist group of writers led by Jean-Paul Sartre antl Simone de Beauvoir. !is p1>e try is in free verse and the Japanese haiku form--which he discovered ~ate ~n his life. tical statements, as haiku s are suppo,ec.1 to be. are rarely racial in flavor. His haikus are harmless ellipAnd the ones in anthologies But his protest poetry of the thirties showSJ im to be a poet of unmist akable talent and 3ensitivity. "I Have Seen Black Hands" owes debts to the American school of poetry developed by Whitman, Fenton Johnson, Masters, Sandburg, Hughes unc.1 others. and corresponding disservices recelv I am bla ck anc.l 1 h 9 ve In it Wright catalogs the services rendered u by Blacks. lie announces that oen black hands, millions anc.l million Ll of th em~anc.l that thes e "hands" have reath cd ra ively, creatively, harmlessly, softly and with strength, out to each other and to c.lo the white man's bidding. Despite their stamina, vil)ilance and dependnt il ity, these same hands are the last put to �1/ work and the first i<lle<l. They held the "dreaded lay-off slip." They suffered from "unemployment and starvation." And they grew nervous a1d sweaty, and opened and shut in ang uish and loubt and hesitation~ an<l irresolution ... Wrigl1t continues, as in his prose works, to develop a psychological portrait of the abuse<l an<l dehu1nanized Blacks. There is a <lrive and an incremental swell, reminiscent of Margaret \falker' s "Fo ~ My People," as he recalls having seen "black hands" grip prison bars, knotted and claw-like un<ler the lynch rope, or "beat fearfully at tall flames." l3ut Blac k han<ls and white hands will someday merge as "fists of revolt" and create a ne,.., "horizon." Here, of course, is Wright's blatant call for Blacks an<l whites to become Communists. "Between the World and Me," however, sustains a differQrit angle of the theme begun in "I llave Seen Black Hands." A Black man has been lured into a wooded area and seduced by a white prostitute; the narrator becorres the lynched body whose remains are .•• dry bones .•. and~ stony skull starinR in yellow su1·prisc at the sun . . . . Making use of awesome, horrorf)·ing ~mages and clashing, brilliant colors and sounds, the poem recounts the n1osL ~nsignificant details of the events and setting of the lyncl1ing: And the sooty det,iils cf the scent rose, thrusting themselves het\1cen the world and me. . •. There was a design of .bite bones slumbering forgottenly upon a cushion of ashes. There was a charrtid st\ mp of sapling pointing a blunt finger ac:cusi1.gly at the sky. �I I There were torn tr ~e l~1bs, tiny veins of burnt leaves, and scorched coil of greasy hemp; And upon the trampled g ·ass were buttons, dead match e s, butt-eads o ' cigars and cigarettes, peanut shells, a dra ~ned gin-flask, and a whore's lipstic k ; Scattered traces of tar, restless arrays of feathers, and the lin gering sm~ ll of gasoline. The poem continues, as the narrator, who "stumbled suddenly upon the thing," becomes one with the victim. technique. It is 1 fascinatin g and highly appropriate poetic Owing much to the psycho logical school of writing, but indicting the cosmos (as Dunbar does in "The llaunt ~d Oak"), "Be tween the World and Me" states that the lynch victim is c.:.vc.:.ry Black. i\ntl the world (through the recitation of usually passive components of the natural landscape) shares in the guilt, the revulsion and the horror of the act. Before God and the world, the victim ... clutched childlike, clutched to the hot sides of death. In 13lack on \1hite (1966) David Littlejohn calls Wright's poem and Robert Hayden's "Middle Passage" "the two fine~ t pot:ras by Negroes." Sterling Brown's poetry also f ~lls into the category of realism though not in the political sen s e with with wit~ c h it is applied to other writers of the era. Like Cuney, Wright, !Javis, llu gLes arJ others, Brown in Southern Road (1932) depicts the harshness and starLness of !Hack misery but his poetry is "chiefly an attempt at folk portraitur e of s c urt'hrl1 characters." A highly respected critic and scholar of Black folk literatun, 8rown approached his "portraits" as a student of the linguistic and thematic mate1ials with whicl1 he worked. He was born and 1 �reared in Washinf_~ton, D.C. /\t \/illi,, ms College, he was elected to Phi ileta Kappa in 1921 and in 1923 rccei\'et.l a, H.A. from llarvart.1. Since that time llrown, the son of educator-parents, ha~: had a lon g and distinguished career as writer, editor, teacher, and professor c,,f En!:j lish at Howard University. He has also taught at New York University, \assar College and Atlanta University. From 1926- 1939 he was Editor on Necro Aff~irs fJr the Federal Writers' Project, and in 1939 he was a staff member of the fa111ou :; Cunegie-Myrdal Study of the Negro. The recipient of numerous awards, Brown 1, the author of The Negro in American Fiction (1937) and Negro Poetry and Dram! (1937). of The Negro Caravan (with Arthur P. In 1941, he served as senior editor )a vis and Ulysses P. Lee), probably the most influential ant.I definitive anthology ,>f Afro-American literature ever published. In the twenties Brown be ga n an uabrok 1!n tradition of publishing articles, reviews ant.I criticism in various journal :i, ne11spapers and periodicals. Perceptive, relentless and ,,eerniug ly always in focus, Brown performed important surgery on Black folk culture an1l its manifestations in the poetry, music and language. llis findings were pub .Lisltel in Negro Poetry and Drama, where he also concluded that the New Negro Mov1:rnent (1914-1936) produced the following five _> " maJ• or concerns II among t h c poets ~0 (1) a lR rediscovery of Afric,1 as ~ source for race pride ~ (2) ~ A use of Negro heroes qnd hc. roic episodes from American history j (3) f-'l'ropaga nda of protest) (4) (.1.,1.. treatment of the Ner, t ·o matt s es (frequently of the folk, less often 0f the workers) \\ 1itlt n1o re understanding and less apology , I (5) tv~nd franker and deeper self revelation ,. Brown's own poetry rev i ved intere s t in Black dialect from a vigorously different angle than before. Cullen (~a rolJ.~ rnk) and Johnson (The Book of American Negro 1 �1 II Poetry) had forecas L the doom 1lf di, lect poetry. and Johnson reduced it to two s 1: op s : Cullen said its day was over humor and pathos. (Interestingly, Arthur P. Davis, in From the Dark TowgJ~, r e 1eats Johnson's position.) However, Brown took the position that dialect has 11mitless possibilities if poets and writers only have the courage and t he ing e nu j ty to work with it. Of the debate and con- flict over dialect poetry, he said: Dialect, or tlie speech of 1:he p( ople, is capable of expressing whatever the people ure. ,~nd tl .c folk Ne g ro is a great deal more than a buffoon or a p .Laint : ve minstrel. Poets more intent 11 upon learning th e ways of 1:he f <,lk, their speech, and their character, that is to say 1>ette r poets, could have smashed the mold. llut first they would lwv1 : had to believe in what were doing. And this was Jiffi1: ull .n a period of conciliation and middle class striving for :f ecog1tition and respectability. Brown himself used his knowledg1! of 1· 01k culture to interpret the people through poetry. And h e cons i dered thi ,, app ;·oach "one of the important tasks of Negro ? Oetry . " Some observors see a ,:ontro <lic tion in llrown' s dazzling academic achieve- ments and his poetic work in th .! foll : materials. poets could learn mu c h fr om Bro,,.rn' 1c. 1i x ...1111 plc. l.lut current young scholars and Too many contemporary poets are writing "at" or "about" t lie fol.~ e x p 1· ri e nce i n s tea<l of from or with it. Wa gne r (lllnck l' o~ t s o_~ ~ ~ ~ t e s) points to the irony and humor in 13rown asking Johnson to write t11c in roduction to SouLhcrn Road. For, in doing so, John ·on wus lilerally forc e d to 1 Lak e back much of his own criticism of dialect I poetry. Tnd e ed John s on had t o ad 111 it to Brown's formidable achievement with the f oJk forms. Be fore So utli l' rn !lo;icl, l. 1 Th e Book of Am e ricnn Negro Poetry, the elder poet and critic ackn owl e d r, cd t 1a t Brown was "one of the outstanding poets �II of the younger group"; for the "best work" 13rown "dug his raw material from the great mine of Negro folk poctry 1 11 Lln. s expressing the folk idiom with "artistry and magnified power." Kerlin (!~Poets and Their Poems) ranked Southern Road as a first volume with Cullen's Colo1 _ and Hughes' The Weary Blues. Even from as far away as Senegal, Africa , ha11 com c praise for Brown in the form of Leopold Scnghor's ;:issertion that Hughes and lrown are "the most Negro" of Black American poets. There is always the temptati c n to compare the two poets but, as Wagner suggests, llrown is the "antithe:;is ot Langston Hu g hes" since Hughes is the poet of the city and Drown the bard of th ( soil. In his closeness to the soil and I his serious studies o f Black fo .k c u l ture, Brown has been compared to Johnson and Zora Neale Hurston (sec J o n , ~ ourd Vine and Mules and Men). The folk idiom, coupled wi1;h clr, ma and word-portraits, provides the meat of Brown's work; though it must be mcnt : oned that he also writes in conventional English--with marked success . 1!is p< ,etic universe is generally drab--with occasional f Lashes of wry humor , 1111 ; ls the poetry of hard times and suffering. lie expresses skepticism in f.'.lce of r1 •ligion and God; and ironically there is no reference to Africa as is Lhe c ,1se ( o lmost thematically) with most poets of the period. Brown seems to be sayi1r, thu fight is here, not in an Africa of mind or fact, and that the !Hack man is p . tted against forces of nature which alternately work for and a g ainst him. Wr . tine during the depression years, Brown was concerned with th e de.-:idly c ,10ler 11, the boll weevil, the ravages of the flooding Mitrnouri river, th e pligl1t of Llic :.-;h.i recropper and tenant farmer, and white racism. It is clear that, for Brown, th e..: lwp in his own stamina, l1is O\m ~ (if it is there) for the I.Hack man lies bi s tori c ll endurance and strengths. Consequently, the poet infuses thi s hi s Lorical str !ngth and defiance with folk rhythms--especially the dramatic narrativ e and the contr 1puntal pattern which incorporates italics �for emphasis and the various soJnJs ,,f men at work, play, prayer, dance or battle. "Strong Men" is pcrhap; th e best example of Brown's style. Using a line from Sandburc-- "The s tron ', me n keep coming on"--he actually borrows exact phrasin!:s, aphorisms, bits of p irabl 1·s and parts of secular and religious songs from the folk cultur e . The for:nal Ep ~ lish narrative is set in dramatic and I musical relief through the use Jf th 1i technique described above. Steeped in a tradition that spans \Jhiuuan, F~nton Johnson, Masters anJ Eliot, Brown catalogs the numerous injustic e s Bl acks liav e ;uffered; he interjects "The strong men keep u-comin I on" or "keep a-inch in' alon ~" or 11 \-lalk togedder chillen." Even though Blacks ,.,,ere "drag ged" fro 111 their n.:1t Lve land and <legraded in every possible way, they kept "Cit tin' s trong e V\ This ls the sam t• mes ~: age in " S t ra nr; e Legaci e s," "After 'inter," "Southern Road" (a near-paraphrase o f a 1,1ork s >ni~), "Ma ltainey," an<l the six-part sequence "When De Saints Go Ma' ching llon1e." ls what Brov111 gives his cliaracterH. to "i;tagg cr" but nonL: to halt I ../hat DuCols called the "dogged strength" As Maq~aret Walker sug)jests, there is room lt e111l 11 iscent of "The Weary Blues," "When De Saints" depicts the "Trouble, Trouble" de e p Jown in the "soul" of a JHack singer. But that troubh! , like tl1e "weariness" o f llughcs, is a collective trouble--the weight, the fati g ue, the burden of the folk. We hear it everywhere in Black expression, from 13essle S111ith to Mur i nn An~erso ri , from Paul Laurence Dunbar to Paul Robeson, from Fenton John s on Lo l t1rvin ( ayL· ( !'rouble Man), from the "sad" and "sorrow" songs of tl1e slaves to th e bluts si Og ers of the river towns and Depression years. After the sincer in Brown's poL 111 hn (j pl.:1yed his various sad and sin songs, he always p laycd one in which he st 'Pl, c~J out of the role of "entertainer." would then 1·,lvc fort Ii h.is ''cllartt o f s aints." lie Anticipating his arrival in heaven and others who would be tllc.;rc, he c , refully describes what each of the entrants I/ �will be wearing. It is a gala qffair--initiation into heaven--and most of the arrivals come in the clothes they wor :! in life on earth . are not allowed in heaven. The sinners, of course, They incl1de Sportin' Legs, lucky Sam, Smitty, Hambone, Hardrock Gene and others. llrown also wrote in the ballad f)rm ("Ile was a Han"), conventional verse ("Effie" and "Salutamus"--a sonnet) a nJ the blues form popularized by Hughes in The Weary lllues. His Black men are o n the run (from a mob or police), in trouble with whites as a result of an arro ~an~ act or response, getting killed, trying to figure out how to feed the hous e hold, or being assaulted by natural disasters. In a large number of tl1ese poems ther b is sorrow, devastation, catastrophe, violence, death, tragedy, socia] disrµption, chaos, ruin, need, pain, skepticism and the paranoia inherent in Bl qck life. "lie was a Han" depicts how a Black man beat a white man (who drew first) to the draw but was lynched in the tradition of handling !.\lacks . Despite the fact that "strong men" keep coming, "Strong Hen" is a poem replete with negatives. " Sister Lou" is a longin8 for heaven as a respite from the hardships and racial ir.justices suffered here on earth. "After Winter" is the portrait of a Black man 'ra gg ed" as "an old scarecrow" whose "swift thoughts" are about the food, d~·ink cJ nd space he must obtain for his family. "Ma Rainer" (" Mother of the Blues") is t\- e rapuetic in her words and her delivery. But she is, a gain, like Fenton ,fohnsc n's "monarch" who presides over sacks of merchandise. The people come t<1 Ma F ainey to "keep us strong. 11 and feel sad when she sings . But they cry Aud on p,oes the Southern Road with the exception of the Slim Creer story-poems and th e lever-man themes which nevertheless feature men who must either love qui cl~ and n n or those reminiscing about their loves while they swing the hammer on the c hain g, ng . predicaments. Slim Greer finds himself in various Most memor a ble are hi :, visits to heaven and hell ("Slim in Hell"), �his absurd effort to p;:iss for w1ite I hou gh he is dark "as midnight" ("Slim Greer") and his bout with the Atlanta l,1w th i. t requires Blacks to laugh only in a "telefoam booth" ("Slim in Atla 1ta") Brown's really great achievement, however, is seen in the brillinnt " :!emphls 13111es. 11 Here the poet asks what difference is it to 13lacks whether Memphis is dest r oyed by "Flood or Flame." Memphis, Babylon and Nineveh arc all the sa me: De win' sini sperri.chalu Through deir dus'. Forecasts of doom can be seen i ·1 mucl1 American literature--but Black writers have carved out a special place for : hem s 1:lves. This allows them to place their racial predicament in relief against Cj1rist :.anity or Christianization. that this concern runs like a SjJine 1:hrough Black poetry: Cullen, McKay, Hur,hcs an <l cert 11inly Brown. and white. We have observed Dunbar, Fenton Johnson, For Brown, God is alternately Black And here, of course, is 1.he contradiction. Because the God of the whites ( the oppressor) cannot b,:! trui; ted; and the Black God seems somewhat helpless against a white power stru,:ture of which Brown says: They don't come by ones They don't co111e by twos But they come by t~ns. !laving published only one book ~hich , at this writing, is just being reissued > I (1974, with new Introduction by Ster ~ing Stuckey), places Brown ln a rather difficult and s01netimcsl nacces;,ible position. nut there ~ t e e n good, if few, appraisals of his work. Jean W~gner takes a long look at Brown (Black Poets of the United States); Brown takes a s~>rt, but helpful, look at himself in Negro Poetry. So does Saunders Ke<lJin g in To ~~ke a Poet 13lack. Also helpful is Stephen Henderson's "A Strong Man Ca~led Sterling Brown," Black World, XIX /3 �II (September 1970), 5-12. Benjiman Br,1wley (The Ner,ro Genius) assesses Brown as poet and critic as does Bl yden Jacks,in in Black Poetry in America. Charles Rowell, a youn g critic-teaclier 3t S0 1thern University, Baton Rouge, has prepared a yet unpublished criticism of 11rown ' s poetry. (BarJsdale anJ Kinna1non). See also Black Writers of America Brown's w>rk appears in most anthologies of Black literature and poetry. One characteristic of Black po e; ry of tl1e thirties was a cry for unionization of Blacks and whites. Brown's "When De Saints Go Ma'chinz Jlome" allows room in heaven for a handful of whites who b ;! fricnJed Blacks. According to the Marxist/ I Communist-influenced thinking of th e time s, downtrodden peoples--of whatever color--were in the same boat. Their strugg les were all the same. One finds this feelinr, in Frank Marshall Davi~'s " Sriapshots of the Cotton South" which paint a rather pathetic and dcpressinr, pictL1re of voteless Blacks who "lack the guts" and "po'" whites who "have not the brairis" to fight the rich plantation owners and the police. The poems also re~k wi~h irony and satire--a Davis trademark. Even though racial "intermingling" ~s "u rit hinkable," syphillis is passed from the "shiftless son" of a plantatior. own c::r (a lynch-mob leader) to a washerwoman who gives it to the chi ef of polic~, who gave it to a youni; mulatto cook who gave it to th e m.::iyor of "Hob town" who 1:ave 1 t to his wife. Currently livin ~; in Hawai i. whe~ he is a salesman, Davis was born in Arkansas City, Kansas, nttendcd l ac. 1 public schools and studied journalism at Kansas Stat e College where he ~,as tl c first recipient of the Sigma Delta Chi Perpetual Sc holarship. lie lat1:r lc:i t school for Chicago to clo newspaper work. In 1931 Davis went to Atlanta 1: 0 he : p establish the Atlanta Daily lforlcl. turning to Chica go , he wor ked ,~ith 1940s when he moved to Hawaii. I Re- he Associated Negro Press until the late In :. 937 he received a Julius Rosenwald Fellowship �I 11 to write poetry. lie has publish ::! d fo1 1r volumes of poetry: Black Man's Verse (1935), I Am the Ameri c an Negro (1937 , , Through Sepia Eyes (1938), and 47th Street (1948). Davis established himself ea r ly as a socially-minded poet who combined his journalistic training with a lyrics. 1 inn(1vative free-verse form to create interesting (Gwendolyn Brooks later deve : .oped a form known as verse-journalism.) Stephen Henderson (Und e rst a nding ~ l e w Black Poetry) notes the similarities between Davis's poetry and that ,:urreptly being written by Chicago-area poets. The influence of Masters and San,lburg can be seen in much of Davis's work; but his poetry is highly flavored wi;h Blpck themes and (sometimes) idioms. Like I Hughes he is the poet of the cit:,. B11t he renders believable pictures of Black "society" and the hard times of .,outh1!rn living. In "Snapshots" he warns whites that death, the boll weevil loes not pibble at only 'nigger cotton. 11 Ironically placing the "Democracy" of death and patural disasters alongside a hollow tunerican "Democracy, 11 Davis is a )le t 1> turn the poem into a piercing sword of social criticism. Ironies also ;;pine poems like "Robert Whitmore," "Arthur Ridgewood, M.D.," and "Giles Joh[lson, Ph.D. 11 --bourgeois Blacks destroyed by status-climbing. Hhitmore, havirig re,1ched the peak of social and business success, dies when he is mistaken for a w~iter , Dr. Ridgewood, forced to choose between the life of a poet and a doctor, dle s from a nerve disruption caused by worry over rejection slips and money probl ~ps. do labor; he dies of starva tion. Dr. Johnson will not teach and cannot The great tragedy, in this stream of poetic ideas, the story of the poet is ''Roos ~velt Smith." Smith could be Davis himself or possibly Countee Cullen or Melvin ·rolson--or any number of Black poets who wrote as they were directed only to e1u up having "contributed" nothing to "his nation's literature." Smith's first Sandburg, Masters and Lindsay. 100k is attacked by white critics for imitating llis S ! cond book, written after he had <lone first-hand �stucly in the South, is criticizcid by Blacks for being too sordid. Critics dis- missed his third book, an expe r j.ment a l effort, as not being consistent with the depth and breadth of the philosophica l material treated by Stein and Eliot. A Black man has no business imitating the "classic" works of Keats, Browning and Shakespeare, they said of his fciurth book. background. He ought to use his rich African Of hi s fifth book , critjcs were suspicious: since it ccintained no traces of anything clone prev ~.ousl) by a white poet, then it must be "just a new kind of prose." The poet th en became a mail carrier where he had time to read in the papers that lHacL wri e rs had contributed so "little" to American literature. Davis also wrote free-vers1! uti liz ing themes of love, night, and the stark life of Blacks in Southside Chicago. sculpted. Brown. His poems about love are quiet and well- They are placed in the ca1egory of "mystic excapist" by Sterling In his first volume, Dalfi s SI rikes vivid pictures, however, in pieces like "Chicago's Congo," "J az z 13,md," "Mojo Mike's Beer Garden," "Cabaret," "Lynched," and "Georgia's Atlan:a." Davis is "panoramic" and can capture Black speech as well as the rhyLhms of Bla1 :k social lif e . In "Jazz Band" he anti- cipates th e \vork of literally <linens of poets of th e sixties (Neal, Crouch, Cortez, Lee, Baraka, Harper, th~ Lds . Poets, Carolyn Rodgers). And certainly one recalls llu11hes' s "Jazzonia" ancl 1'Jazz Band in a Parisian Cabaret" when one hears a line like Play thaL thing yo..1 jaz i mad fools ! and the steady hamme r i nr, of Plink plank plunk n plu1k . Everybody an<l every place has th e blJes since 13lacks brought the sound to town: Chopin, Wagner, London, Moscow, Pari,, llonr,kong, Cairo, Dios, Jehovah, Gott, �Allah, Buddha, and so on. Eve ryon e cin partake of the happy-sad sound being played liy th e "black boy." cat . " Duke Elli1gton would later call himself an "ecumenical And Davis seems to hnv e unders t ood the concept well. close study of his wor k ha s yet to be done. for his work: Unfortunately, a But Davis had many thin gs in mind one poem is desl c n d tJ lie read aloud by eight voices. There is a liricf, but good, assessment of l1im in Wa gner's book; Sterling Brown sets forth crisp and meaty criticism. Benj iuw n Hrawl e y discusses Davis's poetry (Negro Genius); but he app ears all too infr oque ntly in anthologies. > For a current look at Davis see Dudley Randall's interview with him in Black World, XXIV (January ,I 1974). llulierL llay<le11 has on e of tl;t· lo11 i.;es t poetry writing (and publishing) records of any living American poel. 111s po o,ns have appeared in numerous anthologies, newspapers, periodicals, books ~nd pQmphlets since 1940. Horn in Detroit, Michigan, Hayden attended loca l schools ar,d Waype State University, and in 1936 "graduated to the Federal Writers' Project' ' heaq ing research into local Afro-American history and folklore. lie r e sumed his tr a ini ng in 1938 when he enrolled at the University of Michigan, where he r eceiv e d E t eaq l1ing assistantship, and did advanced work in play procJuction, cre at i ve wr~tin g a nd Enr,lish. taught Enel lsh at Michigan for two yc.a rs . poetry in 19]8 a nd 19 42 and during tl'Js Hayden received an M.A. and Il e received the Hopwoo d award for time he had an opportunity to study with \.J.11. Auden, who se poetry his owr. som(; times r eflec ts. poetry, ll ea rt- Sha.J25:_ in th e Uust_1 was published. ln 19110 his first book of Ile joined the faculty of Fisk University in 19116 and remained th c r< until 1968; during the sixties he became i nvolved in a series of "meanin £, fuJ encou nters with proponents of a black literary ~s thetic" (Earksdale and Kinnamc, n) wl lch resulted in his leaving Fisk and joining the faculty of the Univer sit y or M1 cl igan (1969). Hayden has received Rosenwald It �and Ford r,rants and in 1965 his Balli d of Remembrance (1962, Paul Bremen, England) was awarded the CrancJ Prize in the English poetry category at the First World Festival of Negro Arts in Daka1 , Senegal. In presenting Hayden with the award, the festival committee c l teJ l im as a remarkabJ e cr;i.ftsman, a, I outstanding singer of words, a striking thinker, a p o e t , ~ sang . lie gives glory ancJ dig- nity to America throu gh de1!p at! achment to the past, present and future of his race. A:: rica is in his soul, the world at large in his mincJ and hear ; . In 1948 Hayden collaborated witj1 Myrlin O'Higgins in publication of The Lion anc.l the Archer. llis Fieure of Time; published in 1966. Po1!ms appeared in 1955 and Selected Poems was \fords in tli 1~ ·ning Time, with its portraits of violence and <lestructlon, came out ln 1970, ape.I was nominated for a National llook Award (1972). And ~-NJ1•~1__~-ll10011!..1.E.t, Cl'rn)!.::!._ , sliowini~ llaycJcn as a reflective lover of nature and a deeply relir,ious p Jet, 1,as publishec.l in 1972 by Paul llremen. He has also written and produced plays : co Down Moses) and during the forties he was drama ancJ music critic for the t!_ Lchigan Chronicle. Hayden's work appears in practically every anthology of /\f ~o-~nerican literature or poetry published since r!.1!:_J~~~r.E_ Car.31__v_:~ :• llis editor , hip of anthologies includes Kaleidoscope: Poems by /\11_1yrican lle1 ~ro J> r,ets (1967), Afro-A111erican Literature: (1971, with Burrougli! , and Lapid •c), with Hiller and O'Hcal). An Introduction 111d The Unllccl ~jtates 111 Literature (1973, The latter work contains many of llay<len's seminal ideas as well as brilliant crystalizations of Black and ~eneral poetry movements in the Unitec.l States . Ills individual poems have appeared ln Opportunity, Poetry and ,...Atlantic Montlil_y . Order. Currently, !· e is poetry editor of the Baha'i magazine, World �I Althour,h, as a poet, llayden has jla intained a steady balance between racial concerns and the modern poetic tradit Lon , he is what Sterling Brown would call a library poet. Classical allusions, obscurantism, surrealism, and complicated syntax go hand in hand with experimen : al blues poetry and muted anger. Arna Bontemps said that the term "Negro po ! t" was particularly "displeasing" to Countee Cullen; and llayden (a Cullen 1dmirer), in Kaleidoscope, rejected being judged "by standards different from t 1ose applied to the work of other poets." The Black poet should not be lin1ited : o a racial utterance, Hayden believes. Ironically, a poll of Black poets todJy might easily show that a great many of them feel the same way--even thougl1 ~~ch is not suggested by the popular image of the contemporary Black poet. Speaking of his influences in ..!.!:Jterviews with Black \friters, Hayden notes that: When I was in college I loved Countee Cullen, Jean Toomer, Elinor Wylie, Edna St. Vincent Mi llay, Sara Teasdale, Langston Hughes, Carl Sandburg, Han Crarie. I read all the poetry I could get a hold of, and I read ~ithout discrimination. became a favorite. his style. Cullen 1 felt an affinity and wanted to write in I re1;1ember tha( l wrote a longish poem about Africa, imitating his "lleritage." All throu~h my undergraduate years I As l di scovered poets new to me, I was pretty imitative. ::;tudied their work and tri( id to write as they did. youni~ poets do tliis. I suppose all It's c·crt.inly one method of )earning somethini__: about poetry . I re ad e d the point, inevitably, where I didn't want to be influeuce<l ly anyone else. my own voice, my own -.,,ay o i: set!. ng . I tried to find I studied with W.H. Auden �in graduate school, a str·atep,ic t!Xperience in my life. I think he showed me my strengths and wepknesses as a poet in ways no one else before had done. Hayden thus establishes himself as a ioet of the book as opposed to the raw experience--vis a vis Sterllnr, Brown, Langston Ilughes, Frank Marshall Davis, Margaret \folker, and numl!rous othe rs, althoui.;h such a division must many variables. consider And, according to Ar : hur P. Davis, in From the Dark Tower, llaydl!n !urn rl!pu<liated l1is L'ar ly poet r ,--the few poellls of blatant protes} ~ obviously folk-influenced. Most of t1e early poetry shows Hayden as imitator of I the older llarlem Renaissance poets anl under the influence of the CommunistSocialist thou Ght of the 1930s an<l 19~0s. In "Prophecy" he depicts destruction and the people returninG to the "ruin :!d city" to rebuild a new society. is about the famous Gabriel Pro~ser-1 :?d slave revolt. "Gabriel" "Black Gabriel" was hanged for leaJinG slaves From forp,otten graves, .... lnterpolatJ11 i: ltnlicl ze d wurdB ,uHI At rrnz,w with co]loquJalisms (like Sterling Brown), llayden recreates the terrur un<l dr.:11na of Gauriel'a last minutes. Black an<l eolden in the air, Gauriel c.:a n ;•, l os from a noose above Black men who Never, ne ver rest "Speech" is just that --a n h,trani u e c<-jl lln~ !Hack and white "brothers" to fight the co11u11on oppressor, prcii:;11111nhly tot ql it ;i riani s m, fa sc ism and greedy over-seers. "Obituary" is a sensllive ,rnd p;. in ,J re flection of a " fa ther" who lived l'reparc<l for \.Ji ngs 1 /1.Juong thes e e,1rly pieces ([ouncl in C~r avan anti Ha yden's first volumes), "Bacchanal" is especially interesLin i.;--for .. t col lee ts the statement Sterlin[\ l.lr own pcrfec1:ed. ne\,J <llal ec t into the kind of social There is irony in using "bacchanal" to �describe a Black factory worker gettl1 g lligh's a Geor g ia pine to forget that the factory close<l "th .s mawnin." The Black man who, in "Gabriel" can never rest, is seekin g real "joy" on earth. But, minus money and woman, his "bacchanal" becomes a weighty blues s :atement--not the revelry of ancient Greek or Roman party life. One finds none of these poems in Selected Poems. Instead there is the polished llayden of "The Diver," "A Ballad of Remembrance," "Sub Specie Aeternitatis," "Middle Passar,e" and "Runa gate f{una ga ;e ." Neither docs one find such in Words I In the Mournin1• Time. llayden has obvLously elevated his protest themes. there docs remain a fascination with religion, nature and love. Hayden does make his social conur ent, :i s does Cullen. Yet To be sure, ilut his "Zeus Over Redeye" (Mourning) is a far cry from llu nhes " Dream Deferred" or "Ask Your Momma." "Runagate" and "Hiddle Passage" ac.ldra ss with subtlty and allusion the concerns of Owen Doclsen ("Lament"), Marg.: .ret ha lker ("Since 1619"), and Frank Marshall Davis ("Snapshots of the Cotton South"). Hayden brings a fine and intense in- tellect to hls poctry--re gardlct ,s of subject matter. llis output has been relatively small, considering hi :; long can·er, tut Words in the Nournlng Time proves that his intensity has not lessened. And he must be admired for sticking to his aesthetic convlctlons and Illa u11sweq lng dcvotlon tu pocLlc craftsrnanuhip. lland in hand with these concerns has been his enduring interest in history, racial and general. !!is manuscript of poem: dealing with slavery and the Civil War, The Black Spear, won him the s e cond llopw(,od award. The idea for a book-length I series of narrative po ems on Blick h .story--"from the black man's point of view"-I came to llay<len after he read St.!phen Vincent Benet's long narrative poem, John J~rown' s Body (1927). The inack Spca.~ never emer ged as a book, but remnants of �it can be found in section five of -S,!lected Poems. , In working with Black history, Hayden champions such persons as Nat Turner, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Cinquez, Martin Luth e r Kin g and Halc 1ilm X. shared the burden of the Black stru g,:le: He also includes whites who have William Lloyd Garrison, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thore a u, John B·own, John and ~obert Kennedy, and others. llayden's history poems, ho~ev e r . reflect the complexity and disturbances inherent in man's continuing struggl,; . In a non-racial poem like "The Diver" there can be floating, plunging, pi e ~c ing , blurring , disillusionment, wreckage, drunken tilting, "numbing /kisses, 11 a 11d other suggestions of dramatic tension 11 between the real and assumed, b e tw ee11 the shadow and the substance. But the r same II feeling" comes throu ~h in poems of racial flavor. "Middle Passage" certainly I bears this out, as Bl yden Jackson no :es in "From One 'New Negro' to Another" (Black Poetry in America, Jacks::rn an,! Rubin, 1974). Situated, as it were, "in the rockin g loom of history," " ~1id<ll ! Passage" is at once Hayden's and Black Amer i ca' achievement. Calculat ed by opening with the names of slave ships-- ' Estrella, Esperanza, ~ ~ - - t,1e poem criss-crosses the vast geographical, Jesus, chronological and spiritual web of r 11cial horror since slavery. The names of at I least two of the ships--J c sus arid ~ ::.£Y_--carry immediate contradictions and are simultaneously remini s cent of t l1e ex >letive "Jesus, have mercy, 11 and the attendant variations heard da il y in Blac k comm1n iti e s. But this Jesus will have no Mercy-- and in fact will stand throu Bhout ti~! r emainder of Christianity as the albatross around the neck of Chri s tian slav e r s. Any middle passa ge is excitin~ 11s we ll as dan gerous--since it represents the peak and the unfinished quest. le nc c the middle passage suggests both the horrible and brutali zi ng e xp e ri enc e ,Jf slaves aboard ships crossing the Atlantic Oc.ean a nd the incompleted "adventur e ' of Blacks in America. The poem also �satisfies much of th e demands o f mod1 :rnists poetry: the tradition established by T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Wal l .ice Si .evens, Hart Crane and others. ) "Middle Passag~" in fact follows styli ,tic a .ly from such poems as Eliot's The Wasteland, Pound's Cantos, Crane's The Br i1!H,e apu William Corlos Williams' Patterson. Especially is it akin to The \fa ,;telapd in its use of allusion, fragments of obscure information (old docwuents, let:ers, conversation, etc.), typographi~al variation, and the ur genc y and impoctancp of its "statement." "Middle Passage " after its sharl, and arresting opening, weaves together objective narration, notes from a slave s1ip's log, sections from a ship officer's diary, 11 testimony a t a court of inquiry (int p a slave revolt aboard the Cuban slaver Amistad in 1839), the tale of an old sa llor 11ho ceaseu sailing on slaveships because "fever melted" his bones, paraphrasing; of 1l Shakesperean text and familiar expressions from the Christian Bible anu 1~,e re ,. i gio us services. imaginable disaster and conflic ~: The poem depicts every s :arms, rebellions, suicides, a plague that causes blindness ("opthalmalia"), th,! lusty crew members sexual exploitation of female slaves, the "ni~ger kings" wh 1> sold the Africans into slavery, descriptions of the smell and sounds of dying, and tj1e hatred/respect the slave ships surviving spokesman has for rebellion-lea 11er C Lnquez. Almost 100 years before "Middle Passage," James M. Whitfield hal h on,ired this same revolutionary in "To Cinque." The idea of the remade man, a "life," recurs in Hayden's poem: 11 ·,o ya ge" which takes one "through death" into he ~e , again, the sense of one meandering through a "wasteland" in search of the right society, the sane environment. Indeed in much Black American writin g , mirrori1g sometimes the literature of larger America, there is the assertion that the new na n arrives only after paying the dues of being brutalized and oppressed. Ev 1 in everyday life, Blacks are often intolerant of others who have not " gone through' the fire and brimstone of depravity and .J.3 �alienation. Thus , for Hayden, 1:he 11 11 iddle passage" is both spiritually and physically a "voyage " throu 3h d1~ath ~ n order to achieve life. In the middle passar;e the slaves are half way betwQen their African homeland and America. They will not be returning to Africa and )et they know nothing of the life "upon these shores." Too, the middle passage synboli zes the initiation of everyman into the awesome awareness and responsib :. lity of adulthood--and his own mortality. The middle passage is where we all t:rium1h or perish, just as in the wasteland one must create a new world or drif1 . witl the debris. However, the caretakers of slaveships crossin3 the middle passa e are as acutely aware of their mission as 9 are the reflective slaves (and 1>oets). death. They are a lso bring ing life through They bear black gold, black :.vary I bl.:1ck seed. I All this occurs against the pervasiv ~ irony of the ship names Jesus and Mercy and the doubl e irony of slaver':; spo1esman who renounces Cinquez for rebelling against the crew: ..• true Christian:; all 1 •••• While the "Middl e Passage" plaq s Blacks somewhere in the middle of things, "Runagate Runagate" continues the in ny of moving through death to life. There is little to be envied in the ":Life" of the runaway slave depicted in this poem. The hound dogs, th e slave-crack1!rs, the auction blocks, the "wanted" signs, the brandings on the cheel(s, the drlver'1 lash--all re-live the terror, the nightmarish nature of Black "life" after th ,; mid< le passage. For Blacks, then, the initiation continues beyond the first deatb ( th1 , enslavement) . The anxiety and "never, never rest" life of the slave is dram,1 ti ca ..ly captured by Hayden who employs a rich tapestry of language, synt a x, c1)lor, imagery, narration, and religion, alongside the symbolism and "sweep " akin :o mo d ern poetry; added to this is the dramatic �use of italics. The poem celebrates tl1e courage and endurance of escaping slaves and honors illnck and white ab, >liLionist leaders. Hayden allows the reader to re-live the experience of the run1way slave and tl1e accompanying tension-filled hide-and-seek drama. We hear and se! the runaway in the opening line. By avioding the use of punc tu a tlonal br ~a ks, llay<len achieves a "rush" of language very similar to the relentless " drlv! " of Black oral expression and to the "never, never rest" feeling he est.:iblished i1 "C.:ibriel." The runaway Runs falls rlses stu111bl :! s on from <larkness lnto darkness I• an<l the hunt ls on, as the escopce r : fl ec ts on the "many thousands" already channeled through the und ergroun d ra llroad. and fear of the slnve who VO'v/S thJt ,1e We see an<l hear the 111ixe<l j ubi lance \dll never return to the auction block an<l Lhe <lrlver'u LH,h . And before 1'11 be a sl ve I ' ll be buried ln my r, rave Keeping with the trend of modern po Qt ry, Hayden introduces incidental notices and data: an announcement descrlbln~ runaways (inclu<ling age, dress, brandings, and a susplc ion thn t they c:rn turn t hem:;elvcs into quicksand, whirlpools or ocorplons), wanLe<l pcn;teru, anc., n.i 1nls of prominent aLolitionlsts of the <lay. Typographically and s yntactically, lh pol!m ls designed to be read, without slgnlfjcanl pauseH, so that the· non~s top hurtle of the s]u ve toward freedom actually occurs in the tc.:xt; it llly<len Jackson su~!'CSts (thought of "Middle l:;, Passage") "as if it repeats hi! ;tory," of llarril!t Tubm;rn, tl1e g rent cs l: of I "!Jead or .td lvc" an<l wlto was known tc Especially notable is Hayden's treatment nderground railroad leaders, who was wantc<l level a pistol .:it a doubtinr, runaway: �II Dead folks can't jaybi ·d-talk, she says; You keep on going now pr die, she says . . . . "Middle Passage" and "Runagate 1:unar,ate" are only two of Hayden's magnificent poems. Other poems in the historica . vein are "Frederick Douglass" (an ex- perimental sonnet without rhyme), "Tlte Ballad of Nat Turner" ("The fearful splendor of that warring."), "O Daetl ,tlus, Fly Away llome" ("Night is juba, night is conjo. "), and "A Ballad of Rememb ·,:mce" (a surrealistic, complex and erudite poem). llayden poems (prior to .,ford s ) capture supernaturalism ("Witch D·o ctor"), folk life ("llomage to the Empress o f the I3lues," "The Burly Fading One," "Incense > II of the Lucky Virgin," and "Mourning :•oem for the Queen of Sunday .Jtnd ,'1 folk reminiscences ("Summertime and the L .ving ••. ," "The Whipping," "Those Winter Days"). WorJs in the Houcninf\ Time, whi1:h we will return to briefly in Chapter VI, reflects Hayden's general and srecif .c concerns as a poet. Again, he judiciously handles the spectrum of themes, subj 1?cts and styles that assures him a place in the worltl of western as well as 11. ·ro-~nerican poetry. Poems like '''Mystery Boy' Looks for Kin in Nashville," "S1)ledatl," "Aunt Jemima of the Ocean Waves," and "El-llajj Malik El-Shabazz," mark Hayden in touch with the times and willing to share his poetic visio n witli revo •utionaries, pacifists, cultural nationalists and Black pride advocates. On the o .her hand he is at home with poems such as "Locus," "Zeus Over Redey e ," and "Le,1r is Gay"--which mirror his reading, travels, broad concerns and personal friendsh ~ps. llayden can still sensitively and deli- cately discuss great art and flowers, as in Words antl Night-Blooming Cereus; but his control of metaphorical accu~acy and poetic poignancy on a broad range of topics is also clearly there. in the 1960s jolted l1im. ll a1 den aJmits that the battle over aesthetics And while Lt is clear that the fight took place more �outside of poetry than in (s ee : hapt c r VI), Ilayden has not recanted in his position that the Bl ack poet not be , imited to racial utterance. course, has his righl to his owi opit .ion. Hayden, of But, like John Ciardi, Richard Wilbur, and Robert Lowell, and )ther poets of the academy, his trek has not been easy or Jevoid of controversy. side of his poetry, poems like And despite statements llayden makes out- '!1idd e Passage" and "Runagate Runagate" stamp him as a r,ifted handler of !Hae~ th e11e s and materials. For it is not likely that he will be known, as a poet, fo · work that lies drastically outside the passage, pace or pligl1t of Illacl Ame ·leans . 11 Much n eeded critical atte ntio n .s just beginning to come to Hayden. He is treated in Davis's From the ~ ·ower , Donald Gibson's Modern !Hack Poets ("Robert Hayden's Use of Jlistory ," C wrles T. Davis), Jackson anJ Rubin's Black Poetry ln Ameri c a, O'Brien ' s l1tervicw with Black Writers, Barksdale and Kinna111on'1:1 lll ,1ck \/ritl!n.1 of' Arn·r1c.i, and llow I Writc/1 (featuring llay<len, Judson Phillips and Law6on Carter: /~ cw Yor t , 1972). See also Rasey l'ool's "Robert llaydcn, l'oct Laurcalc," ~:.t._~~:;t (_BL1ck Worl<l), XV (June, 1966), 39-43; D. Caller's "Three Ru:l!nt Volumes," review of Words in the Mourning,_'.!:_~ 1971, J>:4. Dudley Randall displa ys Aesthetic in the Thirties, Fortic ~i , 'oc try, CX (1967), 268, and Julius Lester's in The New York Times Book Review, January 24, ,,oo<l insiehts into llayden in ''The Black md Fifties" (Modern Black Poets). And there is a Sl! nsitive trc!,1tmcnt of t l1 e po e t in James O. Young's Black Writers of the Thirties. llavini: helpcd 111nkc thl! 11.irl(•m Henaissance, Lani~s ton llur,hes continued his vaAt and i111;1;•, i11 a tiv l! p<>C.'Llc 011tput lnto the thirties, forLlcs, fiftlcs and Hll:ltlcH. 11 • publblt< ·d fc,ur buckH of pot·Lry ln the 19'301:l, three in the 1940s, an<l two in tile 1950s, and two jn 19(0s, in addition to dozens of short stories, �essays, novels, plays and autobiogra1•hical writinr,s. These things he accomplished along with his travels and his dedic p ted work on behalf of Blacks. But it would be "much too casual," notes Ilui;hcs's friend Arna Bontemps, simply to dismiss him as "prolific." For Hughes was a "mipstrel and a troubador in the classic sense." (Langston llughes, Dona ld C. Dickin s op, 1972) Hughes worked rapidly, turning out prodigious amounts of writing ; a f a c 1. , Blyden Jackson reminds us which caused some to deny him a place alongside "1,e rious" Ulack writers like Ellison, Wright and Baldwin. Hughes always involv cJ himself ,n "contemporary affairs"--even during the 11 Renaissance when Cull e n, ncKay nnd o :here roamed the Elysian fields of Africa or pined away in the "dark" tower. lut Saunders Redding (To Make A Poet Black) had complaincJ that Hughes employed ~hythms in his early poetry but little intellect. Consequently, the thirties and forties--with their steo pu in leftist and radical activities--placed Hu ghe , in the position of having to forge new protest weapons from his "weary blue,." noted: About lluehes's poetry James 0. Young ''His poetry was popular beca1se it could be read easily by people of all ages and uackgrounds." new Black poets: In the sixti?s, similar comments would be made of the llaki R. Madhubuti (Don L. Lee), Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, David Nelson, Arthur Pfister, and o t 1c rs. In th e early thirties, hm,evcr, llup,hes's poetry was considered "decadent" and "unacceptable" to Communist critLcs who wanted him to move from strictly racial themes to champion the fights of proletarians everywhere. Hughes made the switch-over and Scottsboro LL1~ ~cl (1932) shows the impact of Communist thought on him. The pamphlet v,as Jelicated to Black youths on trial for allegedly raping two white prostitutes in Scottsboro, Alabama. Hughes places the boys alongside such revolutiona ry sciints :i s John Brown, Lenin and Nat Turner. The �effect--resembling aborteJ cffo~ts o( some martyr-makinr, poets of the 1960s-was to make the boys, "ir,norant pawn•" thou ih they were, "militant proletarian heroes." The poem-play "Scotts·)OrO l.imiteJ" shows "Red Voices" convincing Black youths that the Communists arc on tlw side of Not just l:,lack--but hli ,c k anJ white. Hughes pul.Jlishcd wide Ly durin g ~he tl1irties in Party presses. In Good Morning Revolution (197], forw;:irJ by Sam.ter p ReJJing), Fnith Berry has compiled his "uncollecteJ writin!',S o( social prot1:st." They g ive many clues to Hughes' social I concerns Juring the three de cad ~s f o low in~ tltc Harlem l{enaissance. He calls for a union of "workers" in Germany, Cliipa , Africa, Poland, Italy, and America-through th e pages of New ttasses , Th e Ne r; ro Worker, The Crisis, Opportunity, International Literature, Conte1npo, ~1 Frica South, The Workers Monthly, New -- Theatre, a nd American Spectator, ~ ._,..... In "Cood Morning, Revolution," Hughes tells ' personified revolution that We gonna pill arou r1d Lo ;e l lier from now on. Secllon Lill•:, of r.uod Mori1Lnr. l{t·vol 1Lio11 oltuw llu 1~li e o to be acutely attuned to the problems and needs of oppresseJ Jeoplcs --lon g be(ore Franz Fanon, Stokely Carmichael and Eldridge CJ ec.1 ver-- .111d in sympathy with Third World struBgle: Section I, !{e volution; Section 2, ~110 lo tlon-l✓ hite Peoples; Sectlon J, The Rich and Tlw Poor; St·ction 4, ~£1..1:.__0_Q I Peace: Section 5, Coodbye Christ; Section 6, The Sailor and ThC" StcwurJ: Se tirn 7, The Meanin g of Sco ttsboro; Section 8, Cowards fru111 the Co.l lt.:!.:.ig u(•s ; S0c Lion 9, Portrait Aguinst fl.:.ickground; Section 10, and Seclio11 J 'J , fZ 1~Lr c,:;p t: c L_iv(• (incJ11 ll 1q: "~ ly Advc:nture !, as a Social l'oet"). I conoc la :, tit· .i11J 1::;acr JI J1:uuu , llu1;l1 -~; l11('urrl:d l11!.! v✓ r:1 tit of 111a11y Ul uck lcadcrf:i �with his poem "Good-by e Christ' 1932. publ .shed in the Baltimore Afro-American in Addressin g Christ, Hughos not 1!d that You Jlcl al r i g lit ln you · Jay, I reckon-But that day's g one no\f . And "Christ Jesus Lord Cod Jehovah" ·. s told to "make way" for a new deity, who has no religion, and whose n a me is Marx CommunLst Le1i11 P1!asant Stalin, \forker, HE-Relir,ious leaders especially co 1de111n1 ·d llughes ' s "blatant atheism." But Melvin Toltrnn, c.:omlng to llu gl1es ' s aid , said that the younr~ poet was simply showing that the Chrlstian offering of a better 11orJ.<l 1 after death had little meaninL; for the world's suffering millions. llup,hes was never a member of till Communlst Party, but he was sympathetic to it as were many other !llack 11rite1 s: Tolson , \✓ rlght, Davis, Margaret \folk.er, EJlison 1 and dozens of others. Hayden, Frank Marshall While his poetry and other writings of communist-oriented 11oclal protest were appearing in radical publications, Ilughes continued with i:terlJng JJrown developin)j and experimenting with illack folk materials. lie pa inst :aldn f 1y pointed up the contradictions in the promises .:rnd realitie ::; of J\111eric:an D~mocracy, assailed social inequality, lamented !Hack and white poverly, railed agai~ st double standards, attacked racial segregation, satirized the Black bourge o sie, and ltnrnortalized the beauty of everyday Blacks. So much of llughes's fight is caur,ht up jn "Let America ne America Ap,ain," first published in 1936 in J·~1~!s..£., arid lnc J uded in J\ New Song (1938). It iti immediately reminiscent of v/alt \n1lt man --in i.ts . wcep--and recites, in the manner of Hayden's I "Speech" and Tolson's "RenJezvoL.s with America," the multiple ills and ingredients of America. / Throughout th e poe111 , as he catelop,s the various ethnic stocks and . contributions, he interpolates the lt.:1unt#IJ · 1-I!" r, America never was A rner1.ca to me. 111/i. ,P fb �By now hughes' s interest Ln 1nac k mu !i ic and folk materials was being worked more artfully into his work. lie cart ied l i.s interest in Blues to his work in jazz (recording his poetry with Char]ie M:ingus and others) and the Be-llop era is strongly reflected in his poetq and 'his writin~s (see the Simple stories). Especially is 1nusic evi.denl i.n _t .onu~e of a Dream Deferred (1951) where, according to Jean \.Ja g ner, "jazz has stronr ly Lr [l uenced the tone and structure ·of these poems." It was from this volumL, to e:, that Lorraine Hansberry would get the title for Iler prize-wi nnin;~ pla): the volume is "llarlem, 11 in whicl deferred." R,i lsin in the S un. The most famous poem in the Black American is likened to a "dream Five precise simile• hc~1, lluv,hes Jraw explicit comparisons between raisins, sores, rotten meal, syrupy ~wee ts, heavy loads, and the all present "dream." Perhaps, llug hes notes at tie end, the dream will "explode." llur,hes wns not "perfect," l .lyder J;1ckson points out, but he was constantly on top of "contempor;n-y issues" and r 'mai netl an expcrimentor throu2hout his writing career. Ask Your Mama-~Twcl, e Moods for Jazz (1961) was published after 40 years of experimentation in \'ers e forms. synthesis we referred to c3 rlj e 1: and themes. It is indeed the attempt at the LI ut of jazz, blues un<l relateJ folk idioms Contcmpornry white poet ~, E.E. Cummint,s and Kenneth Rexroth, had chosen to place all lc•tters in ]m1Pr c;1sc and llughcs did .iust the opposite, cap1 talizin ;; ev •rythlnp,. Dedi. ·t tl!d to Louis Armstroni:--"the greatest horm blower of them all"--the vul1rn1t! is an ext 'IE ion of ideas <.1ttempte<l in The Weary Blues, Shakespeare in llarlL·111, and !~'.?_I_~~L.~~ a Dr eam Deferred. The driving soci<.11 protest is there, but the lnd ig naLion if ; 1n uu, d as in his earlier work. A recession in laq \e r A r n e r ~ iS CO!.(JJ{lrn FOL!~S ' DEl'IU S!i IO!l. The work b punctuated Ly the 1..ne r; Till: <1UAl{Tl.::R OF TllE NEGROES anJ llu~hes continues �the Illa ck poet's conn·rn wi th hist or f : honoring Black he roes and race leaders, displaying the beauty of JHackness a HI recallin1_; the ri ghts of passage. Politician, or~,rnizer of sharecroppers, poet, dramatist, teacher and raconteur, Me lvin Beaunorus Tolson ,..,1s born in Hoberly, Missouri , to the Reverend Hr. and Hrs . Alonzo Tolson. Tolson lived his young life iu various Missouri towns, publishin i; bis first poem at the age of 12 in the "Poet's Corner" or tli e Oskaloosa newspaper . lie r, raduated from Kansas City's Lincoln High School (1911.3) wh ere he lwd be~11 c lass poet, director and actor in Greek Club's Little Theater and captain of the football team. Throughout his adult life, Tol so n maintain ed an active interest in sports , dramatics and debate clubs. !le attended fisk and Lincoln Univer si ties-- g raduating from Lincoln with honors and winnin~ awards in spe ech , debat e, dramatics and Classical literatures. He also captained the football team. In 1924 Tolson, continuln~ a ri ~b and varied career, began teaching English and speech at 1.Jiley Collei:e , in Mars 1all, Texas. There he wrote prose and poetry, and directed drama and debut ~ groups which established a 10-year winning streak. To] son int er rupted his wor k at Wiley to pursue ~~ -4;¢]..<l master's degree in English and Comparative Li te rature at Columbia University. where he J met V.F. Calverton, ed itor of _t!o<lern Qu;.irterly. Later, in 1935 at Wiley, Tolson's career as a debate coach peaked when his team defeate*._~ional champions, University of Southern California, before 1100 people . And in 1947, the same year Tolson was appointe<l poet laureate or Liberia by President V.S. Tubman, he became English an<l drama professor at Langston University, Lancston, Oklahoma where he also served as mayor for four terms. AL Langston he direc ted the Dust llowl Players and dra1natlzcd no vc ]Ll by WalLcr \.Jliite ;.ind C:eorge Sch uyler. A revered and .. eared teacher and or /;i..l nizer, Tolson bec;.ime a J e~:end in his own time. j Hardly �a student at a deep-south Black colle ~e had not heard of Tolson's work as poet, dramatist, debate coach and eJucator. His column, "Cagga bes and Caviar," was a regular in the Washington Trib~ <lJring the thirties. Tolson published three volumes o( poetry: Rendezvous with America (1944), Libretto for the Republic of Liberia (1953), and llarlem Callery, Book I: Curator (1965) . His Ho rk also appear2d in The Hodern Quarterly, Atlantic Monthly, Common Ground, Poetry, and other periJ<licals . / The He won numerous awards and citations, ,fr.t among them first place (1939) i ~ National Poetry Contest sponsored by the American Negro Exposition in Chicago (for "Dark Symphony"); the Omega Psi Phi Award for ,I Creative Literature (1945 ); ~E.Y. ma ~azine' s Ress Ilokim Award for long psycho- ( q f ~J logical poem, "E. & O.E." (1947); honorary Doctor of Letters, Lincoln Universit : ~a~ permanent llrcacl Loaf Fellow in poetry and drama (1954 ; ) i ~ f / ) z_.._~ (fl(&~)i Columbia Citatfon and Award for Cult14ral Achievement in Fine Arts)¢ra«.l.-first appointee to the Avalon Cha ir in llum 9 nities at Tuskegee Institute (1965); and annual poetry award of the American Aca demy of Arts and Letters including a grant of $2 ,500 (1966), the same yeal he died following three operations for abdominal cancer. As a Black poet a nd intellectual in the mid-twentieth century, Tolson wore the many-pronged mant\J\ of his Eighteen th and nineteenth century predecessors (Prince Hall, Benjamin Banneker, Jam Es Whitfield, Alexander Crummell, Frances E. E. Harper anJ others) who ser,ed a. te ac hers, abolitionists, revolutionists, defenders of wltat th ey beli_eved to bt decent in the promise of America, and character models for Block conm1l .niti( s . Tolson' s predecessors fought for the right to be called humans; he [c,ugl1t the battle of integration. As Tolson lay dying, other, youn ge r poets were ! fi gl ting the battle of self-determination-a lbeit usin g the same tool s emp:.oyed by poets and intellectuals of the past two centuries. So, it is indeed ironic 1a nd sad!) when a young writer like Haki R . • 7 �Madhubuti (Don L. Lee) complains that Tolson is not accessible to the everyday reader--see review of l~ale icl osco~: 51-52, 90-94. ~egro Di3est, A'VII, 3, (January, 1968), But Joy Flasch points >ut in Melvin B. Tolson (1972) that Tolson was aware that he was not writin ~ [or tlte "average" reader but for the "vertical" audience. In "Omega" of Ha rlem ~ 2 • Tolson asks if a serious writer should "skim the milk of culture" and g ive t 10se demanding immediacy and relevancy a popular latex brand? Tolson did not live, a s did llayd ~n, Sterling Brown, Saunders Redding, and others, to make Dod ge City contact wi : h proponents of the "Black Aesthetic" of II the 1960s. But some opponents h ~ve c> ntinued to rake him over the coals of responsibility. Black poet Sarah Web3ter Fabio (Negro Digest, XVI, 2--December, 1966--54-58), challenged Karl Shapiro's statement (Introduction ot Harlem Gallery) that Tolson "writes in Negro." His p)etic language is "most certainly not 'Negro,'" she avered, noting tha t it is "a biz a r re, pseudo-literary diction" taken from stilted "American mainstream" poetry / 'where it rightfully and wrongmindedly belonged." Hhite critics and writers joining in the assault on Tolson included Laurence Lieberman and Englishman Paul Bremen (of the Heritage Serie). Lieberman takes exception to Shapiro' s staternen ~, saying that he teaches Black students from all over the world, who are st ee, ed in Black language, but who do not understand Tolson (review of Harlem Galler t'_ in "Poetry Chronicle," The Hudson Review, Autumn, 1965, 455-60). Yet Tolson's ?ublishers had high hopes that he might get the Pulitzer Prize for Libretto. Re-writing and r e-thinking !1is p Jetry over a period of decades, Tolson became more difficult as he made adju s tm e nts to fit modernist trends in poetry. The sta~of Eng lish poetry were Eliot, Pound, Yeats, Crane, and Stevens, and Tolson admired and pattern ed his work after tl1em. Yet throughout his poetic life, �I/ he maintained an "enormous lo v e for rcople" which was reflected in his everyday work as well as in hi s poetry . ltendt zvous with America as a title indicates Tolson's commitment to love anJ do b, ttle with America. America has cancer and promise and Tol!ion perform e d op1 !rati c ns while he feasted on his nation's delights. His titl e poem, "Rend e z vou s with Ameilca," reflects the Whitman influence and Tolson' s awesome word skills, t1!clmi< :11 virtuosity and musical ear. the races and types of people who alio must rendezvous with America. · lie enumerates He sees how Time unltingcd the g;1Lei , to allow the be g innin g of J\meri,:a, ll(ltin r. such landmarks as Plymouth Rock, I Jamestown, and Ellis fsland, wh Leh lw juxtnposes with ancien t sites like Sodom, Gomorrah, Cathay, Cip a ngo and EL Dor n do . The "searchers" came to America which is the Blnck tlan's co1mtry , The l{ecl ~!an ' s , th ,~ Ye] .ow Man 's, The Brown Mnn 's, ~he WJlite Man 's. America flows, Tolson believes ,is An international river with a legion of tributaries! J\ magnj ficenl cosnor.1111,1 with myriad patters of colors! J\ giant fon:st wJ th lo ln-roots in a hundred lands! A corimopo] ft an or clwHL r a witl1 a thounand lnstr11ments playing A,n •rica ! Ilia manipulation of tr.'.ldilional form, coupled with what he called the three S's-"biolo~y , psychology ... s ociolog y ," or the synchronizinr~ of sieht and sound and - sense in a poern--yieJ ded much poetic fruit in his long ye,.irs of writing and r e-writin g his poetr y . l{(•n d czvous with America is not a great first book but it marked him a s an abl l' han d ler of un i:1ue verse forms . Ills major themes (history, �Black presence in th e wo rld , reli g io ) ha tr ed for class structures, and the plight of the underd og ) are handled in u var .e ty of forms: sonnets, rhymed quatrains, ballads, free verse forms, and s pec i a l two-syllable lines. Known as the iconocalst, Tolson used his poetry to do-sto :i l po 11posity and those who manipulated everyman' s sufferings from behind a c]oak of l1i g 1 office. Music and art infor111 1:1uch of his po~try--another reason why his allusory writing has been criticiz ed --as in " ~ .:ndezvous" and "Dark Symphony," the most popular po ell\ in his first book . In " :Zendezvous," in addition to his musical structures, he lists J\.me ri ca 's me l od~js by associating factories, express trains, power dams, river boats, c oal mines, und lumber camps with musical terminology: "allegro," "blues rhap s ody," "b.'.lss crescendo," "diatonic picks," and "belting harmonics." "Dark Symphony," i rrmediqte ly musical and racial in its title, is separated into parts a long musical ljnes and terminology: Part I: Allegro Hoderato; Part II, Lento Grave; Part III, Andante Sostenuto; Part IV, Tempo Primo; and Part V, Larghetto. "R endez\ious" and "Dark Symphony" are patterned after the ode form (which Tolson would exr.,and c n in Libre to and Harlem Gallery). "Dark Symphony" carries the same theme : as 'Rendezvous"--people pitted against their injustices--but the l a tter poem iu mere racial in flavor and subject matter. Located, temporally and spiritu,,lly, be tween the concerns of Whitman ( the "sweep") and John Steinbeck (Crapes of Wrath) 1 "Dark Symphony" opens by reminding Americans that "Black Crispus Attucks" di(!d fo1 th em (Boston Co111mons) Before white Patr..ck 111 :nry' s bu g le breath asked for liberty over denth. ,~ st r 1ingly masculine poem (as is so much of Tolson's work), it moves robustly to rec :Lte t \1c deeds of "Men black and strong. 11 Part II tells of the "slaves s inging " in th e "torture tombs" of ships in the middle passage, the swamps, the "cabin:; of 11eath," and "canebrakes. 11 In the remaining �parts, the Black American, spealdn g I hr?gh the collective "we," vows not to "forget" that "Co lgo tha" has b c . , ~ i}Jor that "The ll ill of Rights is burned." The New Negro wears "sevcn-lea1311e" bpots and springs from a tradition that produced Nat Turner, Joseph Cinque :~ ("R .ack Moses of the Amis tad Mutiny"), Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth and Harrie : Tubman ("Saint Bernard of the Underground Railroad"). Grapes of Wrath anil Nat ~ve Son are invoked as indices to the suffering and the breeding of slums. And, fin ,1lly, the historical concerns of the Black poet: Out of abys se s of Illi :eracy, Through labyrintl13 of . ies, 11 Across wast e lands of )isease h'e advance! Brilliant, esoteric , complex, i1novative, and able to span the world of Black Folk idiom and academic intellectualism, Tolson always punctuat~s his undaunted lyricism with ribald humor and thi i._; h-slapping uproarousness. However, Paul Bremen desparagingly referred to Tolson c1s posturing "for a white audience with an ill-conceived irin and a wic Ked sense of humor ... an entertaining darky using almost comically bi g words as the best wasp tradition demands of its edu5V 1 j L-> fcated house-nigr,ers." (M..1ybe, one 1~ i ght ~ Tolson was "even" too deep for the Yf\ Enclishman Bremen,) Neverthcl ss, the roets of the academy apparently loved Tolson and more than one of them tr1 e d to get him deserved recognition before he > tJi /{ 1A-fw\~ died, h'illiam Carlos;1saluted 1olso r; in his fourth book of Patterson; Allen Tate wrote a now famous introduct ior, to launchin)j Tolson int o th e s ame 1 ibretto; ~ us Shapiro introduced Harlem Callery, f ame that llowclls broui ht to Dunbar M years before; Robert Frost, St .: nl c y f.d p,c1 r llyman, Selden Rodman, John Ciardi, and Theodore Roethke, all tri e d to ''brir g Tolson to the c eneral literary consciousness, but with little succ e ss" (Sl1ap i. ro). A( setJti.. �Tolson's severest critics usuall , have in mind Libretto or Harlem Gallery. Rendezvous has been out of print for ;everal years and many of the younger Black poets and scholars have not read it--1s is the case with Sterling Brown's Southern Road (1932) which has j ust been repr i1te<l . Bu~any casual look at Tolson's work will confirm reports that h3 is 1o t digestible in a single reading. la rle□ before the erudition of Libretto and to the allusion. Even Callery, Tolson accustomed himself Indeed, his stronge,t weapon is the literary or historical reference--the mark of the library po ~t, the learned person. In "An Ex-Judge at ~ the Bar" Tolson is at his fi nest as h :: combines humor, allusion,;1 ironyl with the II justaposing of philosophy and social :ommentary. bar. This ex-judge is at a "drinking" And rich in oral power, like mo,t of Tolson's poetry, the poem surveys the history of a whit e man who, after serving in the war and returning home to become a judge , is guilt-ridden in a tavern where he discusses his life with the bartender. The opening couplet: Bartender, make it straight and make it two-- 7 ~,t<L One for the you in me and~ the me in you. reflects the Black American's dextera-1s ness with oral language anJ Tolson's rich background as storyteller anJ debate coach. The couplet contains the kind of musical, seemingly non-sensical st atqne nt that Black men love to exchange <luring fierce verbal sparrin~ matches--even though the judge is presumably white. Drunk, the judge r e -lives his war experiences and, in a vision, sees the "Goddess Justice" 7 whom someone "blindfo ld s" t_s the lawy e rs lie and railroad defendents before him. ) llut Justice "unbanda ged " her eyes anq accused the judge of lynching a Black man to "gain the judge's sea t," even thot1 gh, ironically, he fought in the last war to "make the world safe for Demcc rac y. " The judge, seeking consolation and implying that no one is ~~rfect, is finally m~veJ to self-evaluation, repents and orders �! \i Ii another round of drink s : Bartender, make it stra .. ght and make it three-One for the Neg ro ... O1te for you and me. "An Ex-Jud ge at the Bar"--wlth i 1 s ironies and double entenJres in the very title--is a poem that slips away from the reader. never sure, that one lias the meanin~ tinde r control . > One tl1inks, though one is The poem refers to Ceasar, Pontius Pilate, the Koran, the S.thara/ "September Morn" (a painting by Paul Chabos), the French language words, Fland,~rs f ~eld, and Macduff in Shakespeare's Macbeth. ~ Certainly these a re no: th e ideal ingredients for a poem directed to I· the "people." On the other hand , for the reader ready to Jo battle with history and world knowlecl e; e, Tolson prov,~s qu Lte rewarding. Dudley Randall ("The !Hack. Aesthetic in Thirties , Forties, ,rnJ FL f ties"--Modern Black Poets) states, with a strained air of seriousnes s , tha c : ''[f the reader has a well-stored mind, or is willing to use dictionaries, enc~lopelias, atlases, and other reference books,'' Tolson's work "should present no grc::i : difficulty." Randall hnd in mind, specificallr, Libretto, a section of which appeared in Poetry along with tl1 e book's preface. In this long poem--constructed loosely around the ode forn1--Tolson celebrate~ Liberia's cent e nnial. "Tolson used all th e devices dear to t he New Criticism: According to Randall, recondite allusions, scraps of f orei r,n lan r,unge s , African proverbs, symbolism, objective correlatives. Hany parts of the poem are obscure, nJ t through some private symbolism of the author, but because of the unusual words, forei gn phrases, and learned allusions." Randall goes on to point out th::it rea.ling Libretto is like reading other "learned poets, such as Milton and T .S. Eliot ." llowever, rea ding Tolson is not ~ xactly like reading other learned poets, for he places Black information in fron t of the r eader . Ile bends the ode into a �I/ musical structure and cel eb ratei; t i1e Black past. Continuing a pattern set in poems like "RenJezvou s with America" a nJ "Dark Symphony," Tolson separates Libretto alon g lines of th e west.ern 11 usical scale: Do. Do, Re, Hi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti, Specifically, Lihrett o a c ktLowl e<g es the 100th birthday of Liberia, founded in 1847 by the Americ a n Colonizati o n So ciety for free men of color. in the Lib e rian menta l ity a s fa c: t an, range of African hi s t o ry: "Rooted symbol, II Libretto traverses the kaleidoscopic the r. ta 2, n i l icent ancient and Medieval kingdoms, European exploitation, various th eo ri e s ,1s t o t he re a son for the question-mark-shape of Africa, the ori g ins o [ Blac k st1:re ot ~p es, Africa's contributions to the world, the impact of Christi a nit y , IsLnn a n 1. other reli g ions. All this Tolson does with what Allen Tate c alls "a great i;l ft of langua g e, a profound historical sense, a first-rate intelligence." Ta1 :e ali;o pondered, as did Emanuel and Gross (Dark Symphony, 1968), "what influenc1! thi1 ; work will have upon Negro poetry in the United States." More than slightly r ecalling Howells, in his endorsement of Dunbar, Tate says "For the firs 1; tim1 •, it seems to me, a Negro poet has assimilated completely the full poetic lang page pf his time and, by implication, the language of the An g lo-American tradition , " Relentl e ssly posin p, the on 1e-wor il question "Liberia?" and reinforcing the nation's existence in "fa c t and symb1> l," Tolson opens Libretto with lofty erudition and color. The fifth stanza of Do, 1 1fter the initial "Liberia?" and accompanying recitation of what the nation i, not, adJress e s its citizens thusly: Y,)u ar Black La zaru s ris ~n f r ! )In the \·/bite Han's grave, Without n r o 1d to Downing Street, Without a h em iJernisemil uaver in an Oxford Stave! Later in the same section, Tols :m e x ~erpts a chant from "The Good Gray Bard of �Timbuktu": "Wanawak e wanaz aa ovyo! Kazi Yenu Wanzun gu!" Robert Hayden has been cal l ed or.e of t l1e most skilled craftsmen since Countee Cullen; but Tolson without a dot.ht hJs sustained the most powerful poetry which adheres ri gorously to the t c nete or t he modernists. His Libretto is the drama of "The Desert Fox" and th e C.ern1an " poosestep" across Africa (Mi); of the snake, "eyeless, y e t with e ye s" ( Fa ); c,f 11 \~l i te Pilgrims" and "Black Pilgrims" who sing "O Christ" that the worsf will ' 1pass ! 11 (Sol); of "Leopard, elephant, ape" and "A white man spine<l wi th J r eams' 1 ( La) _; of a "Calendar of the Country" to "red-letter I the Republic's birth!" (Ti ); and o f ' a professor of metaphysicotheologicocosmonigology" who is also a tooth pull e r a p.:itapl ysicist in a clo.:ica of error a belly's welf a i;kull Is tabernacle a f/13 with stars a muses' <lar 1inr,, busie bee de sac et de corde a nei gh bor's be<l-i d1aker a walking hospital on the walk) The symbols, the synt ax , t he c n 1mma r a nd the langua ge tumble on placine Quai d'Or sa y, White llousc, Kreml in, Downin g Str ee t. in the catalo gue while Ae ain bla c k Ae thi ::ip r e 1chc s at th e sun, 0 Creek. (Ti) The history o [ world wars, t he sossl) in high circles ("11 Duce's Whore"), the concoction of en ume ra bl e l.:in~ua g ~s a nd boo k-buri e d erudition, reveal Tolson as a compl ex and di ff icul t mod e rn· po! t. The tra gedy, Randall and others l1ave �II pointed out, is that as Tolson wrote J.ibretto and Harlem Gallery, white scions of the modern verse were turning thei · backs on erudition for a more common, everyday lan~ua ge in poetry. Tr1ppcd in the middle (he held on to Harlem Gallery for more than 30 years), Tolson ::anti lUed to labor in the best tradition of the modern poetry to the disbelief of con :emporaries--who, like Cummings, Rexroth, and Hughes, were influenced by Be-Dop and a freer langua ge structure. · Tolson's sustained scholarship and comp lex all1sions are reinforced by the addition of scores of footnotes which cite the works of such as Dryden, Shakespeare, Emerson, Tennyson, Lorenzo Dow Turn er (Africa nisms in the Gullah Dialects), J.A. Rogers -~ (Sex and Race), V. Firdousi, Gunnar ~ltrdal, Aeschylus, Boccacio, Baudelaire, and hundreds of others. The worl~ ends (.12:?.) in a use of mystical and technological symbols which examine "Futurafrique" and "tomorrow ... 0 ... Tomorrow." Tolson's career is a terrifying examp le of the confusion that can occur in the Black literary artist. > mien h e fir st sent the manuscript of Libretto to Tate (who was across town at VanJerbjlt with the "Fugitive" poets while Tolson was at Fisk), he rejected it saying he w;is not interested in "propanganda from a Negro poet "<- (Flasch and Randa] l) ~ T lson then dilligently re-wrote the manuscript to subscribe to the hish intellc,ctua~, technical, and scholarly demands of the modern poets (Tate, John Crowe r.anso11 , Eliot, Pound, Robert Penn Warren, Donald Davidson, and others). it. Ile sent the n.:.r nuscript back to Tate who agreed to endorse In 1920, Tolson had stumblc~<l up< n a copy of Sandburg's "Chicago" but was warned by a professor to "leave that stuff alone" (Flasch). His maturation as a poet, then, was stunted--caus .• ng h : m to spend 30 years searching for his own voice. Harlem Gallery (the f irst nf a planned five-volume epic) provides another example of the chaos in Tolson' ,:; poe 1: ic life. In 1932, he completed a 340-page manuscript called "A Gullery of llarl 1!m Portraits" which was qirned down by �publishers. When the Je rivativ e ode, llarlem Gallery was finally brought out in 1966, Tolson hue.! published two newer ·11a nuscripts: Rern.lezvous and Libretto. llarlem Gallery had been placed in ToJ ,o n' s "trunk" for 20 years--a period during which he switched from the Romantics ind Victorians (and Masters after whose Spoon River J\ntholo1~Y "P o rtraits" \.J.1S year per loci Tolson saj d he "r ead and 111odelled) to the Moderns. During the 20 1L>so rbe<l the techniques of Eliot·, Pound, Yeats, Baudelaire, Pastcrnuk and, b.:!licvc, all the grea t moderns. God only knows how many "litll e magazines" st udied, and how much textual analysis (sic) of the New Critics." /\ sta[:r.,ering poe111 , llarlcm Cal.ll!r l'._ "ls a work of art, a sociological commentary, an intellectual tripl e somersault." (Flasch) It meets the vigorous intellectual, scholarly, and stylisLic whims of 111ocjern poetry, but at the same time is "impossible to describe." Yet it ls Tolson's crqwning achievement in more ways than one. First it continues !iii, fascination wlth Black and general history. Second, it pursues Tolson's intense intere~t in both the psycho-dynamics of the Afro-American character ..in<l the.• artlst; he is partj c ularly concerned with the plight of the twentieth century lll:1 c k artist lhcn ·c Book I, The Curator). Third, it provides one of the 1;1ost powerful :1ml aut h C' nt I c links between the llarlem l{enaissance and the Black Arts Movcm011t of tl1e ~ 9(,0B .:i nd J 970s. The very title of Harlem Gallery gives i.t a Black sctl lnf;; and tlic• f;_ic t of it's being conceived and initially drafted duri,1)'. thl! HL·11.1jssnn c c ndic- ; t •~; tliilt Tolson labored over the years (from the stand point of 111c·111ory, LvrhniqtH' a nd trnhject matLC'r) in the after-glow of the 11 terary [ lowering wa Lere<l by M1:Kay, Cullen, Toomer, Hughes, Fisher, Johnson, and Locke. l~i.,iaJly , the cl 1ar :ictL'. rs in ~,r l em Callery are Black: the Curator, Doctor Nkomo (I3antu expatriate anJ Afri_cani 1:L ), Mr . Cuy Delaporte (president of ilola Bola Enterprises), Black Orchid (blu,~s-si11 :;er anc.1 mistress to Oelaporte), the �half-blind Harlem artist John Lc:i u;•,art, l.lli.lck Diamond ( ghet to-promoter of the Lenox policy racket), and llidehc Ik L~, .1ts ( the li g ht-skinned poet of Lenox Avenue). The Curator of the Harlem Callery is an admixture (continuing concern begun in Rendezvous) of rac es (" Afro irishj o,vish"), an octoroon who passes for Black in New York and white in Mississippi. He is a digestion of the humor and pathos Blacks see in thos e of their r ace \/hQ a ttempt to "p ass ." Tolson noted that since thou sands of li1•, ht-ski11neq IlL,cks passed over, th e re is a standing joke among illacks which asks 11 \·Jhat Vil ite nan is white?" Harlem Callery, then, is desi gned to parade th e Bl ack "ti pes" (ultir.1ately everyman types) through the I gallery of life as it is shaped by tl c' vi ew of th e literary ge nius: Tolson. ~ Specifically, the boo!: is a ltu gl) i.lnsi, e r to Cert rude Stein's charge that the "Negro suffers from nothin i:: ness ." illack history. All of hJ s poetic life, Tolson worked to reconstruct Now, i n ~ r y , he was coming with speed and poetic pre- cision from his corner of the syntactical and semantical ring to do battle with Stein's char ge . In the Introduction to Harlem Gallery, Shapiro explains in part the reason why Gertru de St e in wc,uld 1 e rsclf be so ignorant. Whites do not get a chance to read about Bla c k acliiev 11,e nt since "Poetry as we know it remains the 1,ibre! !:£ may have pulled "the rug out from under most lily-whit e of th e arts." 1 the poetry of th e Aca de my" but ears." 11 ll arl1 ·m Callery pulls the house down around their J\ssni ling Elio t anJ otlwrs f<,r "µurifyin g the language," Shapiro praised Tolson for "complicating it , gl1ri n i; t the gif t of ton gues ." Tolson certainly g ave Harl1:m Cn .1.£!:y the "gift of tongues. 11 He uses tidbits from the range of wor ld L111 r, ua ~1!Ll ; b11t h Ls work is more sustained and coherent than in Libr e tto. Dot h story-l ~n e a11J l an g ua ge are more accessible in Gallery-- with its interpolatio n of rich ,S lack spee ch and musical terminology into stilted academic lan g ua ge and form. Se: up 11usically , with eac h section bearing the �II )$v}-lh ) name of a~Creek ,:l!J.phabet, Galle~ slwws Tolson again displaying his amazing technical virtuosity a nd his merger ,>f th e ode form with related Black orally-derived structures: / blues, jazz, Spirituals, folk epics and oral narratives (see "Satchmo" in Lrimbda} or " The Birth o ' John Henry" in XI). The verse pattern in Callery owes some debt to Do in Libr~tto with its tapered typography and irregular line organization wh ich either force, th e reader to speed up or slow· down to catch the rhyme. Alpha opens descri)ing the spice of llarlem as "an Afric pepper bird" before the Cur c1to r tells us thJt I travel, from oasis tJ oasis, man's Saharic ,1 up-.:ind-down. The grand sweep and intellect ual storage of Tolson are ga thered fr-om line to line, between lines, in th ~ margins, arou17d and throu p,hout th e poem. Recalling the verbal jousting in "An Ex-Judg~ at the Bar," the Curator assesses his "I-ness, 11 his 11 humannes s" and his " Negroress" a nd this recipe mixes with the pEppcr bird's reveille in my brain where the plain js twjlled and twilled in plain. The a cad emic stilts are shortcr.ed fer the sake of understanding (Beta): th e comma giv es (.he e)e , not th e head of the h,wk swo llen with rye. Like Hayden's "Middl e Passa ge, " _0:11 ·~ / vi ews the physical and spiritual pre- dicament of th e Black man: wh.it hap he go ne throu gh, how much more can/will he take, how long? Th,~ ans11e r is th a t man may have to endure suffering Aow long ? forever--but if he is doomed t ,) suf 'e r, he is likewise 11 doomed 11 to survive. The �Curator is told that others have su(fcre<l and surviveJ . the artist create in th e ir suffering . The Afro-American and So the "Afroirishjewish Grandpa" of the Curator tells him that: Bet\/een the <lead sc!a hitherto ancl the pro1 nisecl :_ aml I c nc e looms t he wi LJcrn< !SS Ne 1, : althou g h his co11ficlt.!r Ce is often a boar b;lilcd up on a rid g e, som,~ho1,, the Attic salt in wan s11rvives the blow of Attila, Croe;us, Jscariot , and th e witch es Sa)batli in the Catacombs of l3osio . Certainly this survival theme is clos ,! to the heart of the Afro-American and the artist. Artis ts are oft en among the ' i rs t to p l e f or clemency, for free expression, for truth. The Spirituals and tie va,t body of Black folk expression reaffinn the Afro-American's faith in man and the 1uest for survival. Acknowledging this aspect of Black expression and stren~th, Tol wn (and Hayden: "Mean mean mean to be free.") incorporates the rich blast of Black fo lk materials. In heaven (Lambda), Gabriel announces that 'I'd be lhe ~~ reatcst tru '1peter in the Universe, if old Sa tchmo had never been born! ' And the birth of John Henry is an epic birth--akin to that of Jesus, Buddah, Mohammed, and others. The ni ght John Henr~ born an ax of lig htning ~plit ~ the sky, ,::rnd a ha r.un er of thLn<l e r pounds the earth , �I I/ an J the ea 0 L!s am panthers cry! Reciting a soul-fooJ menu at bi .:th , . ohn Henry 'I want some ham hocks ribs, and ;owls, a pot of cabba31! ,rnJ e,reen; some hoecakes, ja1~l butter milk, a platter of po .~k and beans!' Tolson remdins at home in synch .:oni z .n.g, 4:he Afro-American and Western heritages. 7 In Gallery his forte is still tie li :erary allusion juxtaposed with history or religion (as in Libretto); but 1e lore s to ascenlth II mountain of academia '- and then suddenly drop into the mid s : of ghetto6fury as going ( Zeta ) from thoughts that tilt like "long '.fapalese eyes" :o a "catacomb Harlem flat" ( grote s quely vivisecteJ like microscoped maggo ts) .... To the " Elite Chitterling Shop" (Eu.1) which contains the "variegated dinoceras of a jukebox" (singing the ··;.1111Livalence of :::1.ass.i.c:di i.•iues'') . l'\ ...._ ,.....,. ..__ v v .... t,,,.>J..,_ I"'\\....: ...,,_,._ Nkomo, "the alter ego" of the gallery, speaks I Across ar. alp of chitt e rlings, pungent as epigrams, The Doctor returns to the theme o[ survival and free expression : ' The lie of the 9 rtist is the only lie for which a mortal or a god should die.' 'J.'olson' s ever-present rieeJ to ~ynlh Esize (and yet separate) the three ingredients of man (biology, sociolo gy and psycl o lo gy--extending into the three S's--sight, sou:.1d an<l sense ) recur in the J. oem ! T: ta) as the artists paint the seven r ~mels of 111< n ' s tridcmensional ity in var~_for rn! anJ varicolors-since virtut: lw.s no Kelvin scale s :.nce , , mot:her breeds 111 , twins alike , ... �_____ ........, I f l ,;/ ...; '- .... "le I J) j j ~ ...-! < ( . ' r ...,, , _.,, ! / , �1. an<l since no ma n who i.s .i u<lged by hi:; bioi ocia l identity in to r o can b(! a Kiefekil or n'('rtufe, an Isc .:ir iot or an Iar,o ." Hence Tolson extends, sometimes in crnno u f l ou p,e , his ideas about man's similarities and differences. different: To be sure, lw 12 1:.:iying that Black men and white men are but that the <liffer1inces .:i re not si gnificant enou g h to keep them from workin g to ge ther for the m11 tu nl good. This particular stan<l, which laces the work of llnyden, To lson, llur;hes a 1tcl early Gwendolyn Brooks, is not one that will remain popular a1,1ong poets who ,;ubscribe to the !Hack Aesthetic of the 1960s. Nevertheless Tolson <lu g un<lerne,1th t ' 1e hysteria and the ideological neatness to probe the time-honor ed qu es tion, abo1t na n. Psi (a much-anthologized section of Callery) finds Tolson doinr; bat~le wLth a nthropolo g ists, the D.A.R., the F.F.V. (First Families of Vir g in ia ), U1cle 'l'om, the Jim Crow Sign, the Great White Horld, an<l K:rnt, in an attt2mpt to an , Her th e question "Who is a Negro?" ancl "Who is a \Jhite?" satire. Tolson ' s wor k con : ains r; r eat satire; a nd g reat wisdom in the To b e misled by his in :::r ,Jj , le ancl J az:ding wori_ pL:iy is to miss the essential Tolso n who wa n wJ the corni.1 g gene ration that, although Uncle Tom was "dea<l, 11 the y should bew.:ire of hi s so1-- "Dr. Thomas." Sus picious of fame and wealth and desiring to see no man placed ov ~r another (in privile/ge), Tolson remarked after John 1.augart' s murcl <=r , tlw t at~Jnl_'., tho se thinf,S r ema ining was ... infamy, th e siamese t win of fac1c . �Are we privil edced , here , to see a s 1eak (JO-year-before) preview of Watergate? We do not know what HoulJ :rnve ' icen Tolson' s fate as a poet had he come to his own comfortable style ;:is a youn g man in the Harlem Renaissance. nearly fifty when he sent Tate the m,1n uscript for Libretto. He was Fifty, of course, is quite an age for a poet to b! sci 1 at odds with his craft--or to have his work over-s ee n by a cr iti c . Ne·,erth, ~Jess Tolson, not admitted (as Shapiro noted of Black poets), to the " polite comp,tny of the anthology," had to get his voice "together" without th e ai d a vail able to the "Fu gitives" or those in molding centers for modern voctry. ~?f/lM·.~ Few Blac] : poets at th e time were attempting Tolson's I feat--poetry among Bl a cks had, ~n fa, : t, declined in interest during the forties and fifties--and th e r e is much ,~vid pee that Tolson ge nerally intimidated other Black scholars and intellectual ;, witlt his vast knowledge and great talents. Like poets of other ge nerations, he 11as a part-time poet, expending much of his energies on students a nd school··rcla 1. ed work. Randall has pointed out that unless Black poets imitate Tolson--and thus keep him apparent and interesting--he will not exert a major inf l uence on 11.fro-nme rican poetry. But, as Barksdale and Kinnamon note, a poet of Tolson ' s rap ze and power can not go unnoticed for long. Criticism of Tolson is sparse. Joy Flasch's Melvin IL Tolson, in the Tw~{ United States Authors Ser .Les , 11ffers g ood insights into Tolson's techniques. narksdale and Kinnamon give briiif cr :. ticism in Black lvriters of America. Randall appraises him in the article on Blacl . poets of three decades following the Renaissance in his "Po rtr ai t of the l'oet as Ranconteur, '' Negro Digest, XV, 3 (January, 1966) 54-57. See als o "A l'oet' s Odyssey," an interview with Tolson I (conducted by M. W. King) in i\np,(ir, a11d fleyond (1966). For several reasons, Hargare t h'plk.e r's poetry and life provide a rich and rewarding jolt in the writing a c:tiv Lt y o f this period: her For Hy People (1942) � 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. 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