https://digitallis.isg.siue.edu/files/original/7213c53cca72627b747aea55c327f6fd.pdf 368fa1d61a34137c6b572df783a53bc8 PDF Text Text CTHAPTER V A LONG WAYS FROM HOME: j f 10 - / f•O Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, A long ways from home; A long ways from home. --Afro-American Spiritual I OVERVIEW Tbe di srti t i on of c ro nol oGY chapter • 11 1. be~ ne •11•-•f•Pllill?YYlil?acaeai~f•r•1••:s•s•s-lllil T■ l6fas-' f •-• J.:Lvte v 1.· ae D t ·. n t 1. · s because poets of the same age do not always achieve recognition at the same time. We have looked at James Weldon Johnson, for example, but we mention him again ~i • tls is 11.qe:15 Si a In fact--for reasons to be shown--Johnson overshadows almost the whole of Black poetry. Melvin B. Tolson, born before Hughes and Cullen, will be viewed And after them in the so-called post-fenaissance period. ~,Zince the primary aim of this study is to "cite" the most significant · names and events in the development of th-e poetry, e1m arr• a criticism will remain minimal. (-eo.rly aotfl~) * From this point Aon, Blac_fr poe,ts--and BlackS on The l•ttgtlt !""f':"":: s,•,,,..,w, - -: Lo.."~vo...ge.. . bv ame1t,ca-n ,,.,t,,'l Regin being viewed,\alongside all other ~ of M, AC:r-o-A~ WtU\ ~ .praisals of~ t i tApoetry;: I J ■e-; become a bit more difficult since up until the second decade of the 2O,t h ab �v wer-e v,ewed ~ ... century, ,._ Black poets,_A_,..Aas somewhat of a novelty. a wt\'ltih.e fo~ a • x3ub jec't$ for "curious" whites or .,,. a few dedicated Blacks. osse.srerJ . ..-.. very little armament with which to fight critical or literary nlynchings." Their models were essentially white (some con- temporary Black poets continue this _practice) and so were their ~ critics. p.--o v:d.ed · In the 19201s they l!a11111i9AOne of many "exotic"•<•• &,n.,-.Sowie. dF-tti~ illibl\bored ~nd thrill-seeking whites, I•dhe1--.suin.1 I II 'I ztm In the post-Renaissance their skills were often directed tow~rds integration and various other social programs. ,The most incisive . and Ji;fizltF,~(..:f blow to,-._ Black poet, is a dis- respect and rejection that par_a llel the general treatment of Blacks. Criticism of Black poetry is invariably political and racial be. -just as most of the poetry is forced to (.l h4 'P.-,C'fis 1' Some poets lament~this because it implies that protest and anger are reserved for them. It also says that the whole range of human behavior is somehow placed off-limits to the Afro-American poet, criticized by whites for not being "unihi$ own pl.ti versaln and by eiiileliiliii:1iilB1.for not being "Blackn enough. Needless to say, _ it is a dilemma of some magnitude and no amount of words or lamentations will answer or solve it here. We do comment on these matters, though, because they begin to appear as serious--unavoidable--plagues to the Black poet from this period on in our study. �Many poets (Mari Evans, Lance Jeffers, James Emanuel, Ray Durem, Dudley Randall, Zack Gilbert, Bob Kaufman, Frank Horne, and ~k_o butdidn oT br-1·n~ov+v0Lomes un"!Q,,Thet,, L1'ke-w/se. poeuwhohad o t h e r ~ ' 1 n g in periodicals bef~. been publishing books during the years before 1960 (Hayden, Gwendolyn Brooks, Conrad Kent Rivers, Hughes, and others) brought out new works sometimes reflecting different themes and attitudes. Poets who had been publishing substantially in periodicals or anthologies before 1960 will be noted in pa~ng. There will be no attempt to give individual attention to the scores of Black poets writing and publishing in the 1960•s and '70's. II Literary and Social Landscape Night is a curious child, wandering •••• --Frank Marshall Davis A. To 1930 I I n 1910 t e populat io n of Black America was 9s~B7;?•3~ Langston Hughes was a boy of ten and the NAA!?s one year old, By 1930, however, the Black population usn2 c3 ~"increased to 11,891,143 (or 9.7~);_.lJtjor migration of Blacks to northern wJ..J. industrial centers "WQaailaa hee•e"'-taken place; racial riots ~, .. scorched more than half a dozen American cities; the had country Wiel!Jitd ,u"'~ngaged in and ended its first national war, ) & .- 4(.,,.,.0,-r/e '"' f{a;,,,, �and lynchings '"i;i; continu~ to be among the most fearful prospects for Black men. Booker T. Washington had chronicled the hardships and bitter disappointments of Blacks in his Up From Slavery. The new "freedomn was short lived and illusive, Washington observed, because the ex-slave had no skill, no land and no place to go. 11 Emancipated" Blacks were not faring much better than their fore-parents. DuBois had be gun to raise some of the broader, global issues of Black oppression and place the Black Experience in its proper perspective in The Souls of Black Folks. During the second and third decades of the 20th century, Black scholars, activists and writers continued to record t he Black Experi ence with telling accuracy and drama. Additionally, a number of changes and developments in Black communities set off' a cha.in reaction of cross-examinat ions, intense debates, calls for changes and the chartingSof new directions. of lla.c. t.p,.,d_tf , Accordingly , the studentimust understand the mo oa of the times in terms of: l. The decline of Dunbar's inf'luence among poets. 2. Failing support of Booker T. Washington's 11 accom- adationist11 philosophy. 3. The continued disillusionment of survivors and heirs of the "Reconstruction. 4. 11 The development of white hate and intimidation gr oups (Ku Klux Klan, etc. ), �5. The I2 QI presentation of "stereotypes n of Blacks in the mass media and creative literature of the period. 6. The "Jim Crow" laws of the south; job discrimination and general segregation in the north. 7. The splits and confusion in the Black community due to the nnew'' middle-class; the appearance of West Indians in America and class alignment according to color stratification (i.e., lightskin, dark-skin, near-white, etc.). Much of the literature of the period deals with the theme of passing or miscegenation. 8. Race riots in various parts of the country between 1905 and 1917 • tl .:r11 s•• 22 2 America• • • • , science and industry were developing rapidly. Indications of this were the radio, wireless, technological warfare and the automobile. The "new Psychologyn was taking hold and the realism of the previous literature was bowing out to naturalism. This new mode is seen in the works of such writers as Theodore n '1!:J, er, Evelyn Scott and William Faunkner. Interest in local color and dialect, which had dominated the later portion of the 19th century., was also dying and the Black American was "re-discovered n by white writers as a subject for r.ealistic fiction, drama and poetry. White writers who published popular accounts of Black life included Dv3ose Hayward, Sherwood �Anderson and Carl Van Vechten. Revolts in interests and manners characterized American society. Black critic James A. Emanuel points out that during the/t/20~s, many wbi tes went to Harlem to "forget the war and engage their new Freudian awareness by escaping into exotic Q!~AIIS~ 111,q) , black cabaret life ~ Hughes records this exotic indulgence in \~o bis autobiography, The Big Sea (1940). 'I II )I ~~ J JI JS& S:v ~ IS o.L,o bT: it,\ "divers ioru, 11 A McKay in Y1~ A Long Way from Home andA ohnson in Along This WayA The Autobiography of An Ex-Coloured M.an.<//Dramo...of the period was dominated by Eugene O'neill who won Pulitzer and Nobel prizes. Two of 0'neill 1 s plays (The Emperor Jones and The Hairy Ape} symbolically dealt with the psychological involvement of Blacks and whites and suggested a transracial mixture of fear, hatred and admiration. is I & 7 ? g ; I t2Jkg4 ~ne of the ' -= vehicles for O'Heill's tbeo~es was a Black actor, Charles Gilpin, who starred in The Emperor Jones. • n 3 I I ~ Ceviews ....- i g(,3-ilpin' s performances ( "naked body ••• dark lyric of the flesh") typified preoccupation with the exotic savage--a trend that bad continued from Jack London (The Call of the Wild, The Sea-Wolf) and the white writers of local color: Page, Harris, Cable However, many 3 ii o writers, like O'Neill and Dreiser, had begun to shake �off the mystique of the American Dream and deal instead with /h-e "illusion." Such was Dreiser's theme in his novel, An American Tragedy (1925) .. The founding of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, by Harriet Monroe (1912) signaled the birth of the New Poetry movement in America. JJt Tl In 1915• the anthology, l I )( 2 1 Some Irnagist Poets, appeared to rival dissident factions which wanted to dispense with traditional forms. Imagism was in- fluenced by Ezra Pound's theories and French Symbolism as well as Oriental and ancient Greek poetry. Chief spokesman for the Imagist poets was Amy Lowell who was joined by John Gould Fletcher and Hilda Doolittle, among others. During the next two decades the group waged a successful battle against the dissidents; but they also re-worked traditional forms and cornered a new reading market for poetry in America and England. ~ Poet Vachfel Lindsay, an advocate of using rhythm and the ~ reading aloud of poetry, is credited with having "discovered" Langston Hughes. Black poets who participated in this "revival" of American poetry were the innovator Fenton Johnson and the anthologist William Stanley Braithwaite. The most signi.fican,t development of the period, however, was the Black cultural flowering, principally in Harlem, which has become known as the Harlem Renaissance, the Negro Awakening and the Negro Renaissance. Central to the ";enaissancen (critics differ over whether it should be called such) was the �migration of southern Blacks to northern urban centers. With the working-class Blacks also came (and grew) the Black intelligentsia, artists and activists. Current Black creativity or scholarship cannot be understood unless the Harlem Renaissance is placed in proper perspective because the Harlem period is the most important bridge existing between slavery and the modern and/or contemporary eras. Hence, it is necessary t h at we sketch out the important political and artistic developments which led up to (or happened during) the Renaissance. A partial listing of these developments must include: Founding of the Boston Guardian by Monroe Trotter (1901). Founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (1909) and establishment of The Crisis. Founding of the Urban League (1911). Founding of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History by Carter G. Woodson (1915). Establishment of The Journal of Ne@'o History by Woodson (1916). Black troops involvement in World War I. Great Migration of Blacks to northern urban center~ h~ 1916-1919;,.. the trendAcontinued through t h e middle of the centur] • The recording of Black achievements in all areas; Black scholarship is brilliant and sustained �throughout the entire period. The writings, especially, of W.E.B. DuBois, Charles s. Johnson, Alain Locke and James Weldon Johnson. The high point in the influence of Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association (Garvey, who came to the U.S. from Jamaica in 1916, preached a back-to-Africa movement. He was imprisoned in 1925 for mail fraud.) Founding of Opportunity, A Journal of Negro Life (1923; Opportunity and The Crisis published much of the new work of the Renaissance writers and offered annual prizes). The flourishing of Black Music and musical dramas (Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake do Shuffle Along, 1921; Louis Armstrong, with his own band, opens at the Sunset Club, Chicago, 1927; Duke Ellington opens at the Cotton Club, Harlem, the same year). The post-war Pan-African Congresses (Paris, 1919; London, 1921, 1923; New York, 1927; DuBois was primary organizer.) James Weldon Johnson edited the first 20th century American anthology of Black poetry, The Book of American Negro Poetry in 1922. Johnson's work was followed in quick succession by five other poetry anthologies~ 11..,'1-~ ( ~~ Negro Poets and Their Poems (Robert Thomas Kerlin, 19232_; 2fb �An Anthology of American Negro Verse (Newman Ivey White r and Walter Clinton Jackson, 1924l; '-:) An Anthology (Clement Wood, 1924 ~ '""Negro Songs: Caroling Dusk (Countee Cullen, 1927) ,,,,,,.,,,,.' (-or Four Negro Poets (Alain Locke, 1927) • note also was F.F. Calverton 1 s An Anthology of American Negro Literature (1929) which contained 60 pages of poetry. ·Cullen an Locke were two Ji lW !11ajor f g res of the Ii 3 & Renaissance along w· th Cla de Mc a-:.r, Johnson, H sl-ies ,- and Jean Toomer. Locke edited the anthology which heralded and chronicled the new Black mood and achievements: The New Negro: (t An Interpretation (1925); It - ~r emains a classic today. also He ?t-4dvc.ed s ba~the equally important A Decade of Negro Self Expression (1928). A Rhodes Scholar from Pennsylvania, Locke received a Ph.D. in 1918 from Harvard and is still considered (A. 11 bl •~fore- most interpreter of Black creativity of the Renaissance. Cullen published Color, his first book of poetry, when he was 22 and w~,; instantly recogni~ as one of the best young poets in America. McKayA Cullen Mhe.i,,eJ Tu of English poetry. t he a ft S~1c.'t 11t. 11 tradition Considered the best "formal" writer of the Renaissance period, Cullen was meticulous and careful in his o.,.J.: poetic workmanshipA a who CL im he~ 11 J{e .,:,,oifl ed • • • • i t'Athose The Dark Tower II to brood over bein g called "Negro" poets. In addition to Cullen, other ey poets of the Harle~ Awakening - - published i mp ortant volumes or anthologies and �i added to the creative and critical.tf l"t 0~. Johnson and h is brother, J. Rosamond, edited The Book of American Negro Spirituals (1925) and The Second Book of American Negro bo'fh Spirituals (1926). McKay published poetry inAEngland and America. Johnson said McKay belonged "to the post-war group and was its most powerful voice. poet of rebellion. 11 He was pre-eminently the Hughes and Cullen won national recognition (and poetry awards) at about the same time. the comparison ends. There, however, Hughes was one of the widest traveled of all the ienaissance writers. He was also the most prodigious and multi-talented, writing successfully in all genres. Hughes, who when he died in 1967 was the widest translated American author, is known as the international poet laureate of Black people. Johnson recorded much of this creative outpouring in various ways. As a scholar, he is known for his anthologies and his seminal interpretations of Black culture--music 1 and the Spirituals in particular. Of great importance was bis 1 1922 anthology wherj};n an illuminating Preface, be cited the four major Black artistic contributions to America: l. The Uncle Remus stories, collected by Joel Chandler Harris. 2. The Spirituals ("to which the Fisk Jubilee Singers made the public and the musicians of both the United States and Euro~ listen"). 3. The Cakewalk (a dance which Paris called the "poetry of motion 11 ) • �4. The Ragtime ("American musicrr :ror which the U.S. is known all over the world). Johnson is also noted f'or his work with the U.S. diplomatic corps, his pioneering f{§i!'n. Awith the NAACP and his brilliant ~ employ♦ment of' Black idioms and psychology in his poetry and ~ 11 discussions. Lif't Every Voice and Sing,n called the Black national anthem, was ~lt1e:.¼• by him in 1900. One of' the most unique voices o:r the Harlem Renaissance JJIIIIIIIP was Jean Toomer, who along with Hughes, Cullen and McKay make up Loc~s Four Negro Poets. A complex of' person- alities, talents and racial mixtures, Toomer was a constant enigma to critics and f'ellow writers. Although he admitted that he was of' seven racial strands, he acknowledged that "my growing need f'or artistic expression has pulled me deeper and deeper into the Negro group." was published. In 1924, Toomer•s Cane Set primarily in the deep south--in Georgia-- it also deals with the urban impact on migrating Blacks. Love, racial conf'lict, sex, violence, religion, nature and agrarian themes are all explored directly and allegorically. Race pride, the lower side o:r Black life, and a romantic engagement with Af'rica were the main thrusts of the «enaissance literature. activists. So too with the painters, musicians, scholars and Garvey had set up a regal court reminiscent of ancient Mrican Kingdoms and had inf'used his followers with visions of returning to the nhomeland. 11 His "court II was resplendent with hierarchical titles and lavish regalia for �~ parades. ships. Black Star Line was t h e name of h is fleet of The prevailing spirit of the day was one of Black indulgence and many whites sought for, and · got t heir share But of, it. if'ne Black Awakening was not the exclusive property of Harlem. Por as Kerlin points out (Preface, Negro Poets and Their Poems), t h e mood of change spread to other sections of the country. • bl published were A 11 g l ~ "-anth ologies The Q.u ill in Boston, Black Opals in Ph ila- delph ia and The Stylus in Wash ington, D.C. Important, too, were the collections and studies of folk songs. "Noteworthy " collections for tl:e period included: Negro Folk Rhymes (Thomas W. Talley, 1922) The Negro and is Songs (Ho ard W. Odum, 192.5 ) Negro Workaday Songs (Howard W. Odum, 1926) Rainbow Round My Sh oulder (Howard W. Odum, 1928 ) Wings on My Feet (Howard W. Odum, 1929) American Negro Folk Songs (Newman I vey Wbite, 1929) Other brilliant and exciting poets and writers shared t h e Renaissance scene--though they are normally over-sh adowed by Hughes, Toomer, McKay , Johnson and Cullen. Some of t h ese writers--most of whom did not publish volumes u ntil t he later period--were: Arna Bontemps, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Waring Cuney, Robert Hayde n , Gwendolyn Bennett, Sterling Brown, OWen Dodson and Melvin Tolson. Prose writers of t he period included Eric Walrond and Rudolph Fish er as well as Hugh es and Toomer. Bontemps, anthologist, critic, librarian, poet and novelist, �published in leading magazines of the period and won numerous awards for poetry. Brown pursued the fol~ tradition wh ile cultivating an ear and technique that rivaled some of the best modern poetry. His debt to folk idioms and characters is ob- vious in such poems as "¥:dyssey of Bib Boy, "Memphis Blues, 11 and "Long Gone." 11 11 S outhern Road," Brown contributed to peri- odicals of the period, wrote a regular column for Opportunity, and later published important critical studies. Dodson wrote verse plays and collaborated with Cullen on at least one writing project. and poetry. He too won numerous awards for h is plays Hayden and Tolson, both significant modern poets, were to be heard from in succeeding decades as critics and outstanding teachers. B. 1930 - 1960 \~nen the stock market crashed in 1929, white patronization of Black artists ended. Black creativity and scholarship, however, bad grown up during the f'fefi)st three decades of the century, and important writing and musical development continued. Migration of Blacks to northern urban centers was stepped up before and after World War II--with many Blacks being attracted by shipbuilding and other war-manufacturing industries. Afro- Americans have participated in every U.S. military conflict l. The wr i t i ng of poetry conti nued but publishing was slowed down. o. James (1973), notes that Young, in Black Writers of the Thirties 11 Black writers produced less than one • 1 �since Colonial days. During World War II and Korea , however, they were used almost exclusively as fighting troops (between 1943-45 Jim Crowfas abolished in the Armed Forces). Nevertheless, Black soldiers, returning home from European and Pacific war theaters, still faced unemployment and lynching; and in some southern citie~~re forbidden to appear on the streets in military uniforms. Baldwin is one of many perceptive American fftt- 0. writers to note that/\l31ack mftn, seeking the fruits and 111t realization of the American Dream, tried throughout history to adjust and 11 fi tu into American society. So, in face of official American contempt for his humanity and his welfare, the Black soldier marched also with an "equality" o:f death into the Korean War. 2 James Weldon Johnson had opened the dismal period of the Depression with Black Manhattan, a social history o:f Harlem. Black Manhattan was one of the dozens of studies on urban Black communities which had been begun by works such as DuBois' Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (1899). Like Johnson, many of the poets and artists turned their writing skills toward the recording of Black social problems and artistic achievements 12 L (iJohnson' s Black Ameri cans, What Now? and Charles S. Johnson's The Shadow of the Plantation, 4'Ji!Hlh :i11 1934). Some volume of poetry per year between 1929 and 1942.n 2. This turned out to be not so true in the Viet Nam war of the sixties when a dead Black veteran was refused burial in a white cemetary near his home in Georgia. �of the writers were subsidized by WPA grants while others sttw.. managed to obtain jobs as teachers and journalists. ~,01:;hers, o.UO like the common folk, 51troJ, ln soup lines. It was ~uring the period of 1930-60 that white schools of higher learning started accepting more Blacks, as students and teachers. Generally, America witnessed rapid advancements in science and industry. Radio drama became a cultural mainstay and the motion picture industry provided a new and exciting diversion. ':."'I Baseball continued as the "national pastl,.:tme" (for Blacks, it was the era of Jackie Robinson). Jack Johnson bad already (in the previous era) dazzled America with bis pugilistic skills. But it was the prize fighter Joe Louis ( the ''Brown Bomber 11 ) , however, who captured sports-minded America with one of the greatest records in the boxing history. Louis's defeat of German Max Schmeling (1938) came at a crucial time in U.S. history--when America's rising might among the world of nations was being challenged on the battlefield by Hitler. Two years earlier, a racist Hitler had refused to acknowledge the feats of America's Black Olympic track star Jesse, OWens. In prose and drama, white American writers continued to straddle a thematic patW:>etween realism and the American Dream. A distinctly rrpost-war" group · of writers emerged. Dominating the period were Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson, Sinclair Lewis, Willa Cather, Thomas Wolfe, 0 1 //eill, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Dos Passes, Katherine Anne Porter, Erskine Caldwell and Carson HcCullers. Using �symbolism and alle gory to attack war, decadence and t h e atomic bomb., American writers often took as models such Russian writers as Chekov., Dostoevski and Tolstoi. Many employed t .. e strea.a of consc · ousness tech nique--a sty e influenced 11 y t he new psychology " a nd Irish writer James Joyce--which allowed for uninterrupted explorations on the t h oughts of ch aracters who 11 streamed 11 their references. A similar mood pre vailed in the poetry--much of which dealt with social decadence, war and the mechanization of man. E.E. Cummings, known for h is typo- graphical trickery and general linguistic and syntactical experiments., was one of the most relentless critics of bureaucracy and war. Such themes had also concerned T.S. Eliot, considered one of the greatest modern poets, in such poems as " "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prj.frock" and The Waste Land. Tbe Irnagist poets p~rsued their development via such voices as "H.D • ., n Ezra Pound and Marianne Moore. Other modern poets CH·•-e. . _ Conrad Aiken, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Archibald McLeish, Hart Crane, John Crowe Ransom, Allan Tate, Richard Eberhart, Randall Jarrell, Robert Frost and Carl Sandburg. Crane, Eliot, Pound, W.H. Auden and Stevens have been called the ~jor voices of the modern American Poetry. Historically, Black Music bad been marked by white imitation and exploitation. There always existfthe need to create a "white" musical face that ~ b e digested .by Americans at large. From the minstrelsy of plantation days to the sophisticated operettas and musicals of the twenties, this pattern ran un- �broken. During the modern period, Be'lop became the musical heir to Ragtime, early (azz and Tin Pan Alley. While the big lef.O,K band~and ll&eW composers--Basie, Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, w.c. Handy, Eubie Blake, Noble Sissle, etc.--continued their important work, different kinds of experiments were going on among other musicians. From these new formations and probings came some of the giants of modern Black ;f'usic: Miles Davis, Charlie "Yard Bird II Parker, Lester "Prez'-' Young, Sonny Rollins, Gene Ammons, Art Blakey (who studied drums in Africa), Ornette Coleman (see Four Lives in the B0ob Business), Chano Pozo (Afro-Cuban), Dizzy Gillespie and Babs Gonzales (Bop poet and singer: I Paid My Dues, 1967). From the musicians and their supporters emerged an underground nhip 11 language. This tradition, of talking in metaphors and encoded cultural neologisms, had begun during the ienaissance. vocalists were featured with the musicians: oic2ll strsl is I Often, too, Black sa s sf th ass a Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn, Billie ~ Ho1J_iday and Bessie Smith--who died in 1937. The migration to cities also sa~ the continued rise of urban -0r big city p.ues. By 1960, however, the /1ues bad gone through several important periods of development. Some names associated with the modern period were Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, Cab Calloway, Bill Broonzy, Pops Foster, Eddie "Son'' House, Robert Johnson, Johnny Temple, Roosevelt Sykes, Elmo James, B.B. King, Leadbelly, Jimmy Reed, Muddy Waters, Josh White, Sonny Boy Williams, Howlin" Wolf, John Lee Hooker, Ligthnin' Hopkins i'c,n',T'ed, and Big Joe Turner. These men inherited the flames ii QIJllj\bY • �Leroy Carr, Blind Lemon Jefferson and W.C. Handy. Several notable Black literary explosions occured during the period between 1930-60. Important were: the publication of Native Son (Richard Wright, 1940); the publication of For People (Margaret Walker, 1942); the appearance of Invisible My G""enJr,Lyn 81->t.i()~.s,' Man (Ralph El-l ison, 1952) and ilia~ wit'ming of the Pulitzer Prize ror poetry ID J 1 J ~ 950_, - J!nnie Allen). Native Son, a novel, featured a Black protagonist named Bigger Thomas who sym"1lized (and in many ways contained) the anger, rage and pressures felt by urban Blacks. The book was the first by a Black author to make the best seller list and was also a €ook of the Month 6lub choice. ~ ' i During the same period ' Wright, who died an expatriate in France in 1960, published several other novels, short stories, books of essays and miscellaneous prose. appeared. In 1945 Black Boy, his autobiography Wright is significant for many reasons, foremost among them being that he was the first Black writer to deal, accurately and on par with the best fiction writers of the day, with the philosophical and psychological complexity of the Black urbanite. In doing this, he opened a new range of possibilities and ~lped free Black fiction in many ways. There were other excellent fiction writers during this period: Rudolph Fisher, Zora Neale Hurston, SC J McKay, Hughes, • • • Bontemps, Ann Petry, DuBois, Frank Yerby, Eric Walrond, w,Uiq117 f)emb'/ Chester Hime,~and Sterling Brown. Wright, however, was the first to forge and sustain a major Black art piece out of mythical and racial materials. �Baldwin, whose reig~ succeeded Wright's, made his entry in 1953 with the publication of Go Tell It On the Mountain. i N\ff Nb.~"t His other baNLI PI•· work includes Notes of a Native Son (19.55) and Giovanni's Room (1956). A)~rq<A ~et who teaches litera- -~AWalker, ture at Jackson State College, was 22 years old when she wrote "For My People 11 --one of the most famous Black poems. Her book by the same name won the Yale Series of Younger Poets award in 1942. Rich in cultural folk references, Black phonology and social history, the slim book brilliantly traces the hope, humor, pathos, rage, stamina and iron dignity of the race. The winning of the Pulitzer Prize by Gwendolyn Brooks (and Ellison's accolades) told the world that Black writers 11 had mastered the ultimate" English literary crafts of poetry and fiction to a degree which no longer called their abilities into question. Many Black critics feel, however, that there were excellent volumes, before Annie Allen., which should have received the Pulitzer Prize. These critics say Black artists, like the Black Experience, come periodically into fashion (e.g., Harlem Renaissance)--to be tolerated at the whims of white literary bastions, despite their proven abilities. The GNtndoLy,, citation of - . . Brooks (who published A Street in Bronzeville, 4 1945) was a citation of the Black Experience, however--despite the fact that the prize was not a major announcement in the Black community. Blacks, caught up in the post-war mood, job' searching and a quest~or social equality, were not reading �much poetry.,Ellison, who has not published a novel since Invisible Man (1952) remains one of the most controversial figures in American Literature; much of the controversy arising from what he says outside of fiction (see Introduction). Communist-oriented papers generally condemned Invisible Man when it f'irst appeared. They held that it was a "dirt throwing" ritual for Ellison--who combines naturalism and complex symbolism in the book. Black novelist John Oliver Killens also gave it a negative review. Generally, however, the work is considered, by Black and white critics, to be a great novel-perhaps the greatest American novel. It won the National Book Award in 1952 and in a subsequent poll of 200 journalists and critics, it was judged the most distinguished single work of' f'iction since World War II. rAnflamed by the spirit and example of the Harlem Renaissance, Black poets of the pre- and post-war years continued exciting experiments. .from the 11 G"'endblvn 1lilllli~Brooks recalls that a brief encouragement great 11 James Weldon Johnson when she was a child spurred her on her way. Some of the poets of the Renaissance, however, quit writing altogether or began writing in -i'other $· genre~ . Johnson reported in 1931 that Fenton Johnson b ad been "silent" for ten years. Poet Bontemps also wrote novels--the most famous of them being Black Thunder (1939), an adaptation of the 1831 Nat Turner-led slave revolt. He edited and wrote, and sometimes collaborated with others -or_} anthologies and biographies for young readers. With Hughes, be edited The �Poetry of The Negro: 1764-1949, c onsider ed a breakJhrough in modern Black literary activity. One of the handful of Renais- sance Black writers to survive into the Seventies, Bontemps died in 1973. Some have called the period between 1930-54 the age of Lan ston Hug es in Black letters. remained Indeed, Hug 1es rominent and productive throughout the three periods-- . ~naissance, 1930-54, and the rontemporary era. During t e pre- and post-war periods, Hughes continued to turn out everything fron newspaper fiction columns (Jesse B. Simple) to juvenilia to plays. Hughes in poetry, like Wright, Ellison and Baldwin in ~ose, faithfully recorded the Blacr mood. l#t ~· =~the others, he also predicted the social violence of the sixties. Poets and other volumes of the period included! Sterling Brown, Southern Road (1932); Cullen, The Medea and Some Poems (1935); Hayden, Heart-Shape in the Dust (1940); Naomi Long Madgett, Songs to a Phantom Nightingale (1941) ; H. Bing~ DiJmond, We ~lho Would Die (1943); Tolson, Rendezvous With America (1944); Dodson, Powerful Long Ladder (1946); Cullen, On These I Stand (posthumously, 1947); Hayden, with Myroi 0' Higgins, The Lion and the Archer (1948); Tolson, Libretto for the Republic of Liberia (1953); Selected Poems of Claude McKay (posthumously, 1953); Ariel W. Holloway, Shape Them into Dreams (1955); John C. Morris, Cleopatra and Other Poems (1955); Alfred Q. Jarette, Black Man Speaks (1956); Beatrice Wright, Color Scheme (1957); Mary Miller, Into the Clearing (1959); Percy E. Johnston, Concerto for Girl and �Convertible (1960); Oliver Pitcher, Dust of Silence (1960);o-S)._ ean Eater ( 1960 )• i,J3rl Vs@ z en Gwendolyn Brooks , The Tb? * Also writing and/or translating during this period were Dudley Randall, Samuel Allen (Paul ().Od Vesey), Margaret DannerA Richard Wrigh t (wh o also wrote poetry). C J L 5 di ... A , Black and white poets exchanged ideas and socialized_ . . if Ir# I I sl I I r t at 1a as u2 ~ V1 d Po t't rMt:"' •·11sllit-.199-.is1!1!£-i-.t1tM11•f._.,.,o A. )(any of the I t 3 Il ia] 5 2 at gl SP .. r 11 isi J 13& were introduced to publishers and the reading public by well-known white poets or critics. Such a practice was to come under fire, during the latel'l6ots and/f?o'i's, by some Black poets and critics who judge~Black writing. reel that whites could not Reviews of the period were generally favorable to the Black writers who showed great finish in their work. Hayden, Walker, Brooks, Tolson and Dodson were among the poets who received high praise for their tech nical virtuosity. Stephen Vincent Ben~t wrote t he forward to lfi:: For My People, Allen Tate to W IL I Pu Libretto For the Republic ~Ji~YI r-e.(eiued 'A accolades r'ri """ of' Li ber ia and Hayden won Hopwood Awards twice. JJJ,,,,. Poetry: A Magazine of Verse--regarded as t he wh ite American olympus of poetry. One of the most important anthologies of t h e post-~naissance period was The Negro Caravan, (1941) edited by Brown, Arthur P. Davis and Ulysses Lee. The best inclusive anthology of Black literature, it remains today .are ef th ~ 210 tstanding textbook{ . <..!! �Brown also published two important works of criticism, The Negro in American Fiction and Negro Poetry and Drama, both in 1937. And J. Saunders Redding published his critical work, To Make a Poet Black, in 1939. Jn 1940 d · IA/ll,O e.s"twouc htd PhylonAwith the venerable W.E.B. DuBois as editorf~fn 1954, as American soldiers prepared to return from Korea and television glared to consume the world, the Supreme Court decision of May 15 closed the book on one era of Black American history and opened up Pandora's box on another. Wright's Black Power (1954), a commentary on bis experiences in Africa's Gold Coast, may have been more than c.,f just a hint "Ai;M.. what was to come. ~~~woul~ w~~s some, but not all, of the ingreAi;nts of Pandora's box• ~ when a Black woman in Montgomery refused to givi(her seat on a public bu5 to a white man, a new era of Black struggle was born. A successful boycott of buses was led by Martin Luther King, Jr., founder (in 1957) of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Like flesh-flames, hordes of young Blacks (and some whites) began sit-ins and various other "in's" as the Freedom cry reached a new pitch. This was the ges- tation period for the Congress of Racial Equality and the And o.U~~ wl,',Le. Studentll Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. A!hite youth took to television and swayed to the rhythms of Chubby Checker, the Chante ifs ~ and the Five Satins. But as America "twisted the night away" another and different mood, expressed through a 2")1 �difi'erent voice, was hugging t h e rim of the "dream." And we were not yet "Beyond the Blues." ,, THE III '\l()Jaieln - THE TOTEM Good mornin', blues, blues, bow do you do? -- Leadbelly A. The Coming Cadence: Pre-Renaissance Voices As the 20th century continued to open its bewilder ed (some. say "shocked 11 ) eyes, e:'il,:it. m1>-t-\'f & 02 not the least among t em in Blac bm ~ changes were occur ng-- poetry and the arts. vitb the increase int e num er of pub ications taking their work (due to the pioneering efforts of Dun ar, Carrothers, Camp ell, Cotter, Sr., and ot ers), Black poets could at least anticipate 1aving t eir ~~~~tf1pTJ read by white editors. Many of the poets writing in the first and second decades oft e century would never be eard from again; but a few wold become "mi nor " /\JJ.,"> 'tld o ve.r lights of the Harlem Renaissance. T e poets llif at i i m a surprising diversity of styles, linguistic-bents, t emes, temperaments and age categories, and came from practically every corner of the United States, the West I ndies and Sout America. Among the early poets were Kelly Hiller (1863-1939), Leslie Pinckney Hill (18 0-1960), Charles Bertram Johnson (1880- ) , Benjamin Brawley (1882-1939), Raymond Garfield �~ ~ Dandridge (18 2-1930), Otto LeA Bohan1n Edward Mee al 1 (l 80- ( , James ), Angelina Weld Grimk~ (l Jessie Redmond Fauset (1882-1961), Walter Everette awkins ( 1883- '( ) , Mrs. Sarah Lee (Brown) Fleming, Leon R. Harris (1 86- ), Effie Lee ewsome (1885- ), alter Adolphe Roberts (1886-1965), Eva Al erta Jessye (1897- ) , Georgia Douglas Johnson (18 6-1966), T eodore Henry Shackelford (1888-1923), Roscoe C. Jamison (1886-191 ), C1arles ( 18 5- ) , Mrs. Mae Smith Jo nson ( 1890- R.,a. za.fkeri Qf o (1 95- William Edgar ilson ) , Andrea ), Benjamin E enezer B rrell (1Q92- ai. e ·c ), ), Joseph Seamon Cotter, Jr. I'.:\ (1895-1919), Clarissa Scott Delany (1901-1927), and scores more. Major poetic contribut ons were made by James Weldon Johnson, Fenton Johnson, Cotter, Jr. (cut do n iiiiff h{t,:~Ltl develop his promise) and a few ot ers; yet s i mportant that we at least .@: ~ ~~ ome of the lesser lie; ts of t is period • •C•••••1 ic: 3 5 .g Brown and ~•=ii t Redding feel nothing of im- portance, beyond the Johnsons, occured i n the first two decades. But, for purposes of our study and continuity, we must note that t i s was not a period of inactivity among poets. nicall, there was some experimentation. Tech- Ho ever, most of the poets ether helped p ase out the dialect vogue or wrote harmless pieces on nature, love, gardens, death and ~uman sorrow. Others wrote ars ly and itterly of the war. Miller, mathematician and soc ologist, was a leading �Black spokesman of the day and only occasionally wrote poetry. His prose-poem nr See and Am Satisfied 11 provided fuel for further discussion of contemporary racial issues. Consisting 25 stanzas, it is reminiscent of Fentpn ~/ohn_son (ITTired 11 ) of 1-eSL,e Pi neY and Margaret v alker ( "For My People "). , ' (ill produced- i11any good students wile he was principal at C1eyney Training Sc ool for Teachers (later C eyney tate College). e attended arvard and taught at Tuskegee and his literary influences are Longfellow, Wordswort , Milt on and Burns. His pu lis:1ed works are The vings of Oppression (1922) and Toussaint L'Overture--A Dramatic liistoa (1920). il_, Roy L. oet and educator, is a proteg oft e senior Hill wbo feels t ~j)~-A merican "constrained oppression to give h i m wings 11 e,.hd I\ whose. poetry 11as a strenct. laced e tells witb lasbington-typc feelings a o trace relations. us that e will t'mourn t e travail of emorable, o ever, s of an actual lynching. ( a pamphlet, 1900), L,iy race." ?lost gripp · n 0 ly is nso Q,u i etly,n a poet c dist llati.on #c arles o nson pu lis ed isperinc;s :1e T-Tantle of D n ar and Ot er Poe.ns ( a pamo nson •as an edtcator and preac er in 1tlssouri and and serious. at ri , e lures t e read r into That appears to e then ta es some iron· s_ t~- · st or tt rn. of ease w1en 11 1i·r~ "' a ,., " ·...... ea II es71/A.._n occ-as1.ona_ • u l se d sonc'\,i\7t poe t , 11 bVL t\rld ~ ·!). For ,ra-11 ey attended More .ouse, Harvard a~ t e Universit~ of Ch caco, and for years ta col:!..ei:;es. i:;..,t in :Sn •l is1"' depart 1e:1ts at s011t er:1 Plac c Ie ·s pr mar "ly nown for ,.., · s io neer in ..J or ~n �li t orature an soc 5e: hort r-=i:istor:,. istory. (192:), Gor · s (1937 to t and !e 1i ders and ~eroes (10? ra•rlcy ' s stt.:d "es t"at we mt.st .;o for v tal e poetry. deve ii,Q I+- is 1for.,1at or. 01 ii!CBS 6661L, §& .I.. a Dandri dge ' s poetry is r c, and so,nt}times racial in concerns. " B1.4,k II bi,.o'1fl e.."'" "Ti.1e to De" adv_ses.c••~ to 0 ·ve t.,e r ife "f'or sO1n t 1,., i n::;. n • pparent':y e~tered '-~~ tbe aborted Reconstruction and contemporary violence against Blacks, he asks: Or can it be you fear the grave Enough to live and die a slave? 11 Zalka Peetruza II recalls McKay 1 s 11 Harlem Dancer II in that every part of the woman is dancing n--save her face. 11 A native of (.'\ Cinciit}i, Dandridge suffered a stroke when he was 30 years old which left his legs and right arm paralyzed. Thereafter writing most of bis poetry from bis bed, he published The Poet and Other Poems (1920) and Zalka Peetruza and Other Poems (1928). Dandridge also wrote competent poetry in dialect and ¢ 1 11 f 1 ll was a disciple of Dunbar.#Boban~n and McCall contributed poetry to various magazines. A teacher from Washington, D.C., Bohan~ did not publish a volume. Neither did McCall who became an editor of the Independent after J')EConMng . n • bec.t:cu!>e. o f::' blind A typhoid. Angelina Grink6 published a three-act play (Raebel) in 1921 but her poetry remains uncollected. Born in Boston, she was �educated in various schools, of several states, and later taught English for many years at Dunbar High School in Washington, Pi---es 0..41 'n ei_ Ii~" -~.,..,.._ D.c. More than slightly 17 I l!!ii,/\Gwendolyn Brooks ,A"" 1 ■ ,""'9GIP:vm poetry contains some of the most distilled language in modern ~~tlti'Uo.tiA~ American literature. pdi21 t, precise and poignant, she writes of love, seasons, darkness and high spirits during her maturing years--typified in the phrase "the New Negro." Although she had been publishing poetry in periodicals her first big break came when she was included in Cullen's anthology, Caroling Dusk (1927). how~el;, Not until the sixtie,~would such lines as the following take on their full political/cultural significance: Why, beautiful still finger, are you black? And why are you pointing upwards? In "The Want of You 11 even the moon and clouds join in "the crying want of you. 11 ANAe.Lei\o.. , Long overdue is a detailed study or·~,. Grimke.'111 But she is included in the best anthologies of AfroAmerican poetry and literature. Critical comments on her work can be found in the work of Kerlin,lKinnam~J~~~i, \vko c.\.to..~~t-,3ed h~,,., wo..-t.AS :..:J ' and Brown A"irony and quiet despair 11 • e.'#-cepf,ilnAL Ar,1 i iiiaHE student in college and for several years literary editor of the famous Crisis magazine, Jesse Fauset also served as an interpreter for the DuBois-inspired Second Pan-African Congress in London. A native of New Jersey, she attended Cornell (Phi Beta Kappa) and the University of Pennsylvania, and published four novels: There is Confusion (1924), Plum Bun (1929), The Chinaberry Tree (1931) and Comedy, American �Style (1933). Her poetry appeared in numerous periodicals during the twenties and thirties. "Oriflamme, 11 Her skill is evident in her most famous poem. Inspired by a quotation f'rom Sojourner Truth, the poem views the Black mother 1'seared with slavery's mortal scarsu but vows that her sons are Still visioning the stars! Black poets apparently spent time reflecting during the period between the beginning of the century and the Renaissance. So much of the poetry takes us into their private lives--sometimes into racial tones and sometimes not. Some of Jessie Fauset's verse, for example, mirrors her knowledge of French (she taught the language and translated into English several West Indian French-speaking poets). This is seen in the titles of some of-t't;e poems and in other places where she interpolates French words ""' het,.po ;TA-f l'S into the texts. Generally her tone is quietl\.neat and well written. Hawkins (a native of North Carolina) graduated from Kitrell College in 1901 and worked f'or many years in the railway mail service. In "Credo" he announced that I am an Iconoclast. With obvious irony, Hawkins goes on to claim he is "an Anarchist,n (see Brown) and 11 an Agnostic.n Additional irony and cynicism is seen in such poems as "A Spade is Just A Spade" and Death of Justice." 11 The In his rush of language and boldness or subject matter, Hawkins anticipates Tolson. His Chords and and Discords was published in 1909 and his work appears in �-The Poetry of Black America (l,J.off, 1973) and Kerlin's ~ anthology which includes critical notes. on Hawkins (a "foreshadow" of new 11 Brown also comments Negro Poetry"). fuO,. Harris, Mrs. Fleming, Mrs. Newsome, Roberts,~ Jessye, Shackelford., Jamison, Wilson, Hrs. Johnson, RazafieriA,ro, Burrell and Bailey were among other poets contributing to various periodicals of the day. Harris brought out The Steel Makers and Other War Poems in pamphlet form in 1918. He served as editor of the Richmond (Indiana) Blade and published shortstories in The Century. "The Steel Makersn is emotionally and technically akin to some of the work of, Wnitma.n \ Walt Sandburg. Jand co..~L It praises the steel workers--among whom Harris himself numbered at one time. In another place, Harris asks the white man to accept him since, despite color and feature differences, The Negro's the same as the rest. Harris' work can be found in Kerlin's book.r;~'II's. Fleming published Clouds and Sunshine (1920) in Boston at the inception of the Renaissance. Mrs. Newsome, who writes primarily for children, did not publish a volume of poems until 1940 (Gladiola Garden). Among the "earliest Negroes to employ free-verse with artistic effectiveness" were Razafkeriefo and Will Sexton. Sexton contributed to various periodicals as did Razafkeriefo whose work appeared in The Crusader and The Negro World. through the theme of the day, Sexton announced I am the New Negro. Carrying �Taken from 11 Tbe New Negrou, this line will be seen again in various places and temperaments including . ; Tolson' s Symphony. rt In 11 11 Dark The Bomb Thrower rr Sexton plays the role of "America ' s evil genius" and sardonically proposes a reversal of the ideals of Democracy. Razafkeriefo, born in Washington, D.C. to Afro-American and Madagascaran parents, only had an elementary education. He asks, in "The Negro Church," for "manly, thinking preachers n And not shouting money-makers, after declaring (in the manner of a Stokely Carmichael, Malcolm X or Rapl Brown) that the church has great "power. he warns, should work to 11 11 Preachers, f'i t the Negro u For this world as well as heaven. In addition to anger and impatience, this poet also expresses race pride and praises 11 The Negro Woman. 11 If it were left up to him to pick a woman for "queen of the ball of fame," be would nselect the wonderful Negro woman. n ~urrell, who con- tributed poetry to magazines, echoes Razafkeriefo in "To A Negro Mother. 11 In :rour eight-line. stanzas (using iambic octa- meter) Burrell celebrates the ngrace and f'ortituden of the Black mother. Recalling that greatness of Black history, he asks earth mother to Create anew the captains of the past; (Build in your soul the Ethiopian power, The preceding two poems call to mind Hughes' Watkins t 'Ebon Maid and Girl of Mine, 1 n 11 ... Tbe Negro Motber,n :Hrs. Johnson's uTo My �Grandmother, 11 Dodson's "Black Mother Praying," and other moving tributes to the A.fro-American woman. <1/wilson' s body' s Child" is not good poetry but its subject is. 11 Some- He worked as a printer and theatrical performer and ser-ed time w'1e."'e. in t1:1e ~ussouri State Penitentiary · together a small book of l1is verses. of Canada ·who studied at a Philadelpb ia Art Museum. 1,.; e put Shackelford was a native industr5_a: training sc ool and t , e His book, Ny Country and Other Poems, was published in Philadelphia in 1918. Jamison published Negro Soldiers and Other Poems in South St. Josep:1, His souri, in 1918. Jamison writes about "Castles in the Air, "Hopelessness II and 11 The Negro Soldiers. rr 11 love, Th e latter poem bas something or the rlavor or Dunbar's "Colored Soldiers II and salutes the bravery and courage or Black troops whose "souls grandly rise.rr These troops, Jamison points out, rougbt for America instead or seeking "vengence ror their wrongs. " A native of Missouri, Bailey's only volume or poems (The Firstling) was released in 1914. "The Slump" makes a baseball (via Christian symbolism) game analogous to t h e hardships or Black life: Well, we're all at the and warns that the 11 at-- ball may be burled rr as a plea. "Hr. Self 11 is at the bat but There's the Beggar and Gate-and a whispering voice rrom above calls "Strike tbree. 11 9v0,.._ Jessye wrote moving poetry but is much better known �for her work in developing and leading professional choruses. Born in Kansas, she received musical training at Western University in Kansas and Langston University in Oklahoma. Moving to New York City in the twenties, she continued working with figures like Will Harion Cook, J. Rosamond Johnson, Hall Johnson and others. In her famous concerts around the world she has used work from Porgy and Bess, John Work 1 s compositions and that of the men listed above. Her published collections include My Spirituals (1927), The Life of Christ in Negro e,giritu~l~ (1931), Paradise Lost and Regained (Milton's work adapted to Black songs, 1934), and The Chronicle of Job (a folk .drama, 1936). I mportant for t , e same reaso ns noted i n our discussion of Alex Rogers, rJ-YfA'-Jessye successfully com- bined the poetic and the musical language (though they are so similar to start withJ). Her poem, 11 The Singerrr recalls t h e work of Corrothers, Dunbar, Johnson (James), and numerous other poets who have bridged the gap between the two art forms. One is reminded of Johnson 1 s "O Black and Unknown Bards" in ~\ltl. ~ Jessyefs statement that the singer's "speech was blunt and manner plain. 11 Like the "unknown bards,ll his unlettered song was "but the essence of the heart." Her poems, published in newspapers during the twenties, show a lightheartedness but a sincerity and sense of conviction. She writes about "spring" and the "Rosebud" and while she is not singularly distinguished as a poet, her life 1 s work is an indispensable float in the grand parade of ~lw'Afro-American creativity in �the arts. sh• In choral work, HioEJ diio••e•• is especially noted for her direction of the Original Dixie Jubilee Singers, later named the Eva Jessye Choir. of Jji;s s I C1111 t <y';ttre For a thorough discussion and works ( along with t h at of h er con- temporaries) see Eileen Southern's The Music of Blac k Americans. For poetry select io ns, see Kerlin. During t h e period of the Renaissance, poets such as Georgia Johnson, Jessie Fauset, Anne Spencer, Alice DunbarNelson, Hill, McKay, James Weldon Johnson, Dandridge and Cotter (Who had achieved recognition before 1923), continued t heir output either t hrough magazines or book-pub lication. Much of this work is recorded in Johnson's The Book of American Negro Poetry (1922, 1931); Kerlin's Negro Poets and Their Poems (1923, 1935) and Contemporary Poetry of t h e Ne gro (1921), a nd in ot er suc 1 compilati ons and peri odicals . Anne Spencer was born in West Vir ginia and studied at the Virginia Seminary in Ly nchbur g wh ere s h e h as spent most of her life. (She recently relocated in California~ 'hwt UM for a long tim~ltft~arian at Dunbar High Sch ool in Lynchbur g . This poet's work h ardly ever reflects racial or political concerns but she is one of t h e most tech nically-sure of all Black poets. She writes about women, love, carnivals and t he workings of the mind. In its brevity and conciseness, h er poetry anti- cipates t he work of Gwendolyn Brooks and is l oosely a kin to Angelina Grimki's (though t h e latter's work is racially-flavored). Her poetry also bears some ki nsh ip to t he "Ima.gist tr sch ool of �poets writing in the early years of tbe century. Elements of aLs.t, this particular technique and style canAbe 11 ( The Diver, n se~~~ nNight-Blooming Cereus.$, and others • A "At The Carnival 11 we smell sausage and garlic t bat Sent unholy incense skyward and are told (in an echo of the ro mantics) that Whatever is good is God. 11 Dunbar 11 laments 11 11 how poets sing and die! and places the eulogized Black poet in the same class with Chatterton, Shelley and Keats. 11 Hiaa OtJCHUOiH;rmost moving poem, it seems, is Translation" wherein two lovers naver speak But each knew all the other said. Calling her the nmost original of .all Negro women poets, 11 Brown advised, in 1937, that her ttsensitive, and keenly observantn work should be ncollected for a wider audience." But as of ,.:Sftti;:~ , 19~, no one had undertaken Brown's suggestion. . -A.nn-e Considering her span of years, ~~Spencer (somewhat like Hayden) has not been prolific. Her work can be found in several antho- logies and periodicals of the twenties. Critical assessments are given by Kerlin, Brown and Johnson. James Weldon Johnson, we noted earlier, published Fifty Years and Other Poems in 1917. 52SR JJ ~ Jr~ncluded dialect as well as conventional standard English commemorative pieces. Not highly original, the work was one more step in the long and fruitful development of perhaps t h e most important figure in the history of Black poetry. 21/-J It seems Johnson was involved �in as many things as could have been humanly possible. After ~voL.vemtnt his JI 1 Aon Broadway (with light operas), he worked for t he re-election of Theodore Roosevelt, served as United States Consul (a reward for his political work) in Nicaragua and Venezuela, published (anonymously) The Autobiography of An Ex-Colored Man in 1912, wrote editorials (for more than 10 years) for the New York Age and became the NAACP's first secretary general--working in that post for deeply psychological work , Auto 14 years. y dealt with sue A an explosive contemporary topic--the theme of passing--that Johnson would not affix his own name to it until it was reissued during the Renaissance (1927) with an introduction by Carl Van Vechten. The conventional poetry of Fifty Years shows Johnson to be politically at the threshhold of the "awakening." Brown stated, incorrectly, that Johnson's "Brothers" was t he most "vigorous poem of protest fro m any Negro poet up to h is time." We know that Whitfield, Whitman, DuBois, Hawkins and others were just as strong and forceful. Fifty Years was highly praised by Braithwaite ("intellectual substance 11 ) , Brander Ma.thews (should be grouped with the noblest American commemorative poems) , and other influential critics. This first book shows a strength, nvirility" and robustness t hat would mark Johnson's future writings--especially God's Trombones (1927). The poems are patriotic ("Fifty Years" which commemorates t he fiftieth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation), nostalgic ( 11 0 Southland!"), descriptively amorous ("The Glory of . the Day was in Her Face"), strong and v~rile ("Th1 Young Wai{}or 11 ) , �race-proud (angry) and didactic ( "Brothers n )} and fundamental and religious ( "O Black and Unknown Bard n). The last poem, more important for what it records than how it is assembled, is an artistic tribute of the makers of the Spirituals. Using actual words and names from Spirituals, Johnson weaves in the strength and artistry characteristic of thew songs he loved-and to which he devoted so much research and listening time. Great ar,F, he says, is produced y These simple children of the sun and soil. Johnson knew, too, that these makers would not be 0 black slave singers, gone, forgot, unfamed, if work of the sort be was doing continued in the bands of those to whom be passed the torch. Although Fifty Years is strong, solid work, it is later that Jonson's comes into his own as experimentalist and pace-setter. Georgia Johnson also wrote race-conscious vii iii? themes are suggested in her titles: yrics. The Eea.rt of A ~ C,:>.f) Woman (1918), Bronze (1922) and An Autumn Love Cyc 1-"I\ and fluent," her poetry deals primarily wit - · t¼ e.r "Skillful loneliness, sorrow, seasons, unrequited love and is intellectually-based. The first Black woman after Frances Harper to achiev¾.,~lcognition as a poet, she is explicitly racial in Bronze although allusions to Sh~ Blackness sometime~appear in her other work. Yet~ seems to know something about the heart of all w·omen ( and men) when she says the singer's songs Are tones that repeat �The cry of the heart Till it ceases to beat . 0 "The Octi\roon n deals with a woman who is tainted because she is the victim of One drop of midnight in the dawn of life's pulsating stream but who finds hospitality in the Black community. 11 humble fold"--presumably the This poem recalls Cotter's "The Mulatto to His Criticsn which depicts the multi-racial predicament of one (probably Cotter himself) made up Of Red Man, Black Man, Briton, Celt, and Scot, but who loves the dark-skinned, . curly haired race that "puts sweet music in my soul.~~f~ohnson develops a similar To Jv.ry Son4 11 ,Jthe tosses and turns between advising her son that,... udusky pall or shadows screen the highway of tension in 11 sky" and encouraging him to "storm the sullen fortress 11 .founded on racism. In addition to writing such powerful and lasting Shi), poetry, Mt 11, IeJ decades. t mo was of service to young writers .for several A .female counter-part to Langston Hughes, she hosted regular and spontaneous writers meetings in her home in Washington, D.C., where she moved after receiving academic and musical training at Atlanta University and Oberlin College. A native of Georgia, she was employed in government service most of her adult life. For critically introduced selections of her work, see Barksdale and Kinnamon, Johnson and Kerlin. Brown also supplies a good �asse s s me nt. We s h ould note, i n pass i ng a nd by way of intr oduct i on to Fenton Johnson, H. Binge. Dismond (1891-1956) wh o did not publish a v olume of poetry until 1943 (We Wb o Woul d Die ). Dismond, like Johnson and Frank Mars all Davis was one of the many writers of the period who was not physically present in Iarlem during t e Renaissance. Dismond was born in Virginia and, a track star (as was Frank Horne), studied physical t erapy at Rush r1edical College after attending Howard University Academy and the University of Chicago. c ipation in the Renaissanc e has (The Midwest ' s parti- een dramatically underplayed.) Dismond , who wrote some crisp and poignant poetr:r of love and protest , is more important to us durinc tris period for his journalistic ork. Tit1 Johnson, e edited T e Champion Magazine (starting in 1916) for several yea.rs. They also co-edited The Favorite Mae;azine ( "The World 1 s Greatest Monthly") wh• G~ ttii;. t1219 7 1 iis publ i shed Apo ems and articles. Johnson had several of Pekin Theatre when i s plays performed in Chicago ' s e was nineteen and is generally seen as Otlt. O ~ t e most creative link~between the poets of Dun ar ' s era and t1e Harlem Renaiss a nce. Born in C icago of economically stale parents, be attended t e city ' s namesake university a nd taught school for a year in the Sout1. He privately pu lished three volumes of poetry, one (A Little Dreaming, 1917) in Chicago, and two (Visions of t1e Dusk, 1915; and Songs of the Soil, 1916) in Uew York where .1 e lived for a. s 1ort time. Harriet Monroe and( 11 T e New Poetryn group) bad establ s ed • �Poetry (1912) i n h is her. he. ome town and Jonson made contact with In 1920, t@ht a @R pu lisbed Ta es of Darkest America, sort stories. A participant in t1e "poetry revival" in America., Jonson 1ad h is work accepted for Poetr~, and t½e anthologies Ot ers (1916, 1917, 1920), Te Poetry and Lyric America, 1630-1930. An Anthology of American Poetry: In saying Jonson was ultimately t e poet of "despair" u.. and t at be was the only poet writing in sucbJ,,..vein (as Brown, Redding, Jo nson, Wagner, and ot ers _ ave done), critics onl:~ presented part oft e man. and Sand new in rg; He did this allowed orro from Iiasters , Lindsa:, t Ln to voice somet11· ng relativel:,- oPexperimenl.L e><ch«n-9 (" an avenue --~ be 11\'.te" ~ nd wJ;;r-c, A 1is lack,\contemporaries. lack poetry ·w ileh& ~provid •- But in poems such as "Tired, n "The Banjo Player, 11 "The Scarlet Woman" and "Rulers" he displays much more than "despair. 11 Reflecting., as Brown noted, the "two extremes of Negro poetry after 1914, 11 Johnson can deal with either the brawling urban blues or the down-home, "we shall overcome)' motifs. Because his work does not contain a consistent spirit of hope, ft, •s-a...-.to Weldon Johnson said his message mirrored ideas T'foreign to any philosophy of life the NegTo in America bad ever preached or practiced." Johnson thought this wa.s "sta.rtlingn despite the "birt~ about the same time as Fenton Johnson 1 s work, of the blues era--and the work of W.C. Handy (1873-1958) who is sometimes called its "father. 11 Fenton Johnson is "Tired II of a civilization which has given him "too many" children and �no chance for them to share in the American dream. Ho proposes t o his wife that they Throw the children into tbe river: and observes that • • • It is better tfdie than it is to grow up and find out that you are colored. Johnson writes about roustabouts, prostitutes, vagrants, laborer~ -1. strong will and is, as Jay Wright said of Henry Dumas, "the poet of the dispossessed. 11 He is also t h e poet of the blues . • and '1am 8xcsl!!!i:ss lilai 1.ur\rnd abe.lJ llbhc 7.:slacs are a .f1eeaor.I song: u, In breaking away from traditional Black poetic diction and form, Johnson not only received influence from the white experimenters lrM" of free verse k he borrowed heavily from the blues and, at this level, must share some of the accolades usually reserved almost solely f'or .;:;•~Hughes. It is now widely accepted that the blues do not simply preach resignation. To the contrary, the blues, telling about heart-ache and personal failures , carry hope in the singing and the going on. Margaret Walker is only one of the many poets whose work seems to reflect the influence of Johnson.A/Jo we really believe that Johnson meant for the children to be thrown in the river4jfnymore than we take the bl~es singer literally when be promises to 11 lay my head down on some railroad trackn? Johnson's "note of despair" is one more brilliant distillation of the strange ~Vc.hl(llo(lit (.. 'Li'd!5& ■ 1 a ll\web '511.l:Q a.1i!lie1t1i&> which produced the sorrow songs, the Spirituals , the ditties , jokes, rhymes and • �blues. At t h e time Joh nson wrote hi s poetry Ha ndy was com- posing some of his most famous blues songs ( 11St. Louis Blues," nThe Memph is Blues, 11 1"Yellow Dog Blues 11 ) and arranging traditional blues pieces like "Train' s A-Comin," C"~ "i' Travel1er, n '1Come on, Eph , 11 and 11 11 Juba. Let Us Ch eer t h e Weary 11 And in t h is list alone '---' is locked partial answers to much of t h e work of several Afro-American writers: Hu ghes, Walker, Tolson, Wrigh t, Brown, Jayne Cortez, Gil Scott-Heron and numberless oth ers. It is c,,i possible t h at critics looking at Joh nson were .-tAprepared for his irony and poetic assimilation of t hemes and feelings : i Ji h anesthetics. J In 7 11 11 \>~evtous.l~ 4 1\gloss~d over by Christianity and oth er Rulers" Johnson discusses a "monarch n on "Lombard Street in Ph iladelphia," wh o flwas seated on a t hrone of flour bags. 11 Near the "monarch 11 two y oung b oys with guitars played "ragtime tunes of t h e day . 11 Clearly t h is "monarch 11 ( a Black ula.borer 11 in reality) is being serenaded and saluted just as any oth er "ruler 11 would be. of the blues ( 11 aagtime 11 ) ! He presides as a prince Joh nson 1 s work is in most anth ologies of Afro-American poetry and critical assess ments of h i m h ave already been noted. For more t h orough discussions of t h e · poetry-blues concept see,.. Steph en Henderson 1 s Understanding o,.JJ~ • -tt,J "telt.t~ t h e New Black Poetry, JIPAb i bliograp'by ~ l::fl ;cl 1 ■ :Z:L At the dawn of the Harlem Renaissance t ere appeared a s l i m- volume of poetr y by Se amon Cotter, Jr. (1895-1919 ) , t e pr ecocious son of the Cotter already discussed. Young Cotter died a n early death whi ch cut s1ort the work of one of the �most promising figures in Af'ro-American poetry. Born in Kentucky and frail from childhood like Dunbar, Cotter had to end his college career at Fisk University when he developed tubercul0s\•i An innovator, as was his father, Cotter shows a sharp awareness (in The BA,nd of Gideon, 1918) of the plight of Blacks and an even sharper ability to express that plight He echoes much of along with other sentiments and feelings. ctnd.1 Black poetry's concerns in "And What Shall I Say"; }L).... f\. Rain Mfsic 11 eipt.rt'rne,,1.s anticipates \)'f.Y o:f Hughes 's pieces- irl i 91·1\ in The Weary Blues, 11 Jazzonia,n and so on--when he recalls the "dusty earth-drum 11 which hammers falling rain ~ Now a whispered murmur, Now a louder strain. Bearing the import of much of the "exotic" Black literature of the renaissance, Cotter nevertheless sees in the beat of· the Slender, silvery drumsticks a rejuvenation of life as ordered by God, "the Great Musician. Cotter began writing poems while a teenager. His tecbnique,~k~ ..... ' f!r1'toti .Jii!iliiil!~,.rohnson's, combines the best of traditional Western poetry with the new wave of free verse. His poems are about love, "Negro Soldiers, 11 religion, Blackness, justice and bis own illness. "Is It Because I Am Black 11 seems to .1ave l""l looking forward to a 19600s 11 een souln song of a similar title wherein the singer says Something is holding me Lawd, is it In 11 ack! ecause I'm Bl c? ~ , ~poem Cotter asks wl y w i tes a.re so amazed t ,at ' e can �"stand" in t~eir important meetings, look them straiGJ t in t 1e face, and "speak their tongue?" i Cotter; work appears in The Book of American Negro Poetry, Negro Caravan., Kerlin's study (!!The stamp of the African mind is upon" Cotter), and The Poetry of Black America. Although Kerlin submits brief critical comments., a study of this young poet's work is sorely needed. He{iert).. alsolseveral plays and unpublished sonnets. B. POETS AS PROlHETS: The Harlem Renaissance A wave of longing through my· body swept ·. -- Claude McKay The Harlem Renaissance (see section I of this chapter) is normally seen as a decade-length (1920-1930) out-pouring of cultural and artistic activity in what James Weldon Jo1nson called the Negro cultural capit~. There is harmless dis- agreement as to when the tnaissance actually began and how long it lasted. 1935. Some say it started in 1925 and ran until Others give the first time span mentioned above. Still others (including Wagner , Black Poets of the United States) designate t 1e period et1een t e two iorld 1ars (191 -1939). ~,oets of the flenaissance--which included dance, painting, sculpture., music , theater, literature, science and scholarship--knew and read each other's works. Ironically, however, only one of the leading figures is said to have been born in New York City: Countee Cullen (1903-1946) and ' �he w~s raised in the "conservative atmosphere of a Methodist n Hughes parsonage," the adopted son of a minister. (1902-1967) spent much of the decade of the twenties traveling 3 so did Claude McKay (1890-1948) who wandered over "Europe and Litoof.L>' North Africa 11 --in many instances 'r\"a long way from home. 11 Jean Toomer {1894-1967), disturbed and haunted by his complex ethnic background, was a mysterious figure who died the same year as Hughes in the anonymity of a Quaker commune in Philadelphia (obscure after having years before). given up writing several Often called nminor" writers of the Renaissance, neither sterling Brown (1901was born in New York. ) nor Arna Bontemps {1902-1973) And neither publish ed books during t h e twenties but they did have poems accepted by such magazines as The Crisis and Opportunity. McKay , l abeled t he rena i ssance ' s poet of a nger and: rebellion, Kt1fW is chieflyAfor his famous sonnet ("If We Must Die") wh ich winds down (up?) to the following couplet: Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack, Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back! ii'e•.,us~i &01-i.bblcel on bhe c.alls tt1 C9f· the Abbie& apr lslng Of 19?f, :lsRmabcr' McKay wrote it in 1919 shortly after a series that took hundreds of Black lives. as the beginni~g of the Many critics use the date Renaissance. But McKay had made �bis entry into the Harlem world of letters two years earlier {1917) with the publication of two poems ( 11Harlem Dancer 11 and "Invocationn) in Seven Arts Magazine. He came to America in 1912 from his native Jamaica, where he-~much European literature and philosophy, to study agriculture. Enrolling first at Tuskegee and later at Kansas state College, he finally went on to Harlem where he worked as a porter, waiter and restaurant pro~etor. Before leaving Jamaica, McKay had established his reputation as a poet of dialect poetry with his Songs of Jamaica {1912) and Constab Ballads (1912), the latter work reflecting his one-time employment as a policeman on the island. In New York, he gained quick entrance into literary and political circles, establishing a life-long friendship with Max Eastman {who wrote a biographical note for Selected Poems (1953). McKay counted among his friends some of the most in- fluential literary and political figures of the day: John Reed, Floyd Dell {The Masses ), Waldo Frank, Frank Harris (Pearson's Magazine ), Fiery and forceful, McKay was the subject of much attention and discussion. Although be never joined the Communist Party, be ~ . .,.,~ defended its stand in most of the publications/\he wrote. ttrr e Must Die 11 was read into the Congressional Record as an example of Black unrest and resentment. In the furry, McKay left the United States in 1919, returned for a brief period the following year, and left again to travel all over Europe and Northf Africa for 15 lears. He returned to America in 1934 �,f!t· ~·I Pd - BT remai~until bis death in 1948. McKay's other volumes of poetry include Spring in New Hampshire (1920, with a preface by the famous critic I.A. Richards); Harlem Shadows (1922) and The Dialect Poetry of Claude McKay (1972). -Songs of Jamaica was reissued in 1969 and a new volume of prose and poetry (The Passion of Claude McKay) was published in 1973. It contains published and un- published writings, 1912-1948. McKay died obscure and poor in Chicago where he had gone to teach in Catholic Schools. His lif'e, like that of so many Black artists (Dunbar, Charlie 1 1Yardbird" Parker, Sam Cooke, Leroy Carr, Blind Lemon Jefferson) . . <..o nit---.d.1~ was lived with consumate speed, fea~tbD tragedy. Though he lashed out at whites , his closest friends were white; while he wrote defiant , angry and militant verse, he denied that it was inspired by the I ;y , t-e61eo.1n e-.i';. tradictions and enigmas in his life. to unravel them here. There are other con- BlacksA But we make no attempt Keys to much of McKay's complexity, however, can be gained by reading bis autobiography (A Long Way from Home, 1937 , 1970), bis novels: Home to Harlem (1928), Banjo (1929) and Banana Bottom (1933), and his many articles and short stories, Gingertown (1932). entitled Harlem: He also wrote a study Negro Metropolis (1940). The best source for McKay's poetry is his Selected Poems. 'In many ways it is ironic that McKay is called the poet of anger ( Nathan Huggins/ Harlem Renaissance) calls him the j "black Prometheus, 1 since most of his poems deal with quiet �topics such as mothe~ature, nostalgia, loneliness, mental reflection, religion, world travel, and descriptions of city life. orftterally dozens of poems he published, only about ten can be called "angry. ' unrest (' 1/Jme.Wl4 11 tf) Of course there is often seething 1 IJ And I am sharp as steel with discontent ••• , in much of the poetry that is not overtly violent. true of everyday Black life. Such is And in this sense most Black Americans could be labeled "militant" or as it were, polarizing tensions ( 11 violent "--harboring, 11 Baptism 11 ) that make one defy all: ov1 I will comel\back to your world of tears, A stronger soul within a finer frame. Though one of the greatest influences on Black thought and art of his day, McKay perhaps did not know that his writings inspired various spokesmen for African nationalism: sldar Senghor, Ousmane Soce and Aimt clsaire. ,, Leopold And be is today seen as the major link between the lenaissance and the militant writings of the 1960's. Just as his dialect poems (such as "Two-an'-Si.x 11 ) bad charmed and entertained his fellow Jamaicans, the disciplined anger of his popular American poems incited and inspired Blacks, and titillated and fascinated whites. For during this period, whites around the world were indicating a new interestl in Blacks; and Blacks, inspired by the growing nationalist feelings in some European countries, found ready fuel and propaganda in their brothers of color returning home �from the war. Yet for all the anger, McKay never swerved from his use of conventional English verse. With Cullen--though not so religiously--he avoided experimentation. The folk materials of American Blacks, the examples of Fenton Johnson and others, none of these seems to have had much influence on McKay. But his English is designed to cage fury and passion in "sonnettragediesn as James Weldon Johnson called them. Above all he is a poet of passion, distrust, anger and hatred. We have seen some hatred before in Black poetry (DuBois, Gwendolyn Bennett) but not quite like we see it in McKay whom Wagner says "is par excellence the poet of hate. i;,&-, expressed" poems like After, 11 11 11 The White City , 0 Work I Lo"'le to Sing, is not always the hater. fl 11 11 11 Such feeling is Mulatto, and "Polarity. " fl none Year But McKay He examines bate in tbe hands of whites--or as a product of Western sickness and decadence, vented albeit on the Blacks. The nobility of the Black soul l'ii is to stand above this emotion and not"-.be destroyed by it. Other themes in tbe work of McKay are the importance of the earth (and t he countryside), disillusionment (see Dumas) with city life, race pride (celebrations of Blac r past and virtues, ~ "Harlem Dancer 11 ) , prin:itivism and romantic treatment of Africa, Harlem as a Pan-African crossroad, and spiritualism and religion. While McKay was not an experi- mentalist , be did make heretofore unnoticed modifications in the sonnet form. n,71,tt As the first Black poet to _..,.sustai ned use of the sonnet as a political/racial weapon, he must be �given credit (instead of being dispara.ged--c.f., Huggins) for 11 turning this race pride. sonnet to 11 white" form into a vehicle of protest, love and We observed that Lucian B. Watkins opened his The New Negro 11 with He thinks in black. But in no ot er quarter, before or since cKay, does a Black poet persist--infusing blues and tragic irony--with the sonnet. Gwendolyn Brooks will later invent her memorable "sonnet-ballad." And Cullen's sonnets certainly must be taken into account. HcKay, however, endures with an ironic inconclusiveness that verges on the 11 despair 11 critics seem to see in Fenton Johnson. For McKay the sonnet is a form of tberapy--allowing him to loose controlled anger. ( 11 His is the anger of a native Jamaican home boy 11 ) caught up in the strait-jacket of white literary amenities. He wants to be freed. poetry--principally the sonnet. seen in "The Negro's Tragedy, and "The Lynching!'n 11 And freedom comes through This open-endedness can be "The Negro's Friend, 11 "In Bondage, " As a correct and carefully nurtured darling of Western poetry, the sonnet had been in the annals of English b..i,.... literature for centuries when McKay ~siJ!9 it. Containing 14 lines (in various stanzaic patterns), it is designed to pose a problem, squirm in it for a while, and close in a neat answer which begins with line nine, or the sextet. Presto! solving a problem in mathematics or calculus. nrace problem, n however, is not quite so easy. cannot nsolven a lynching. Just like "Solving" the Hence McKay But he places it in the most awesome, �gruesome contexts by equating the lynching to the crucifixion of Christ (see Cullen's The Black Christ and 11 Colors"), and failing to resolve the white-man's moral and religious crisis. The blue-eyed women come to view the body, but show no sorrow And little lads, lynchers that were to b e, Danced round the dreadful t h ing in fiendish glee. Clearly this is not how Petrarch, Shakespeare, Spe4r, Milton, ~ Wordsworth, Arnold or Sanwana would have wanted the problem 11 solved. 11 There was no answer--except for Blacks "fighting back" here and there--so McKay modified t h e concept of t h e sonnet in order to deal with a real "problem." 'tnAost -«ii itPs critics of Black literature and culture h ave discussed McKay -t s work. His Selected Poems is available and he is now being represented e ven in white "prestige" anth olo gies (Norton, BrooksLewis-Warren, The United States in Literature and oth ers). The mos t ambitious study of McKay to dat e is by J e an Wa gner ( l ack Poets). Another recent study (which includes prose writi ngs) is Arthur P. Davis 1, From the Dark Tower: 1900 to 1960 (1974). Afro-American Writers, Also see appendixes to most anth ologies,t'M1 bibliography section of this work, and especially t h e listings in Black Writers of America (Barksdale and Kinnamon). Unl i ke t hat of t he 11 pure blooded " McKay , Jean Toomer•s body housed seve n racial strains and he looked wh ite. Evidence to support the fact that Toomer rejected h is Black b lood and "passed rr cannot be found in h is major work--Cane ( 1923). �Neit 1er is it i n 11 Tbe Bl ue Meridian," written in 1936 a nd sadly overlooked, in which he tries to unite the disparate elements of the American personality into one person. Apparently unhappy in childhood , Toomer never knew bis father who abandoned the boy's mother shortly after be was born in Washington, D.C. Toomer ' s possible claim to name and money bad been thwarted earlier when his mother, the daughter of P.B.S. Pinchback, an important Louisiana Reconstruction politician, had to reduce her social status and re-locate in the upper-class Black area of Washington. robustness: 11 It was here that Toomer found spirit and more emotion, more rhythm, more color, more (~J~)., . gaietyi tt A After attending local public schools (including Dunbar High) be enrolled in one colle ge after anoth er, never becoming a serious de gree candidate. From this latter type of life, be went through a series of jobs, finally getting into serious writing and putting poems and stories in several avant-garde little magazines. Toomer also formed close asso- ciations with New York intellectuals: Hart Crane, Waldo Frank (to whom he dedicated a section of Cane), Gorh a m P. Munson, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Rosenfeld, Kenneth Burke and others. Later, while working as superi ntendent (for four month s) of a small Black school in Sparta, Geor gia, h e gained much of t he material for the first and t h ird sections of Cane. After pub - lication of Cane , Toomer' s life returned to "psych ological disarray" and he turned to oth er sources in search of a selfunifying meth odology. With oth er intellectuals-associates, b e �delved into the philosophies of F. Matthias Alexander, P.D. Ouspensky, and, most importantly, George J. Gurdjieff--whose disciple he later became. Gurdjieff, a Russian, assimilated aspects of Yoga, religious mysticism and Freud, to produce s. what he called Unitism. won over converts. Toomer later e~poused the theory and For a short while he also lived in a heterosexual experimental commune. married two white women. In quick succession Toomer After his second marriage in the thirties, he quipped: "I do not know whether colored blood flows through my veins. 11 Earlier, however, be bad noted in a biographical sketch accompanying work be submitted to The · L berator, that I have lived equally among the two race groups. Now white, now colored. From my own point of view I am naturally an American. I have strived for a spiritual fusion analagous to the fact of racial intermingling. Without denying a single element in me, with no desire to subdue one to the other, I have sought to let them live in harmony. Within the last two or three years, however, my growing need for artistic expression bas pulled me deeper and deeper into the Negro group. And as powers of receptivity increased, I found myself loving it in a way that I could never love the other. Although James Weldon Johnson complained that Toomer refused �(allegedly out of contempt for racial categorizing) to be included in the second edition of The Book of American Negro Poetry, it was later brought out (conversation between Sterling Brown and Jean Wagner ) that ill-feelings existed between the two men. At any rate, Toomer•s poetry and prose appear in practically every subsequent anthology of Afro-American literature. In terms of influence, Toomer exerted more than any other Benaissance figure on the Black intellectuals of the era. i: - No other writer experimented with literature or depicted Blacks P~ll"'1nw,tQ..l r quite the way he did. ~ A influence seems to have occurfd between him and Hart cr·ane. And Robert Bone (Negro Novel in America) places Cane on par with the writings of some of the best American contemporaries: This is M Hemingway, Stein, Pound, Eliot. wJ,et1 o.;,c,,i-taltv pvbl;sl,ecl surprising since Cane ~ old !ess t'ban 500 copies. As a work of art, however, it reflects Toomer's efforts to achieve unity of both self and purpose. Called variously a novel, a collection of short stories/vignettes, a poetic drama, Cane defies labels. we. I n • classrooms" often refer to it as a Blues-Epic--conceptually-,similar to the great nationalistic sagas of the world: Beoi.ulf, Siegfried, The Song of Roland, Chaka, and others, r afvkelded by Black spirituality and the rhythms of Afro-American ritual. Cane has three basic movements-- Toomer bad been interested in both music composition and painting--whicb involve (l) Georgia and the South, (2) Chicago, Washington, D.C. and the North, and (3) Georgia again where i �,~\.. Toomer waxes autobiograph~. In the first part of Cane there are numerous pictures of women, many of them who, like Karintha, will be ripened "too soon . " In the second section, Toomer views northern urban decadence and corruption and their influence on Blacks. In the third movement, a naive northern Black educator goes South (Georeia) to find his African roots. He rather clumsily passes through a series of rites during which To~mer uses all:\::&~ symbolism to heighten the tonC"uo~ 4 11•-.. fear and ~ HtpJ]CJt Many of the stories are introduced by and interspersed with poetic sketches. final section, 11 man's The third, and Kabnis" , is similar to a play. Karintha ' s skin "is like dusk on the eastern" horizon and immediately , at the opening of Cane, we find significant symbols in tbe words "dusk" and "eastern. 11 Through")mt the a... book, Toomer A ssays the plight and joys of Blacks t roug and sometimes enigmatic poetry. Word meanings are given double, triple, and even more levels., as in the 11 Reapers 11 sharpening their scythes for farm chores but also, perhaps, for a massacre. Black beauty is sometimes surprising in the c ontext of w ite barrenness and brutality: Flower. n "~o ember Cotton "Face II is an old, tired Black woman in Georgia. "Cotton Song" celebrates the worksong, unity among field workers, and encodes revolutionary messaces: "We aint agwine -t wait until th Judgment Day!" The 11 Beehive 11 is a metap:ior for t e g_ otto, co,·1 pressed, car- doned off, i mpoveris 1~ed. The narrator wishes '1e could rest ' �"forever II in a flower on s o...e farm ( gai I n t he 11 oc tr: Toomer rural vs cit:,. life). r· te a a out sun and evening "songs, 11 Conversion" and nPortrait in Georgia," the electricity of a 't·Toman •s lips, "Harvest Song , needles. 11 and the cane scents and pine From the pen of t~e poet spill the lives-- roken, mended, some never be un--of tbe severely damaged men and 11 women 'tvho, with vestiges of pomp," carry their Race memories of king and caravan, and go singing through the "Georgia Dustt.11 Original, awesome and sustained in craftsmanship, Cane as poetry is. a classic of Afro-American literature. the book , 11 S or.a of the Son, 11 In the most important poem in Toomer encases both Jis superior techniques and the concept for Cane. Tle son s ngs : Pour O pour that parting soul in song, because he knows the tradition is in tact. Just "pour" the song, he asks, And let the valley carry it along. And let the valley carry it along. The songs of 11 slavery 11 will be transformed into ~ ; - dirges, compositions and epics (like Cane). And Toomer's was a fitting observation in the years preceding the birth of big Black jazz bands (Basie, Ellington) and following the blues (Handy and others). The plaintive soul will soon be gone, but it will leave An everlasting son, a singing tree •••• Likened by some to a series of artistic sketches, by others �to a symphonic composition, still by others to the syncopation and vocal blendings of Afro-American folk music, Cane--according to one critic--was at least two decades ahead of the era in which it was written. Less impressive as Black material, but brilliant as a general work of art, is :---. 11 ~ Blue Meridian . 11 H_eavily in:f'luenced by the modernist school of poetry (Pound, Crane, Eliot, etc.), 11 1?e.,ne1 Meridian n was overlooked for years and is finallyl\aflthologized{4tt- !C> Black Writers of America): Upwards of 700 lines, the poem makes use of vari ous rhyme schemes, stress formulas, linguistic and stylistic marriages. a lot to Walt Whitman in its sweep and intent. 11 muted shades of Sandburg. It owes And there are Meridian," seems to be Toomer's near-final effort to plr,suade the different elements of himself to 11 live in harmony ." ~ - Eliot had knelled the doom of Western civilization in 1922 (The Wasteland) and other poets bad echoed him. Fenton Johnson, of course, had preceded Eliot with this proclamation. Toomer had intimated the same thing in Cane (~"November Cotton Flower"). But it is in "Meridian" that he warns of the impending downf'a.11 of the West--noting that such fate might not be undeserved. The world is full of "crying men and hard women" and We're all niggers now--get me? Black niggers, white niggers,--take your choice. These omens of doom come in the first section of the poem. �But the second section heralds the coming of the new man (for Toomer, perhaps, an admixture of races and colors) who is spiritually and psychically elevated above race and oth er immaterial problems. The new man is a "blue" man, possibly a cross between a Black and a white man, and even sexual crosses are suggested. For we know all these things troubled Toomer. He was concerned as a teenager about bis "nascent sexuality." And he declared that be was above both sex and race if~i~eym~ or obstacles ,..._~defeat. It is a challenge to the more curious student, however, to unravel the life and works of one of the most complex geniuses in American letters. is an achiev~~~be Whatever the outcome, Toomer's reckoned .wi•h ► His work can be found in most anthologies of Afro-American literature. He also pub- lished Essentials-- 11definitions and aph orisms"--in 1931. Toomer wrote more things but most are uncollected and remain at Fisk University. An unpublished se gment of his autobiography, Earth-Being, appeared in the January, 1971, issue of The Black Sch olar. While Wagner's treatment of Toomer does not equal hi~ discussion of other poets of t h e ~enaissance, it is good. $ Brown., Redding, and numerous other critics discuss Toomer 1 s work in various places. nJean Toomer: Of special aid is John M. Reilly's An Annotated Checklist of Criticis m,n Resources for American Literary Study, Vol. IV, No. 1 (1974). See also Toomer listings in ~ ~ ~ a n e f i r ZF?lm!!! I tfl II Countee Cullen, anoth er brilliant-tragic fi gure in Black �poetry, spent most of his life trying to bridge the gap between a 11 Christian upbringingn and a npagan urge. n How can the educated Afro-American, Cullen seems to ask, remain true to bis native instincts and feelings while be WBars the mantle of European nRespectability"? This particular aspect of Cullenfs life and work is often taken too lightly by critics who view bis highly stylized poetry as intellectual (and hence not real) journeys into the awesome world of death, religion and color. Yet Cullen knew , as be said it in "The Shroud of Color,n that being Black in white America requires have. 11 11 courage more than angels History , of course, shows that so far Cullenfs name has withstood heat from the .furnace of "Baptism" just like many others before and after. And such figures as Gwendolyn Brooks, Carl Van Vechten and Eleanor RooseYeltl\\uded his passionately searching and skillful effort to avoid being devoured by the dragon of racism he tried to slay. However, Cullen did not consciously seek after the unity so desperately thirsted after by Toomer. On the one hand , Toomer felt free to explore all facets of the religious and mystical world; on the other be was committed to an intellectual and spiritual search of his African origins. Cullen embraced Christianity and developed the first major Black tragedy figure by reincarnating Christ into a Black man. The 11 pure" and no1ifY Black becomes the new "only begotten son 11 on a several-hundre~frch up Calvary. Here, of course, Cullen was close to McKay; but in sustaining such efforts, in making them allegorical, he surpassed McKay. Cullen's already complicated personal situations't411Wi!vl �aggravated by his reluctance to deal truthfully with the details of his early life. It is still unclear as to whether be was born in Baltimore, Maryland or Louisville, Kentucky, though he makes references to both ( "Incident" and 11 Tbe Ballad of A Brown Girln); or if be was raised by his mother or bis grandmother (up until the time of bis adoption by the Rev. Frederick Asbury Cullen). Johnson (The Book of American Negro Poetry) says Cullen was born in New York City (as do the editors of The Negro Caravan)--probably because this is what Cullen wanted readers to think. .~ Possibly, Wagner notes, he was an "illegiti- maten child and, out of fear of embarrassment, purposely confused the j$}!_~~. This mystery, coupled with Cullen's "'El=Cliiiiilli"M,1vf:,;J ~Li~ sexual,:J! t i\l tnW 1 :itr;::?;is desire to assume the persona of an ~ ~ bard English romantic poet, haunt:"1"1111ii@ precocious ~~throughout his lif e'fiiiii.. Cullen's initiation into poetics came, as with Dunbar and Hughes, in high school where he won poetry contests and published pieces in a student publication which be helped edit. By the time he had finished New York University (Phi Beta Kappa) he had won several awards (including the Witter Bynner award for excellence)·ror his poetry and received a contract from Harper 1 s and Brothers for publication of his first book (Color, 1925). This marked the first time, since Dunbar•s death, that a major publisher had brought out the work of a Black poet. It also marked the first time in almost 20 years that such a book had been published for a live Black poet. · The most skillful J �Black user of English verse forms, Cullen achieved almost instant success. Color sold over 2,000 copies during tbe first two years of publication. And be received bis M.A . from Howard during the same period. He generally sided witb McKay in not breaking away from traditional English poetry. e~pecially admired the poetry of Kea.ts and Shelley. 11 noting that He Johnson, he.might be called a younger brother of Housman,n said some critics argued that Cullen was not an ttautbentic Negro poet. n And Cullen, reminiscent of Toomer 1 s position, straddled the fence on the question of inspiration and themes for Black poets. On one occasion be acknowledged his debt to the Black tradition; but on another, complained that the Black poet ought to be able to spiritual or blues appears. 11 11 chant rr poetry 11 in which no His ~stbetics were stated more concisely in 1927, h owever , in the 1'e1m fl forward to Caroling Dusk (1927), an anthology of Afro-American poetry which he compiled. His comment was startling, especially at the height of the Harlem Renaissance and coming, as it were, from a New Negro: As heretical as it may sound, there is the probability that Negro poets, dependent as they are on the English languaGe, may have more to gain from. the ricb background of English and American poetry than from any nebulous atavistic yearnings towards an African inheritance. Consequently, Cullen called Caroling Dusk an anthology of 11 verse �by Negro poets rather than an ant ology of egro verse." But Cullen could not always subscribe to this particular~estbetic; for much of 1is own poetry can be la eled "a.ta istic yearnings towards an African inheritance." Examination wills ow that such poetry is found in his early volume (Colo:".') as well as in his later ·works: Girl; Copper Sun (1927), Tbe B llad of the Brown J.d Ballad Retold (1927), T!.1e Black C rist nnd Ot er Poems (1929), Te Medea and Some Poems (1935) and Lis selected poems , On These I Stand (1947). •1 -en also wrote ooks for children (T Je Lost Zoo, 1940; a.nd •Iy Lives and How I Lost T em, 1942). He translated Greek literature (The 1edea), wrote numerous lyrics for music and worked on a dramatic adaptation ( "Saint Louis Woman 11 ) of an Ar na Bontemps novel: Sunday. God Sends In 1932, seeking to renew his •iminishing creative powers, he published his only novel, One Wa._r to Heaven . ost of Cullen's poetry represents the vast influence of Christianity. He wrestles with the Lord or asks God why this event or that event occurs. Especially • is this seen in his poetry of racial conflict w.ere the co ntradictions of white Christianity are exposed over and over. "For a Lady I Know" depicts a white woman in heaven who thinks "black cherubs" (or servants) will do her "celestial chores ." nscotts oro, too, Is Worth Its Song" chides '¼merican poets,n outraged by the plights of Sacco and Vanzetti, for not defending Black boys kangaroo'd for "rape" in an Alabama Court. • says, is also "dt vinely spun." ThJdi) cause, Cullen In "Colors" the nswart" (i.e., �Black) man is hanged on a "newer Calvary. 11 Cullen's longest poem and treatment of this theme is The Black Christ (publis1ed in France). It deals allegorically with a lynching. A Black man, Jim, attacks and kills a white man who insults a white woman. Jim is lynched, as southern law requires. His state- ments leading up to the lynching, and the action of the poem, suggest the crucifixion. Redding called the poem mysticism of a bad dream." 11 The childish Indeed, despite the poem's evasive- ness and "mysticism," lynching is much worse than a 11 bad dream. 11 Finally (though the theme continues in countless other poems), there is the famous 'ty'et Do I Marvel. 11 Here Cullen applies the sonnet to the riddle of the Afro-American poet, concluding, after high praise of God, that: Yet do I marvel at this curious thing'"1f! To make a poet blacI_;,and bid him sing! Curious, indeed, was the Black poet--curious both for Cullen and the whites who lavished praise and gifts upon these New and Unusual Negroes. was also "curious." And Cullen's fame (recalling Dunbar's) Here was a poet making waves with old, outdated forms of English verse. 11 fresh beauty." Johnson said he gave them This is true but Cullen's white audience seems to have gotten special pleasur~out of bis ability to handle Black anger, Black grief and Black pathos in such amusingly antiquated poetic clothing. Prevalent themes in Cullen's poetry, then, are race pride, endurance, lynchings, cynicism and pessimism ("can death be worse?"), :Jf/f �a primitive or romantic view of Africa. ("Heritage" and many others), religious and psychological conflict, love and death, spiritual freedom, personal or racial inferiority, doubt and fear, the tensions created by being Black among whites, and Christ as a symbol of conflict and contradiction. Cullen saw the plight of t he Afro-Americans as true tragedy in a Christian land. This comes through in many of his poems, but poignantly in "Heritage": Father, Son, and Holy-Ghost, So I make an idle boast; Jesus of tbe twice-turned cheek, Lamb of God, although I speak With my mouth thus, in my heart Do I play a double part. For the Black American, trapped in Christian attire but longing deep inside for what Zack Gilbert calls "t .a.t all-Black Saturday night,u it is indeed a tragedy. to reconcile a 11 Toomer wanted to Cullen tried all of bis life Cbristian" education with a npagan urge.n 11 unite 11 his several parts. And McKay tried to find a "home 11 in the desolate and sometimes contemptuous place Elijah Muba.rama.d calls "the w1.lderness of Iforth America. McKay went all the way to Europe and North Africa. made annual treks to France for several years. Cullen Black literature abounds with the tragedies incurred when Black intellectuals relinquish their 11 dance II for a 11 book. 11 11 Earlier in "Heritage" Cullen admits this deep need, felt by Blacks caught in white �worlds everywhere, to "Strip!" and . 'Doff this new ex1Vberance. ~ Come and do the Lover's dance!' McKay 's "lynching' remains unsolved by t _e sonnet and Cullen is unable to make his "heart and head" know that They and I are civilized despite the meters. 11 unremittant beat" of his impressive iarnbic tetra- A classic statement on the inner-workings of the mind of a Black genius who must "twist and squirm" in an a.lien uHeritage 11 has yet to be seen on the many psychological • • Ott wht,tk t 1'J.,.,.a"' ;+ Ml ~'v-omM·TI'°\'cr" -l"Ktv~,,o, in"lo f'r\w.1 d imens ions ~1.\1 opera es.. ..,,.,., ,. .J . 1 it' {s AL~ a.-dQvttrta'ltng Svr9ic-cii.. e.'l.pto ... t).17M or- Tf\,. aiut ?SVCnt• This and related themes also pervade other poems by Cullen. world. "From the Dark Tower 11 is inspired by his column of a similar name in Opportunity. Although Black artists and thinkers "were not made eternally to weep, 11 they must either face destruction of their potential or wear the mask and "tend our agonizing seeds." Cullen also writes about timid lovers and Black pro- stitutes, about many., many 11 browntt girls (another favorite theme) and the ache of the human heart. He writes in the shadow of Keats and Shelley and pens epitaphs to them. His employment of traditional English verse forms is not as ~startling" as McKay 's. But he does bring a Black force and intellectual veracity to these devices and techniques whi ch bad long housed ttwhite" hopes and feelings. He took the best of Keats and Edna St. Vincent Hillay and made it work in a "marked technical skill." Brown identifies his "gifts 11 �as "rluency and brilliant imagery. 11 But be is likened by many critics to the standard English work or Braithwaite and Dunbar. Cullen cons ciously developed misery--apparently in an effort to 11 suffer II like tb e romantics, so he could know what real inner-strife was all about. He bad not seen the underside of Black life in the way that McKay (Banjo, Banana Bottom), Hughes (The Weary Blues), Fenton Johnson, and others had come to know and understand it. into a pristine verse. or 11 He subdued bis anger and violence Most critic\ allude to the woman-like prissy 11 nature of Cullen's work. Redding complained that he viewed "life through the eyes of a woman who is at once shrinking and bold , sweet and bitter," In Cullen's 11 a.tavistic 11 or "primitive 11 pieces one feels that be is not really there himself--much like one feels in reading white poet Vachel Lindsay's poems oq Af'rica and the "Congo. one of the 11 But Cullen remains epi1'!:t~~bmeteorites of Black poetry. His passion has yet to be surpassed, even among contemporary Afro-American poets. Though he does not convince the reader that be would actually "stripJ" and do the 11 Lover's dance!" he does distill an intellectual fury which chronicles the death-during-life vortex (Davis calls it "alien-and-exile") that so many Africans in America struggle against. Wagner's _Black Poets contains the most up to date and incisive critical assessment of Cullen. See, also, criticism by Redding, Brown, Johnson, Huggins (Harlem Renaissance), Bontemps (including Harlem Renaissance · Remembered), the listings in the Cullen section of Black Writers �,~.fterl• -,..\\.~ of America and r!lj' om .. · ,.t,y1 1.. 1 1.ograp Jr I:any of Cu 11 en f s unp lis .ed works are deposited in the library at Atlanta University. J'arnes Heldon J'o1nson, whom we ave cause to mention again, ranks today as one of tbe most distinguis ed men of Black American letters. eosrss, tis s tbs -, . 1 I I lt C lid! C 82i S&J.. rffss ss Sil srt PS ti& TI ilsdfib&b&Z a a sscrstFl t ,'WJJal11stisn sf bis 2rnrnJ T,,, /\, .... _, i s ~ :,!"9 co ntinued to combine America wit • owY1, carrr , J'o nson's ~name . l Il 3 I gt b ; 1 tniatl n al ,, g wsAuto iofrapbz. was re-issued in 1927, dropped, - LS& .AS ACi h Hi 1 SP; bl I L1 g .$ D J4£©"' 813 t . e earlier pseudonym During t e twenties J'o nson is keen social observations of Blac s poetic development a nd output. car SU s: £? alC Te Book of A,erican Negro Poetry (1922, 1931) was one of t e .ig points oft e D.enaissance. Important for more tan just the poets included, t e ant olomr represented t~e first sustained effort 11 t its t 1 egro II elements in poetry • of a 1 lack critic to identify ri tten since Dun a.r. It was also t1e first anthology of Afro-American poetry to e p "' is ed int e 20t1 cent ry and t e first ever to lis ed in Engl s . • e p One can safely say t at any ser ous st d:,r of has to e 0 in and Essay on it. ames 1 e ldon J'o .. ns on. is s lack critic ism l i tlo ( -1i th Tegro 's Creative Genius)suggested t .e d mens ions of J'o .. nson ' s concern n t e antlioloc~r. He ug~ identif · ed t e various influences on t e poets, noted d-tstinctions '--et een diff re r t kinds of dialects, and 6 a e assessnents of t 1~e �poetry. Discussing t1e pro lem of dialect o~~son declared t 1at it possessed on_y t o e 1otions-- 1umor and pat o • dill & (: ro•,m, reactinc; 15 years later, cop out.) m l • ed s c ~ a state, ent & as a. o nso~ a_so issued t e followins c~allence to Dlac~ oets: What the colored poet in the United States needs to do is somet ing like what Synge did for the Irish; he needs to find a form tat will express t:.1e racial spirit by symbols f'rom wi tl-1in rather t_an y sym ols from without, suc1 as t::ie nere :1utilation of Ene;lis ,. spellins and pronunciation. lie needs a form t. at is ~reer and larcer t 1an dialect, Jut wr1ic will still :1old tl1e racial flavor; a f'orm ex ressing the imacery, t e idioms, t e peculiar turns of thouG1t, and the distinctive humor and pathos, too, of t:.1e 1 ecro, t w ic ~ill a:so ~e ca a~~e of voicins the deepest and highest emotions and aspirations, and allow the widest range of subjects and tl-Je widest scope of treatment. It was a gigantic challenge. it? Has any succeeded? W~ Did any Black poet rise to meet ~4All.- • With bis brother, J. Rosamond, Johnson also co-ed ted The Book of American iegro Spirituals (1925) and The Second Book of .. erican :-:-e;;ro 1.. p ri t, a . . . s ( l926). cal arrangements by J. Rosa~d. Both volumes carried musi- Johnson lsimrszlf tried to meet �li<, # ' \M'~challenge with God's Trom½ones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse (1927), a rendering or the works of the "old time 11 Black preac ers. His pamphlet , Native Ai'rican Races and Culture, was published in 1927. A study of Harlem, Black Hanhattan, came out in 1930. _ is auto iobrap y, Along Tis · ay, appeared in 1933. A~d a social/political commentary , Negro Americans, What Now? , was published the same year. His selected poems (St. Peter Relates an Incide nt oft e Resurrection Day) came out in 1930. Jo nson ht, 0- osta lished i mself as Aprolific and exemplary man , a co1-:J i- nation of :f'ormidable talents, by the time he was killed in an automobile accident in 1938. Aside from their literary and social value, the sermons w. in God 1 s Trombones have , in the years since th ir publication, "'711,tiv'lllu,rl Tl~ :s bro~ght delight and instruction to many ~ieilta•"A,various, .,...·-.--~ ~ , .which they have been presented. I°"-- st:g~or otherwise dramatically l>'t.,.N e.m classes we assign a sermon per-student and, allowing days for research and preparation, stage the works :f'or a larger campus or community audience. Just how much of his own challenge (see above) was attempted in Godfs Trombones is indicated by Johnson ' s Pref'ace It I whe.►.., R he brief'ly gives the history of Black preachers and explains why he chose the trombone as the central symbol in the work: He (the preacher) strode the pulpit up and down in what was actually a very rhythmic dance, and he brought into play the full gamut of his wonderf'ul voice, a .voice--what shall I say?--not of an organ or a trumpet, but rather of a �trombone, the instrument possessing above all others the power to express the wide and varied range of emotions encompassed by the human voi ce-and with greater amplitude. He intoned, be moaned , he pleaded--he bl ared, he crashed, he thundered. I sat fascinated; and more, I was, perhaps against my will, deeply moved; the emotional effect upon me was irresistible. This scene occured at a church Johnson attended in Kansas City. While the preacher was strutting and delivering, Johnson recalled that he njotted" down notes for 11 The Creation. 11 God's Trombones contains seve r. sermons and one prayer--"Listen, Lord. 11 The sermons, each taken from a text in the Bible, include nThe Creation," 11 The Prodigal Son, "Noah Built the Ark, and 11 n The Judgment Day. 11 11 "Go Down Death--A Funeral Sermon," Tbe Crucifixion, n "Let 1y People Gorr 11 Coming as it did at the high point oft e Renaissance-1927--God's Trombones was rather odd in that a less than ostensibly religious verse was being written by other poets. There were religious themes in mµch of the poetry--but none ~,i of the poets dipped into the same reservoir in the same manner as l\Johnson. Johnson was, however, able to fuse some of the ffieV jazz and blues patterns of the day into his work--though • ~not that noticeable. The sermons are not in Black dialect since Johnson said that the Afro-American poet must transcend that form. The language is generally that of any white �American or Englishman . What Johnson does is instill racial feeling and dramati c (ethni c) touches , a-+':rfa7h ng • • spon- t/().rfOOS ta.neity, hui?llii111!!1i.1t repetition_, and M1t_1loi§li2~,free verse forms. Margaret Walker, l1iM:g st ~ Hughes ,- and s-ee1 l i n1s Brown I IA~/" eLeme11t:s ~ place~all these It IA in a more secular context--altbough Brown - - - interp olatedtiil :a, religious expletives and ex- c lamations ~,~~some of bis work. Tbe double negative, which qi,,ui"' Johnson makes ~ se of, is not an exclusively Black product. But we do find him interspersing Black sayings, usages and ot½er idiomat i c spices into tbe tex~ of the sermons. It was the first time that a Black poet bad undertaken such a task solely for literary reasons. So this alone makes the work important-- not to mention its anthropo lOgical and sociological value.{ The over-riding achievement of the sermons is their graphic, full-blown images and their inferential "Blac kening" of God (see Cullen, Toomer and others) . • anal ogy is more obvious in Th 46 11 T. e Creation" where God Like a mammy bending over her baby, Kneeled down in the dust Toiling over a lump of clay Till " e shaped it in ll:is own imagej It seems only natural that Johnson would pay tbis tribute to tbe Blac k motber--most Black poets writing since , say , 1880, bad done so. And he had earlier complained of John Wesley Holloway ' s "Blac k Mammies" in dialect , saying: f' or better poetry than this.n "The blac k mammy is material Fr om Johnson ' s nmilk-wbite horse, 11 �through phrases like 11 0--Mary's Baby--, 11 "sinners in their head- long plunge," and "Blacker than a hundred midnights, n the power of the dramatic Black sermon can be seen. There are threats and warnings, adm\iisbments and pleas, fire and brimstones, force and even worse fury. "The Prodigal Son II is warned: Young man-Young man-Your arm's too short to box with God. The incremental lines, the spontaneity, the witty turns of phrases, the colorful and sometimes bombastic language--all give God's Trombones itiauthenticity. Johnson does use symbols that express from "within" rather than from nwithout" the Black experience. For ;as he noted in his Preface/ "The Negro today is, perhaps, the most priest-governed group in the country. 11 The old time preacher knew the "secrets 11 of ancestral oral and gestural power, Johnson says; they knew the 11 secret of oratory, II that at bottom of it is a progression of rhythmic words. _.._ • 1 II . 5 ? d The preachers had inherited "innate grandiloquence of their old Af'rican tongues.fl •1i19 Once in the pulpit, the minister fused these ntongues fl ~:/iblical language because this "gratified a highly developed sense of sound and rhythm in himself and his bearers. 11 These were the concepts and ideas under which Johnson labored in God's Trombones. Doubtlessly, the volume is one of the most precious in the annals of Afro-American writing. There is hardly a person who cannot "feel" these sermons--and yet their power and their intuitive �embracing of a world of emotions and temperaments make tbem lasting as classical literature of whatever definition and bue. Johnson's Saint Peter, following a tradition of Dunbar's 11 Tbe Haunted Oak, n I ug es' "Song for A Dark Girl, " Mc ay' s "The Lynch ng," and Cullen's T e is Worth Its Song", 11 lac { Christ and "Scotts oro, Too, attempts to fiace the desecration of Black humanity within its proper co ntradictory Christian context. . I n each of t e poems, t e 1 ync:1 i ng is connec t e d ,,.-., ¾lilt- to ah gher order--usually the Christian God. Using a "visionary type of imagination," Jo :rnson applies satire to t e segregation of Black and white mot ers of Gold Star-winning soldiers. Sending t 11e parents to visit t eir sons' graves, the Nar Department puts Black mothers on a foul, crowded boat (reminiscent of a slave sbip) and white mot ers on a modern liner. Jonson, int e poems , imagines that the Unknmn Soldier arrives in ,eaven ,..._, and is discovered to e lack. Various patriotic and terrforist organizations (t e G.A.R., t e D.A.R., the Legion, t e Klan, and ot ers) want him buried For more criticism of Jonson see Davis, agner, Bontemps (including note in American Negro Poetry), rown, Redding, Huggins and others. Langston Hug es was at t e oppos te end of tlie poetic spectrum from Cullen w en e wrote in "Mot er to on 11 : Well, son I'll tell you: Life for me ain't For while ot een no crystal stair. men ac ieved recognition a out t e same time, �Hughes was a folk trou ador with .is finger on t e "pulse of t e people . 11 He was also free from the restraints of con- vent onal Englis verse tat dominated practically all of Cullen's poetry . Born in Joplin, Hissouri, Hug es had pulsed more tan a dozen ooks of poetry, several volumes of prose and pla s, and seen h · s own dramas staged all overt e co ntry, ti e of is deat sance poets, unt 1 the Of t e quartet of first-line Harlem Renais- 1. U[;!.'"'es succum ed to wold e the only one to rema n active Arts Movement of t e 1 6 lac ig y t. e 'rs. IfoXa::- and C llen load pressure int e forties and Too~er, as we noted, died in t•1e o1)scuri tw,. of a Q a er comm n t:,.. whose maternal grandmot er five lacs 1~0 ad w"l-icre e finis 1cd ig ro n's raid o, :a.nsas, and, e -ent for- a b s fat er in ::cxico, ret rnin.:; to tl,e later and enrolling in ,.., • 0 arpcr's ater, to Cleve_a ,d sc ool and -ms elected class poet. com et i on of 1i.:;"b sc:1001, . ile to ni ted ol m ia Uni versity. tL.1e _1a ntin~ jazz spots an V llage, and dissatisfied r sc oo_ and rorked odd 20 n ·t J._;,re tates Tpon it'~ 15 .1ont s pendin3 most of an 0 ing o tin Green1 · ch Colu,.1, · a, efore siu _ n;: on as a .1em,e:::-- of t e crmr of a frei.:; t steamer. This al owed '- :i.m to visit t e Canar:; Islands, t11e Azores and t e Uest Coast of Africa. Re- turning for a w1ile to Wew rork; }~e left t 1e country ot" },is 22nd birt1day an es, een 1:1.arr ed to one of t"e partic pated in JoJn Ferrw, moved f rst to La rence, "P" .:: went to Paris, a ain working odd jo s, on �to Italy and Genoa, and after a number of varied experiences (see The Big Sea : and I Wonder as I h'ander), returned to. America. He then spent time in Washington, D. C. ~(where his mot er ad movea.j working i nt e office of Dr. Carter G. ~oodson, editor 1 or the Journal or Ne~ro History/and later,~busboy (see "Rrass Spittoons") at t e Har man Par-Rote_. At~ latter:i 11Pts,. he had a chance to show some of his poems to Vachel Lindsay--thus launching Hughes' "career II through the newspapers. His volumes of poetry include The Hear:::r lues (1926), Negro Mother and Other Drama.tic Recitations (1931), Scottsboro ! 6JiillitiiCI 9JB)J Limited (1932), The Dream Keeper and Other Poems (1932), ~Shakespeare in Harlem (1942), Freedom's Plow (a long poem, 1943), Jim Crow's Last Stand (1943), Fields of Wonder (1947), One-Way Ticket (1949), Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951), Ask Your Homa: for Jazz (1961) and The Panther and the Lash: Times (1967). 12 Moods Poems of Our Hug es also wrote sort stories and novels (including collected stories fro m the Jesse B. Simple series whic e originated). Prose works a.re Not Without La.ug_ter (1930), The Ways of White Folrn (1934)., Simple Speaks I is M nd (1950), Laughing to Keep from Crying (1952), Simple Takes A Jife (1953), Simple Stakes a Claim (1957), Tam ourines to Glory (1958), Somet ing in Common (1963) and Simple's Uncle a~ ~~:i~· Five 1 Plays y Langston Hug es ·was published in 1963. either vrote (or collaborated wit many ~ a l so-. others ~ usually Bontemps) oors for young readers as well as works of general and specific interest on Black culture. �In his early years, Hughes was influenced b and Dunbar. In r Walt W1..,i tman igb school, a teacher introduced 1im to the poetry of Amy Lowell, Lindsay, Masters and Sandbur 0 • le was especially indebted to Sandburg, of whom 1e would speak, in The Big Sea, as his nguiding star. the only poet up until 11 Fenton Johnson bad ughes to sustain sue poetry of Black folk life. een an energetic Hughes improved on what Johnson began , adding fres1 portraits--though not t.e ridicule sometimes appearing in Dun ar--and actually using musi c to inspire his writing or accompany his live readings. -He made recordings with Charlie riingus, among ot er jazz greats. And e is given credit for originating the practice of reading poetry to jazz. Interestingly enough, this interweaving of music and poetry (discussed in Chapter IV) architectonics. • ecomes av rtual ac{)one of Blacr Baldwin, for example, speaks of listening repeatedly to the records of Bessie Smit1 to 6 ain rbyt min bis prose. Certainly the same fusion of style and spirit can be found in Ellison, Wrig t, Tolson, Baraka and Crouc .. poet Greenlee, quoted earlier, noted in a Novelist- iograp ical note to his Blues for an African Princess, t1at My chief literary influences are C a.rlie Parker, Lester Young, Miles Davis and Billie Holiday. As a writer, I consider myself a jazz musician whose instrument is a typewriter. l'Ii chael S. Harper, a Black poet who ca,no to maturation in tlle sixties, also attri utes muc 1 of his st~rle an poetic p½iloso\\ ,, phy to jazz musicians w.o belped him understand pa.in and make �it "arc .et~~pal . 11 Part of HUG es' • poetry is documented i 1ard "Ir mpact on t · s area of ell temporary Afro-American Poetry. Roots of Con- as cally Hug1es' M poetry falls into tree stylistic cate gories: an ur an sort), lac r dialect (pri ,mril_ of is use of lues and traditionalNfree verse. d alect is seen in practically every ~ook e pu lished. is blues and free-verse forms are especially evident in Te Weary lue$. One of :1is most famous free-verse poems is "The Jegro Speaks of Rivers," written rig t after and pu lis 1ed in T1Je Crisis in 1921. e f nis1ed ig11 sc11oo T1, · s form, accor ing to ~ • • • • • Redding, ism b- more effective a ve.icle for H t ban dia ect or ~ es ug,es comest ro G , Reddi1g fees, lues . In "Rivers II in t e "purer verse forms. " t e deep deep well of uc1.,es reac. es into lack '"'istor:r and struggle, un tine; i n spirit t e glo al African: I've .nown ri vcr·s : I' ve kn~-n rivers anc ent as t e worl older than t e flo an of h -~~n Jlood in 1uman vein • s . . . . . . . . . . . . . non rivers: Ancie nt , d1s Tc . . . . . . . I' ve ~ ro;n deep li~e tbe rivers. M rivers. sou~ Jas gr o n dee se of words -like "soul" an t½ro .:;1 li~ the ri ers. "ri ver s"-- lac.r fo_ dore an. :iterat re, a, __ o, ic s r r n 1 · 1rn s . i nes l.'.: es to to-:. c., �t10 deepest loncinGs and spirit al 1e_l-springs of,, s peo le. In 11 vci ns, " 11 deep, 11 1 fl ow, 11 11 dus {'J, 11 11 anc ient II an t cata- :10 loging of act al place-names important to Blac rn, l1e esta lis 11es A similar t e longevity of life and str r·:::;1e .a11•1111s•Pii?•-• strengt and longevit:r is put into 11 Poem, 11 "Te ecro, 11 and numerous ot ers. Hug es' • dialect and lues-oriented poems were not 11 swc0t" tote ears of some Harlem Black intellectuals oft e tJenties, Just as ~ y of tbem bad soue; t to cens re C llen for not wri tin~ more latantly h out criticized side of lack str g~le (in u 11es for dealing ·wit lac{ idioms), the:r the "lower strata 11 or under- lack lif0. \1ne _.idden and robust ( 11 ta of Black life wore 17 11 ) 11 ~ riters. 11 Ru 11 i•Iulatto 11 Brown, ( And Hu,.,, es 11 11 A _ittle ;rello /:Jasta.rd Joy. was worth during ), Hughes worked t is medi is life time. r.1 t e two for muc, of w1at it These vario s for s also Hug1cs ' ' t emes and su jects. j ects. t1e second line repeats the first, and the third end-line rhymes wit preceding ones. 11 and more s c:1 expcr enc es or s1 T.e blues form calls for throe-linef stanzas: esta lis aspects row ng tendency in speaking frankly a out "S icide," nPo' Bo:r Blues, "Hard Daddv , 11 eginning to come to t1e fore in the works of Blacks (licKa:r) and white (Van. ec ten) joined t.is 00 elped Linguistic freedom allowed him to treat a theme wit c:rnicism, iron:r, pity, tragedy, violence or compassion. In many of is poems, Hucles is a le to develop a dialo; , etieen t e Blac underdo 0 and t~e white ruler. 1 mor, This occurs in "Brass Spittoons" ·where t:,e "'Usbo:r �interlaces a portrait of a common lack :vhythms of c urc , w -ii te men ' s orders, life and t e s 1iny spittoons or er it½ dazzling )lac r party and nL; t lacks must keep polisJ ed. \· e not racially, in "Jazzonia. 1' in see it tec1nica_ly, t t1e call-and-response pattern co pled it carefullJ rearranged chordal structures: 0. , silver tree! Oh, s'1-)inini:; rivers of t .e soul! T1ree stanzas later, t e same idea -.ppears in t11is forr.1: 0. , singing tree! 0 sh ning rivers oft e sol! And five stanzas later, it appears thusl~: Oh, s1ininc treel 01, silver rivers oft e sol! This rillia-n t use of t ~ me intricate call-and-response continues in 11 :~ attern of dialog .. and latte. n T e "Bastard is rejected first b_ t_ e w i te fat er and later by t e rot.er, ot i- o: 1 11 -ii te representing (t 1ro gh the interjection of dialoc) different · types and generations of white men--one o½jecting to t e existence of an "illegi timate" son and t' e ot er (t e former•s off-spring) refusin to extend a _and of _Iug ed t emes, w_ ic remained wit protest, racial f rot erly concern. 1im t ro g1 most of 1 ,is life 1 nit7, race \,_..,AJ. IUH_.,....,.,. /1 ride '!f,__ i\ Cullen or IIcKay ), lack wom . ( I lii"2ss 6eauty and t eir strenct ,s ), jazz, ~ aal religio s musi c, violence ai:;ainst 1-)1 es/ lac rn and integration. �Hughes, especially, was tbe spokesman of t1 f ~ClJ.~e'S.:~ And 10 la.c lj.. often rel is ed tbe common profundity of B a.cks a.t dance, play, wors 1ip or work. In 11 egro Dancers,'! be recalls J. Mord Allen's "The Squea r of the Fiddle n and James Edwin Campbell's 11 11 Ho il.e Buck. Allen hints that whites cannot dance. Q... And Campbell reproduces in poetr~ the rbyt ms ofl\contemporar: dance known as t 10 sation, claims that 11 uck. Hug 1es; showing off t1 re and . is a.by la.ck improvi- ave Two mo' ways to do de C arleston! --also a poplar contemporary dance. 11 Even if w1ites la.ug1 11 and "prayll Blacks can take satisfaction in t e knowledge t .1at they can ~ p t eir own reservoir of spontaneity and creativity when they want to side-step or annoy the mec1a.nical ut Hug_ es also wrote poetr:r a o t world. 11 nigbt II and afraid. T 1ere is c yni cis m an in t is poet w110 o served 11 einc- ,_ ite alo,1e II at sarcas:11 and tra.Ged::r is people t rougb a deep and creati e affection. Iughes ' f persona.l life, of cours e, was just as fasci- natin as .is poetry. Ie won numero s awards and wr · t nn- grants, b t was often introduced to audiences as .n t e poet Laureate of larlcm. I 11 fonder as I 1, antler), In 1-iis auto )iO[;rap ies (T .e writes a.')out~ 1 4itlliii■Rii?iili..__JWI••iliilj112-·-••• . 10-r lac • ...<'. .. e filled a car tr n -;: wit traveled t ro ,;; o t t . e So t at - ea an9 ·1 • ..:+ ')oo s and read inc >is poems and spea. · n..; c~ re es ad colloGon. ~e ru'½ed sbo _ders ran ing; r · ters and int l ect a_s of ~is da.:~ ith the t re,na.incd i_n �contact nit. t ,e µ:_ c 1;: masses . 1~ ters aidin~ 7o•n:er o~es G ~Leon Af'oot Damas, of Frencl, 1,e tradit on of senior as a_so • een traced to iana, ere its ,. L1 i t1-i est-,"' _ :::;_.,in:; Par-African l t re.r:.,. and artistic ties. one of the o_ or statesmen of .... ac also c i ted ant'Jo_o · es of . . . ac cu1 t rr 0 hes ·ms at the First ·!or'.:.d 11 0 f'rican prose an poetr:T. de __ i_ vored a man:.fes o as i1porta:1t as Jo1 nso~1fs c' ·-;_s :a:,, ro ct ' on, .le:1"-'e. Fe declare-:. t .at t:10 11.:-0 i1,ser 1: ee;ro artists' wo __ d ex ress .a- t eir "indivi •1 dark-s 1:inned sel"es. 11 ites ap roved or- dicapp:roved, it di ton-ton cr."os and t c;"l;es rece;i Te .0 i c; _ eddin_:;, al t½o G to .n-to~1:: :..a·: s. f6::t n 0 1 t:::11illx·~1 11 11 0xper nents II in verse, c 1es 'fl t e!l, h it he does not naivete. 11 It is true t .at An t~e thirt·es, s riters. e din.:; sa.i Spea~inc of " __ c fee_s in t~:.s is t e so rce of u__: cs .. a.i nte.L10d a ti\'h 11 docs not t~ .. ink" is 0 o ntr e. And to almost a 1 is iterary ',oi:::;1,ts, r ·L \ . r--Mtve_.,1 ,')'W"r~ys ~oues.sn.1 rn n\J r. "i(e ,,as intollcct--a cyr,mastic inte_lic;ence, and a fur o words. a,1 · as not of t•~e in- )rof'ile and did not aspire to lofty int13-~ c t.u~ t to sa~r >e "Th _a,cl:: critics Bro n tellectua . . . stature of ot.er tG naiGsanco n :ac s or not 1;1atter. praise fr~t1 ) ; ~cddinc; 111 If e ·tie::- 1s J a ~raindance po rnr it 1 s poetr~ pro cd to· e irresistible and inspiring alf--cent 1r~,. of conte r.1 orarics. The nex s of I c; ~es tW po ?' �seems to e a out a "Dream Def erred. in so tmch lac poetry. in t 1at part cular poem And_ e •1· 11 S:l"e dream, a__,ain, : ke as never more prop etic t~an ere 1e as ed, w· tbo t a.nswerine;, tl-ie question : · at ½appens to a dream deferred? "(l ..fj " 'ti!,, In ~"-.Poe m, ~ whic "-Lorraine Hans,"'Jerr:r t 1-ie name for J.~l~PO~Dtbe WD.J her fanous P-a~~ /tu g=.es also disp_a-:rs · is master:, o er tec 1-inical skill. Ie uses fie h i gJly effective similes 1 in an a;;sregate analog:~ t. at lenst .. ens to Or does it explode? And •. o lived to see tbe explosion in ~Jatts, ' and at.er places. writings are in all 2 t ant1ologies of Afro-American literature. studios of is work appear in Haener' s Fro. t e Dar { Tmver. Tewar c, Detroit 1 cent r7 Detailed criticalac r Poets and Davis' l o is also assessed in 1 orks 1-iv rown, \r'l Kerlin, Redd:i.ng., Jo nson and/\n- merous other studies and coi1pilations. James Timan el's • iography of hi~ (La □ Gston Hu3 es) was pu lis ed in 1967. Other important source items on Hughes are Francois Dodat's Langston Hughes (Paris, 1964), Raymond Quinot•s Langston Hughes (Brussels, 1964), Milton Meltzer•s Langston Hughes: Hughes: A Biography (1968), Elizabeth P. Meyers ' Lan gs ton Poet of His People (1970) and Charlemae Rollins' Blac~ Troubador: Langston Hughes (1970). Of the plethora of material steadily pouring out ~Hughes, a most valuable book is Langston Hughes: Black Genius: Therman B. O'Daniel. A Critical Evaluation (1971), ed ted by O'Daniel includes a selected classified bibliography detailing Hughes' lengthy career as writer in all genres, anthologist and criti~. Hughes inspired generations of ' Black Africans and Americans and also edited the following ~q()c_~ �anthologies: An African Treasury: Articles, Essays, Stories, Poems By Black Africans (1960); Poems from Black Africa (1963); New Negro Poets: U.S.A. (1964); and Voices: Poetry (Negro poets issue, winter, 1950). A Quarterly of �C. Minor or Second Echelon Poets of the Renaissance Dozens of poets helped to make up the variegated atmosphere of the New Negro Movement. And just as the New Black Poetry of ,r.\ the 1960ts cannot be characterized in terms of four or five individuals, so the Renaissance cannot be understood unless the Co rYt t.et'; poetry scene is examined. Many of the so-called minor or second echelon poets writing during the peak of the Renaissance had already established reputations before 1923. Principal among these were Arna Bontemps (1902-1973), Angelina Grimk~, Gwendolyn Bennett (1902- ), Anne Spencer, Clarissa Scott Delaney (1901-1927), Frank Horne (1899~,.,.., Georgia Douglas Johnson, George Leonard Allen (1905-1935), Donald Jeffrey Hayes (1904- ), Jonathan Henderson Brooks (1904-1945), Helene Johnson (1907- ), Waring Cuney (1906- ), Lewis Alexander (1900-1945), and Lucy Ariel Williams Holloway ( 1905- ). Other poets, to be mention·e d at the end of this unit, can be dispersed rather widely along a spectrum of relative significance. Many of them won prizes and places for their poems among the pages of The Crisis and Opportunity and then disappeared from t e scene. Others met untirnel. deaths--wh · le yet others chose different careers or leaped into the freedom fieht. Cullen's Caroling Dusk (1927) contains the best representation of AfroAmerican poetry written between 1910 and 1925. Jonson's The ook of American regro Poetry (1922) presents poets between Dun ar and t e time of its last edition (1931). 1~jor an minor poets are also to be found in Kerlin ' s Negro Poets and Their Poems (1923, 1935). �Hughes and Bontemps made many of these lyricists available.,. , . in The Poetry of the Negro (1949, 1970). At least half a dozen of the lesser known poets are included in Alain Locke ' s The New Negro (1925). Randall (The Black Poets, 1971) displays work by Horne and Bontemps; but only Bontemps is included in Randall's Black Poetry (1969). Henderson does not list one of these transitional figures in Understanding the New Black Poetry (1973). And only Cuney and Bont emps are included in Rosey Pool ' s Beyond the Blues (1962). RvT' ~ 1 ' _We the anthologies for content. are ltllllllr randomly sampling See the bibliograp y for more detailed listings. # The . best contemporary anthology of 20th Century Black poetry is Arnold Adoff's The Poetry of Black (lq1lJ Amerio ~ which lists more than 140 poets and practically all of the minor ones of the ~enaissance, although the omission \ !. ~ pnA. U. ,·nc: , of Cuney and Edward Silvera bs ;sgz J • 1 ;{ t 1 Ji~ Il I• Unfortunately, no Black anthology of the magnitude of the Norton series has appeared. ( The NeerP Qa:seva.r (Sterling Brown, et al), a comprehensive anthology published in 1941 and re-issued (unrevised) in 1970, contains nearly a dozen of' the minor voices. Horne and the Second Echelon Poets of the (The Harlem Renaissance Remembered, In "Frank arlem Renaissance 11 Bontemps, ◄ I 1972), Ronald Primeau launches an impressive and important discussion of these lesser known figures. While 1agner ( lack Poets of the United States, 1973) makes a partial effort to d scuss tPese poets, qvis.l\ seems generally to dismiss them as cli C\~ seekers after an African past. So at this writing, e rown's "Contemporary �Negro Poetry (1914-1936)," in his Negro Poetry and Drama (1937), rema ns t e est critical overviei oft ese poets. Bontemps is one oft ree important iena ssance figures (along wit up ug es and Brown) to survive nt 1 t e 1960fs. '1'agner calls f'klsi<A~yand creatively onter.1ps "one of t'""e most brill ant minor poets of' the Harl n Renaissance" and also as Jig rm n Po~1 pra se ~"' 1 s poetry and fiction. Davis . ) sees an "alien-and-exile" theme continuing from the major trunk of ~naissance poetry into the work of Bontemps. • With the notable exception of Georgia Douglas Johnson, the important minor ((enaissance figures did not publish books ,;. ~ of poetry until the 1960 , s. This fact alone tels us much about Bontemps' seeming poetic obscurity between 1930 and 1960. more But mportant, for the record, is the fact that Bontemps' fforts ere directed to ard fiction, drama, c ildren's liter - ture, .istory, c ronicl n~ the development o and ground- rea ing ibrar work. other a.ck poets orn in Alexandria, Louisiana, Bontemps family moved to California when he was still a cl1ild. He attended Pacif'ic Union College and the University of' Chicago. His diverse riting output, almost as prodigious as includes numerous books, pamphl ts and articles. ughes', His novels are God Sends Sunday (1931; dramatized as St. Louis Woman, 1946), Black Thunder (1936, about the Nat Turner- - revolt) and Drums at Dusk (1939 ) . Bontemps also co-edited with Hughes the very influential anthology The Poetry of the Negro (1949, 1970), and he brought out American Negro Poetry in 1963. Other anthologies �are Golden Slippers: An Anthology of Negro Poetry for Young Readers ( 1941), The Book of Negro Folklore ( 1958, wi tb Hughes), Great Slave Narratives (1969), Hold Fast to Dreams: Poems Old and New (1969) and Tbe Harlem Renaissance Remembered (1972, a collection of articles). Additionally Bontemps published more than 20 odd works of bibliography (usually on Black heroes), juvenilia, culture and history. He served as \lniversity l ibrarian 4!. ' at Fisk for more than 20 years and was a member of tbe faculties of tbe University of Illinois and Yale--where be was i n charge of Afro-American Studies.at the time of his deat. Between 1924 and 1931 Bontemps ' poems were published widely in various magazines and periodicals and -he won poetry prizes i'rom both The Crisis and Opportunity. His only published volume of poetry, Personals, did not come out until 196~. ..(,tX1~: ...ili:'l.il1Lil8~lilil~a~ (faul Breman). Personals as an idea-position sums up much of Bontemps ' poetry. 1 . For throughout the book there is t e use of ~e 11 or "Us." 11 1 11 or His poetry is personal, like Robert Hayden f s, Countee Culle n 's and Frank Horne 1 s. A comi'orta1Jleness also attends Bontemps' poetry--not a smug comfort, stability and careful workmanship. Jut tcomi'ort of He was among t,ose poets w00, unlike Dunbar, bad tbe security of college dec;rces and access to books unlimited! Consequentl: there is little oft e yearning for i nstant recognition or the frenz~ that t~e anticipation of fane creates. 1 Bontemps 1rites of love ("love's )rown arms"), the African past ( 11 T1"'e ;1cturn n and niroctur ne at . et rnsda fl), t. e Soutb ( nsout 11ern Nans io n n), 1lilllJc. defiance and �s t rcn.::;t . , ( 11 c:oae Your Eye::; 11 cone ud e s t h at t trad iti on of Black . a or a n 11 food on itter fruit. h anging in the Sout II Reni r.: _s cent of 'J1 oo·,,er 1 s n , apers, • l ab or ers' c,: ildr en /\LfLid on e Bil ie Holiday would lat e rJ'_iill and write 11 S tra nge Fruit. 11 II ; a And we recall t .at since James l itfield, Black poe ts h ave poi nt ed tote contradictions in .American Christianity and t be arren versus earing t h eme. Bontemps also followed t he lonaissance patter n of ro~anti~ cizing a pagan-like .Afro-American or African. \ ith t he taste of slavery and t e dialect tradition still bitter on t h eir tongues, these poets leaped backwards over slav ery to anoth er place a nd another clime. closely resembles Cullen ' s of "remembered rain, 11 11 11 The Returnn wh ich Heri tage II and some of t h e atav istic 11 pieces of L a E§.!I t • Hughes and Gtil>et "dance of rain , 11 Bontemps does just t h is in '1 :McKay. "the friendly ghost , jungle sky, n 11 11 Bontemps spea s 11 lost ni ghts, muffled drums, 11 11 and t h en suggests: Let us go back into t he dusk a gain, Dusk , ebony , jet, night, evenings, purple, blue , raven and other such synonyms for Blacks are frequently employed to great effect and power by Afro-American poets. Likewise, symbols or images of invisibility and blindness are also pre a.lent in Black writing . Bontemps employs and implies such states in several poems wh ere he achieves a surreal quality--a dream-like longing for anoth er time and another place (again, a pattern in t h e poetry of t h e period). If y ou "Close Your· Ey es, 11 Bontemps says, you can go �back to what you were, and maybe the sone;, as with Toomer, will "in time return to thee." Closing the eyes will also allow one to "walk bravely enough. 11 Away from the daily lime- light and without the constant pressure (c.f., Cullen) to succeed and bold up the light of the race, Bontemps developed strong statements using convention:~oetic patterns with occasional free-verse experimentation. Personal and powerful, Bontemps' poetry looks ahead to a similar stamina (this ti me in a new dialect) exclaimed by Sterling Brown in Southern Road. For even though Bontemps tells us in "Golgotha is A Mountain", tha.t One day I will crumble we know tba.t the dust will fossilize and "make a mountain": I think it will be Golgotha. There bas been very little critical assessment of Bontemps' poetry. But brief reactions to his work can be found in The Harlem Renaissance Remem ered (whic'li he edited),~- w Brown's study, Ba.rksdale~and Kannamon's anthology, Robert Kerlin's critical-anthology, .Jitilii••~ Davis' f' From the Dark Tower, a r;d The Negro Caravan. For a near complete listing of Bontemps' published works see Black Uorld, XX (Septem er 1971), 78-79. Along wit ~ I Angelina Grimke, Lewis Alexander, Anne Spencer, Bontemps, Georgia. Douglas Jo nson, and I elene Jo 1nson, 1 Gwendolyn Bennett helped to fill out t e list of lesser known enaissance poets who appeared in T1e New Nec;ro (see 196" edition ~ith a prefa ce by Ro ert Hayden ). Unfort natel:r, ,...,owever, 1 f~ ennett's best foot was not put forward in the "Song" which �Alain Locke accepted for publication in the above named anthology. 11 Song 11 is not representative of Hfi P TNihJJeiitile it. generally high craftmanship; it is flawed by imbalance and an 'foO attempt to saylmany things in one poem. poetry of tbe period, 11 Characteristic of the Song" reaches back to "forgotten banjo songs" and but !fl -AIA... m• Clinking chains and minstrelsy =t' interpolation of dialect lines does not come off with the ease and power of Brown's similar efforts. On the other hand, her sharp crisp and precise imagery employed in poems which appeared in magazines and other a.nt"liologies show her as a poet with many gifts and resources. Gwendolyn Bennett was born in Giddings, Texas, to professional parents. After graduation from the Girls' High School in Brooklyn, New York, she attended Teachers College, Colu~iliia University, for two years and studied in the Fine Arts Department--thereafter establishing a dual career as poet and artist. She later attended Pratt Institute, taught in the Fine Arts Department at Howard University, and then received the Thousand Dollar Foreign Scholarship of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, which enabled her to go to Europe where she studied for a year f f f in Paris at the Academie Julian and the Ecole Pantheon. She returned to New York at tbe height of the §enaissance and for a while was a member of the editorial staff oi' Opportunity where several of her poems appeared. 1h(L In reading her i'inest poems, one recalls ~depth of Black womanhood revealed in the poetry oi' �. kt Frances Harper , Georgia Johnson and Ange 1.ina Grime. 11 To A Dark Girl 11 is a r.ieditation on the sisterhood which retains 11 aspects of old forgotten queens . " We recall the word n.ror- gotten II from "Song"; but it a.bounds in the poetry of tbis period. 11 He" lfl:1111••••9!~ "brown girl II f.MalMWM {9ullen!) is sorrow ' s ma.tell but i.f she forgets her slave background she 11 can still laugh at Fate!" "Nocturne" distills ,,, 11 distant laughter" and "Sonnet--2 11 recalls nuegroes bu ·ng melodies." 11 Heri tage II is alt1ost iden- tical , in theme and tone , to Countee Cullen ' s poem of t1e same name. 11 Just as Cullen laments the disparity heart and head, 11 etween his this poet sees the same duality in her "sad people ' s soul 11 Hidden by a minstrel-smile. Finally , "Hatred II is sharp and stinging Like a dart of singing steel and we are reminded of the poems of the same theme: "The Riddle of the Spbinx. and 11 The White House. 11 DuBois' and McKay's "To the White Fiends" 11 For Clarissa Scott Delaney, 11 Joy" seems to contain the emotional intensity that "Hatred II holds for Gwendolyn Bennett. The daughter of Emmett J . Scott, the "distinguished secretary to Booker T. \lashington, 11 Ers. Delaney lived a tragically short life and died at the peak of the Renaissance. "Joy II is �what she vows to "abandon" herself to in an effort to avoid the troubling 11 maze it of life. Her poetry is quietly power- ful and seems to compl t ment that o f ~ Bontemps since it is deep and flows from tradition, stamina and endurance. Born in Tuskegee Institute, Alabama, she attended Bradford Academy in New England and then Wellesley College, after which sbe taught three years at the famous Dunbar High School in Washington, D. C. ,1.. .,.;ss.,_ ""' According to • • • Kerlin, 'ilii4-Tielan y also "Studied V delinquency and neglect among Negro children in New York City." Her poetry reflects a perceptive and analytical mind . Initially, she appears detached and metalli c--deceptively , like Gwendol;n Brooks, but the poem usually winds down to a gripping mes sage on pretense, loneliness, joy or despair. The night in "Interiri 11 is a "gracious cloak" used to conceal tbe defeat of the soul. "The Mask" immediately brings to mind Dunbar's Hask. 11 11 We Wear the Except for the differences in persona. and dramatic affects, t he two poems are quite similar. Re-reading 11 The I1ask, 11 .Sota~, 11 one is reminded of Smokey Bill Robinson's recently popular ~ Tbe Tears of A Clown"--which carries the theme of duality and schizophrenia so often found in Black thought and writing,> G vfoile all Black artists do n~t displ;y this "twoness n with the intensity of a ~8111111_ _. Cullen or always present in their works. Ellison, it is almost Especially is this true of the Black American writer, forced to use the communi catio n tools of the over-seers to speak about that whic is closest to im. �This particular aspect of Black poetry gives rise to much speculation since poems devoid of racial or ethnic flavor take on added significance when we know their authors are Such is the case with Gwendolyn Bennett's "Hatred 11 Black. (where 11 you" could be whites) and W.E .B. DuBois' "Tbe Riddle of the Sphinx" (where "them" probably means whites). '//Fra nk Horne, who won a poetry contest in The Crisis in 1925 but did not publish a book (Haverstraw) until 1963, fits into this context. Horne was born in New York City where be attended public schools. As a student at the College of the City of New York, be won varsity letters in track and wrote poetry. He later graduated from the Northern Illinois College of Ophthalmology with a degree of Doctor of Optometry. Horne worked in Chicago, New York, tauc;ht in Fort Valley Georgia and was for some time employed by the United Stat~Housing Authority. ~ Aul~ ~lliH\Nl"'IP"'tllfl"li.l. d-o Jq ?',I. Horne "possesses the authentic g ift of poetry," according to James Weldon Johnson,-; fnd ~t 1;'.J( '!& Brown mentions "intellectual irony. 11 ' Indeed Horne is cyni cnl, skeptical , re- served and almost bare in his short lines and econonic language. Tbe corpus of bis early poetr~ revolves around "Letters found near a suicide II for w ich e won The Crisis award. Host of t e poems are addressed to individual y-named persons and recall sor:~e point of co·1tact (contention?) between tl1e al lee;ed su · c ide victim and t 11e person addressed. As notec ear ier, poems __ a\~c to be placed i·, t 1 1e context of :1a.t :r of t 1 e Bla.c 1:" po tr:r if 11 �the shortness of if'e, contra.dictio s n c_ risti 1i t:r, endurance, love, atrcd, surviva_ of tbe spirit o "er p1:"'sica_ deat , r1usic, scientific inqu · r:r adapted to t :e racial injt:stice, and victory as fact or idea. ctra:"a.~, oet ' s q1.estio 1in,.c,, Horne's verse is sanguine but , forte most pa.rt, avoids t.e romantic treat- 4th tY' pc, /) fl lbi . fe naissanc ~ ment of Africa found in ~rsetieRJl p all~pe,e* His "Nizger (A c_ant for Children ) " catalogs Black ,eroes: Hannibal, Othello , Crispus Attucks, Toussaint L 'O ~erture, and adds Jesus near the end. SI Ac ora iteration, anticipating i-r a i ·41g Brown and compl~menting Hughes, N- nclu es: !!Nigger .•• nigger .•• nigger 11 " To the Poets If recalls Cullen ' s "Scottsboro·, Too, Is Worth Its Song" ; both oems chide other poets for singinc: songs o er wrong causes. yelling got Horne "yelled im nowhere . osannas n into t e emptiness, 1,ut (Neither did yelling move mountains for Baldwin who, as a boy-preacher, quickly saw t e contradi c tion in singing ''You can have all dis world but give me Jesus. Horne ' s know edge of science is put to good use in sue as "To Henry" and "Q,.E.D. 11 11 ) poeris And his skepticism continually surf ac es as in "To You t1 1here he examines t e road to salvation, which is through ''Your t1 ( or Christ ' s) body. But later he is involved in a worldly experience with "ber II and w en to the altar to eat and drink of "only of her. e returns 11 Your" splendors be can think 11 Much of Horne ' s poetry employs t1e symbolism and vocabulary of athletic contests--principally football and track. JOf �ot -\1\e He also uses language associated withtplayingAmusic or singing. "To Caroline" and "To CatalinJ;' merge melody, harmonies, pain and ecstasy. "Caroline" plays~ "skin" as well as the piano. "Catalina" is warned (and ,cx.k.e) that the piano will give,1j oy and hurt. "To Chick" reca~u.e§.,he days of the "Terrible Two" on the football field. The "signal"R-n football is analagous to the "signal" called in real life. In both instances the poet crossej the victory line, "fighting and squirming." "To one who called me 'nigger'" is a comment on the white man's ability to do everything but face America's race problems. Continuing his theme of skepticism, Horne presents a "Toast" to eyes, lips, heart and l:Q>dy, even though the person addressed has an "unborn" soul. His poetry is solely in free-verse and, though sparse, his language invariablf operates on multiple levels. "To A Persistent Phantom" is an excellent example of Horne "complicating" the l meaning of words through the use of repetition, e*pses, and the strategic use of words like "tears," "tangled," "deeper," "charms" and "buried." If the language and action of athletic competition influenced Horne, it was melody that captured George Leonard Allen, a poet who lived only 30 years. Allen achieved wide recognition before his death, however, for his "To Melody" won first prize in a 1927 state-wide poetry contest sponsored by the North Carolina Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. His poems also appeared in Opportunity, American Life, The Southern Christian Advocate, The Lyric West and Caroling Dusk. "Pilate in Modern America" employs what is, by Allen's time, a traditional theme in Black poetry: equating Black suffering to the crucifixion of Christ. The "Pilate" of America pleads with God for redemption, claiming that "one man's voice" �(pf dissent) could not be heard in the din of the lynch mob. But God's voice (the white man's conscience) tells "Pilate" that his guilt is as great as the crowd's. "To Melody" has no racial import. It simply praises song and is imitative, in language and theme, of early 19th century English poetry. As a sonnet, it only remotely suggests the work of McKay and Cullen. "Pilate" is well handled in iambic pentameter. Allen was born in Lumberton, North Carolina where he attended public schools--later completing his studies at Johnson C. smith University. His book-learning is evident in his poetry which is competent but conventional. A certain formalism also marks the work of Donald Jeffrey Hayes. Hayes was born in Raleigh, North Carolina; his education, which was quite extensive, was gained primarily through private study where he pursued his interests in singing, directing and writing. During the twenties and thirties, Hayes appeared in several Broadway productions as a member of a singing chorus. His poetry, much of which reflects his interest in music, was published in Harper's Bazaar, Good Housekeeping and This Week. 11 Appoggiatura 11 --a musical term--draws sustained comparisons between a woman's movements and sounds of water. and watering flow. h1dj11 one It is a towering poem full of surreal image,a.l mysticism Ultimately the woman seems to become a mermaid. He heari the "indistinguishable sound of water silence" and then the woman disappear~ : "Sea-Woman--slim-fingered-water-thing II This theme of having lost something or someone pervades Hayes' poetry. And while he never mentions Africa or the lost Black purity lamented by other A -t/.Gse hilft d "Benediction" ~naissance poets, it is possible that he had strilmr1•1srm2 tn 4 :. 30'3 �is for the departed rather than a prayer to end a religious service. pursues Horne's theme of life's briefness. the poet's "kiss was sweet." for time before death. "Poet" A eulogy, the poem notes that "Prescience" depicts the poet trying to stall His concern is not for his own physical and emotional well-being, but for the "you" addressed in the poem. The speaker cannot bear the thought of his loved one being alone after his death. "Haven" death haunts all of Hayes' anthologized poetry. and conventional forms. Except for He writes in free-verse "Poet" and "Prescience" make the most of careful meter and rhyming couplets. elR,- Another poet, Jonathan Henderson Brooks, writes with allegorical quence. His work is deeply religious; but it is not a canned religiousness. He takes Chris.tian symbolism and makes it work for the Black cause. , Metlttates I L ~lack suffering to the sufferings of Christ. And like Phillis Wheatley, he ensconces his deep and troubled feelings in religious fervor. "The Resurrection" is a poetic narrative--employing dialog where racial concerns can only be inferred. doubt as to its intent. But "My Angel" leaves little Freighted with both hope and doubt, with "Despair and my disgrace", the poem depicts "my angel" attempting to lift the burden from the shoulders of Black Americans. But the angel, who struggled "All night," is unable to lift The heaviest load since Lucifer .••• Carefully and startlingly, Brooks weaves in the relatively new Black poetic On be.~o.\.~ o.P theme of indifference towards (and distrust of) Christianity."- "Black necessit)f but after the all night struggle, the angel intervenesj he wearily flies off "To angels' resting place. JOtf �Thus leaving the narrator with his despair and disgrace. It is a chilling I)(' I poem, one which blatantly carries a doubt more subdued in other1'!3rooks pieces. Alternating between iambic tetrameter and 1· trimeter, and using six-lin~ stanzas, he presents an exciting technical achievement with an ab c b db rhyme scheme. Brooks was born in Mississippi, on a farm "twelve miles southwest of Lexington." After his parents separated, he stayed with his mother until he was 14 when he went to Jackson College for four months on money his mother had saved. - At Jackson he won a prize for a short-story and later completed his high schooling at Lincoln University (Missouri). at Tougaloo, Mississippi. He then wentAto college Though religion is the outstanding influence on his poetry, he is nevertheless unconventional in his use of it and his poetry is always well-crafted. His over-riding achievement appears to be "She Said .•• " a poem dedicated to the memory of the first Black soldier from Alcorn County, Mississippi, to be "killed in action in the invasion of Normandy." Again using Christian symbolism and terms, he imagines the response of the soldier's mother who wonders if her son screamed when he was shot, if "unhurrying Death" was called, and if he died in sunshine, rain, or night. The mother finally equates herself to "Mary of Galilee" and notes that the two women must have felt the same emotion. This is an irresistible idea and theme in Black poetry. The searchingl,,skillful contemporary poet, Raymond Patterson, presented a similar situation in his elegy on the death of Mrs. Martin Luther King, Sr. ("All Things Abide," Black World, September, 1974). Patterson echoes Wheatley, DuBois, McKay, Hughes, Cullen and Dunbar when he asks who in our presence can say how Jesus' mother perished: --Jesus, crucified? �The question mark aids in calling up all the gore and grief and passion and terror that engulf and interlace Black existence as it is infused by Christianity, Africanisms and the Amreican experience of slavery. there again. Was Jesus really crucified? Skepticism and cynicism are In his poem, Brooks achieves a haunting, yet immediate, requiem by tieing the soldier's death to the cosmos-anticipating ~ Dodson's "Lament"--and relating place-names of importance. He establishes other associations: the stars and stripes (of the flag) are connected to the "sun's shining," the sunlight and moonglow are associated with the "stars forever," bullet and death and days and hours and sunshine and night and rain and battleground--all set the stage for Mary and the "Garden" and the suggestion of a rising. -flie.. ~ns o~ LastlyJ\the narration · d {4'1(!, #;().t OC.CV Ir- I'r1-ffi l IY!tn Brooks is set off in Jtalic~ certainly worth much more study. Helene Johnson's small output should be collected and published in bookform . mihcr because she is an importantN:oet. Born in Boston, where she attended local :L S.h t. . d in . New y ork in . pu bl ic sch oo 1 s an d Boston Un i vers i ty, ~n~e~z•@•1~a...i•--~rrive T • 1926 to do additional study at the Extension Division of Columbia University ~ and to become one of the important "younger" figures of the Pl 7 Renaissance. Her poems were published in Opportunity, Vanity Fair and several other periodicals and anthologies. and language. Her poetry is terse, emphatic and diverse in form, style She is at home with the sonnet, free-verse, conventional rhyme pieces, or with what James Weldon Johnson calls "colloquial style--a style which numberless poets of this new age (1910-1930) have assumed to be easy," (Johnson sounds as if he -, age" 1960-1974!). onfc2.•b.tT.ho is(tc?ZBe lib some of the poets of the current "new And Johnson is right about Helene Johnson when he says that she is aware that a poem written in dialect, colloquial or street language ..Job �"demands as much work and workmanship as a well-wrought sonnet." Helene Johnson's dominant themes are cultural reclamation (the African heritage), the ludicrous (sometimes peacockish) dress and mannerisms of Black men, Black beauty and love. Almost always she expresses longing, either for personal love or a return to pre-slavery Africa. In "Summer Matures," "Fu1fwment" and "Magalu" she invites lovers both literally and metaphorically. "Magal~ iike "Sonnet to a Negro in Harlem," "The Road," "Poem," and "Bottled," suggests that the Black American is better than he thinks he is; that examination of his African past and his innate rhythmic richness will allow him to maintain both his past glory and his present sanity. The hint that whites are crass, immobile and inhibited ( a theme recurring in Black thought and writing) also creeps through these poems. "Magalu" is told to ignore the teachings of the man in a "white collar" who carries a rble. Poetry, or ancestral and cultural worship, is better than Christianity, the poet says. Here, of course, she advances an answer to the riddle of fiun•i» Cullen, who appears to have wanted to "dance" but could not throw off the cloak of Western education, sentimentality and respectability. Helene Johnson asks Magalu: Would you sell the colors of your sunset and the fragrance Of your flowers, and the passionate wonder of your forest For a creed that will not let you dance? Continuing this theme in "Sonnet to A Negro in Harlem" (and recalling McKay's "Harlem Dancer" Harlem ..\ol!:;~~ as •• well ea i~s'it"t~oem1j· she depicts the d~e t8t being psychologically and religiouslylf/!!I ■ rt I I r. ;;; T"'\"'Otn~e. �environment in which he or she lives. Somehow, the Black American has remained untainted by crass, Western ways and inflexible thought. this is embodied symbolically in the Harlem Black who, in his All • d ♦vine bar- barism, stylistic richness and refusal to imitate those "whom you despise," is "too splendid for this city street." Helene Johnson seems to direct her poetry at Cullen and others who are unaQ.e to ,litoAM+~hcmsslea ,...._. the clash of - "Christian" training and ,._ is the answer an easy one. "pagan urge." ~ For despite all the~naissance proposals calling for spiritual or physical return to the essences of the African self, the writers had no concrete suggestionjto offer. Except for DuBois, Garvey and a few others, they simply explored romantic declarations and yearnings. This mood is evident also in Helene Johnson's "Poem" where the "Slim, dark, big-eyed" boy becomes a prince like the "monarch" laborer in Fenton Johnson's "Rulers." Yet there is important immediate social commentary in the same type of poem~ "Bottled," which ridicules a superfly-type character of the ....... 1920#s. Her "Negro dressed fit to kill" refused to dance the Charleston or the Black Bottom since he is too "dignified." Instead of a cane, she says, he should be "carrying a spear with a sharp fine point." spear should be dipped in poison. The tip of the And the rest, of course, is obvious. Finally, the poem laments the apparent internal turmoil of a Black man who is "all glass" ("plastic" in today's language). "Bottled" is typical of much of the thematic focus of Black writing in all genres of the period. It also anticipated the continuing satire that would be found in the writings u of Frank Marshall Davis, George Scn,7ler, Hughes, and others. A young con- temporary woman poet, Barbara McHone (Black World, August, 1974) assesses a character similar to Helene Johnson's in "A Sea of Brown Boys. " --=;,,I . �e;:t, (L 113 Lara Hell •••,\_chides the boys for wearing high heel shoes, purses, and patterning their lives after Shaft, Superfly and Sweetback. After stating the urgent needs of the times and implying that Black masculinity is being undermined, she asks: where did our love go? Helene Johnson seems to make her most cogent statement, however, in "The Road" where she links into a theme long-associated with Black struggle: on moving." fight. "Keep "The Road" encourages Blacks to see their beauty as well as their "Trodden beauty," is still "trodden pride." Reminiscent of Johnson's "Lift Every Voice and Sing" and Fenton Johnson's "Children of the Sun," she advises her people to Rise to one brimming golden, spilling 1 cry! Perhaps not coincidentally, Helene Johnson's work is similar, in language and . w:LLi~rn ALL-In IJiLl theme, to the poetry of Waring Cuney who (along with Hughe?f,nd Edward Silvera) belongs to the group sometimes called the Lincoln University poets.3 Cuney was A. born one huihf c fAtwinl in Washington, D.C. where he attended public schools and later studied music (after Howard and Lincoln Universities) at the Boston Conservatory of Music and in Rome. The twins had similar interests: singing and his brother's the piano. Waring's being After his poem "No Images" won an Opportunity prize, James Weldon Johnson stated that Cuney's work held "exceptional promise." However Cuney never became a prolific writer of literary poetry. Instead he divided his time between writing lyrics for songs and his other numerous chores. His protest lyrics were set to music and sung by Josh White on the album Southern Exposure. And his poetry was not published in book form until 1960 when the 3. See Four Lincoln University Poets (Hughes, 1931) and Lincoln University Poets (Cuney, Hughes, and Bruce McM. Wright, 1954). Hughes called Lincoln University (Pennsylvania) "a place of -beauty and the ideal colLege for a poet." His assessment seems to have been correct. Raymond Patterson, Larry Neal and �bibliophile society in the Netherlands brought out Puzzles. free-verse and maintains "great economy of phrase." He usually writes in His poetry surveys the whole of the human experience but most of it carries either a racial or a folksy note. There is also cynicism and skepticism of the sort found in Fenton Johnson, McKay, Cullen and Hl=fi;ie. Heavily influenced by Hughes, Cuney's early work depicts frank pictures of Black and general life and often uses the plain, direct folk speech as a major vehicle. This trend is seen in poems like "Hard Times Blues," "Cruci- fixion," "Troubled Jesus," and "Burial of the Young Love." Though his poems were published in several magazines and anthologies of the era, his "No Images"--which won the Opportunity prize--ties in with a general poetic theme of the eenaissance: ~ that Black beauty and creativity are too good to flourish in the decadence of Western civilization. The Black woman in Cuney's poem is similar to the Harlem Negro of Helene Johnson's poem, the dancer of McKay's "Harlem Dancer," the ravished and tormented narrator in Cullen's "Heritage," and the split personality in Toomer's "Kabnis" (Cane): they all seek to be whole in a world that denies and carica- tures their humanity. Cuney's woman figure • • • thinks her brown body Has no glory. But if she had an opportunity to dance as her natural self--"naked" perhaps--in her natural habitat--Africa--where her "image would be reflected by the river, then she would "know" how beautiful she is. But civilization corrodes the idea of trees and naturalness and, consequently, deprives Blacks of their own beauty and their healthy self-image: And dishwater gives back no images. Dishwater is a . kind of death--a spiritual and moral death--for Cuney whose work Gil Scott-Heron are only three of the neler poetic talents nurtured at Lincoln. '1ol.son <AL.so A11erided Unto\..n, �shows him to be preoccupied with death. Several of his poems ("Threnody," "The Death Bed," "Crucifixion," "Burial of the Young," "Finis" and "Dust") react to, anticipate or contemplate death. For Cuney, who seems to place a strong trust in the folkways, there is an irony in the fact that the God who protects the oppressors is also expected to protect the oppressed. This particular brand of Black cyni- cism makes it~most dramatic debut with Dunbar and remains a dominant theme in Black poetry up until this very day. In "The Death Bed" the dying man sends all the praying "kin-folk" away from his bed. The praying ones, of course, think this is strange and continue praying against his will in a room accross the hall. Failing in an attempt to sing a final song, the dying man lapses back and, knowing (I'\ death is i~nent, wonders What it was they cound be saying. "Hard Times Blues" is a protest song-poem which talks about drought, hunger, depression and general bad times in the South. The refrain contains this paradoxical plea-assertion: Great-God-Amighty Folks feeling bad, Lost all they ever had. The indirect association of God with the misery/coupled with an oblique prayer for help/is different indeed--though its antecedents can clearly be seen in the coded Spirituals, blues, jokes, and oral epics of the folk. A similar paradox and irony is contained in "My Lord, What a Morning" where the speaker is ecstatic over "black" Jack Johnson's defeat of "white" Jim Jeffries. Admitting to the "Lord" that "Fighting is wrong," the speaker nevertheless exclaims: But what an uppercut. Making God a colloquial person--Black, that is--in several of his poems, Cuney �recalls Johnson's feat in tGod 's TrombpJle.§, ,where God is likened to a ' 1mammy." Another important later achievement of Cuney's is "Charles Parker, 1925-1955." The legendary jazz musician is given credit for reshaping the blues idiom in music--and hence revitalizing the Black aesthetic. The poem is made up of lines 10 of one~three words and includes phonetic renderings of saxophone sounds. And throughout the piece, the reader is advised to "listen." Lewis Alexander apparently also wants us to "listen" to his "Enchantment" which embodies, again, the theme of the exotic and beautiful African. the "body smiling with black beauty" is wearing "African moonlight." divides his poem into two sections: the "Medicine Dance." This time Alexander "Part I" which is "Night" and "Part II," Part one gives the setting, moonlight in Africa, juice gushing from over-ripe fruit, palm trees, silence. ~ In /art lJ,1 the medicine dancer is placed in relief against the "grotesque hyena-faced monster" who (seeming to represent whites) is driven back into the "wilderness" by his own fear and the spell cast on him by the medicine dancer. The poem is in free-verse and features several exclamation marks and single-word lines. Typographically, the poem works well with its depiction of dancing, mystery, suspense, fright and anticipation. There is a quickening here, a stalking there, finally a resolution and the black body now dances with "delight" as Terror reigns like a new crowned queen. Alexander was born in Washington, D.C., educated in public schools, including the celebrated Dunbar High, and attended Howard University. His interests somewhat paralleled those of Cuney and Donald Jeffrey Hayes and he acted in the Ethiopian Art Theatre Company; for a while he was a member of the Playwriters' Circle and the Ira Aldridge Piayers. Many of the major themes and experimental techniques of the ~naissance can be found in Alexander's poetry) ftt'pm~ation of the Black �anatomy to nature. Hughes says the faces, eyes and souls of "my people" are beautiful like the night, stars and sun. Alexander finds, on the other hand, that the heavy hanging sky, the curved scars of the moon, the twinkl,~f stars and the trembling earth, all parallel the burdensome hair, wrinkled brow, tears flowing Mam~'an aging hurt.,:~-- e y ~ J v , e,tjpg and cupping ~t-0W01i"t\r> tearsA For Hughes nature is a partner to Black beauty; for Alexander it is a companion to agony, suffering and historical pain. possibilities of color and shade symbolism. when night falls black." Alexander also probes the "Dream Song" advises one to "dream In "Nocturne Varial" shadow (Blacks) becomes light (beautiful, aware) and the deeper the Blackness gets (spreads its influence) the more changes (the greater the impact) will occur among whites. In the deepest core of the night, "Each note is a star" but the light emitted from that darkness is not blinding. Then, after this searching contrast and overlay of what painters call chiaroscuro, we are told that: I came as a shadow, To dazzle your night. The idea of transfiguration and change weighs heavily upon Alexander's poetry. Significant changes occur in "Negro Woman," "Enchantment," "Nocturne Varial" and "Transformation." After having arrived as a "shadow" in "Nocturne Varial" the poet (or the persona "I") decides to "return" a bitterness that has gone through the wash of tears. through the years." The bitterness becomes "loveliness" which has been "garnished Announcing that the bitterness has been worn from the taste of the past, Alexander implies here, as he does in other poems, that he is a forgiving person. Indeed he may be saying that Blacks will hold no hatred (for whites) or desire for retribution. Alexander's poetry is concise and neat, mostly �in free-verse and conventional language. Neat also is the only anthologized poem by Lucy Ariel Williams Holloway. Found in Caroling Dusk (Cullen), The Poetry of The Negro (Hughes and Bontemps) and Johnson's The Book of American Negro Poetry, "Northboun'" garnered the coveted Opportunity poetry prize in 1926. We mention it because it shows great talent and feel in the employment of Black southern speech and it embodies not only ~/~but historical concerns of Blacks. The world is neither flat nor round, the poet tells us: H'it's one long strip Hangin' up an' down-and there's only "Souf an' Norf." The foregoing is part of the chorus in this song-poem which comically predicts how people "all 'ud fall" if the world "wuz jes' a ball." For those who brag about the city seen by Saint John, Lucy Holloway challenges them to see Saginaw. Opportunities for Blacks are good in Saginaw (heaven) and pretty women are _plentiful. The poem restates the belief (developed during slavery and abolition efforts) that the North is heaven compared to the South (hell). Lucy Holloway emotionally chronicles the feelings, anticipations and oral narratives connected with "moving north." Such a preoccupation can be seen throughout the literature of the period, in the stories, the poems, the plays, the novels, the articles and the songs. Finally, 'if n~?-'- g /\tells us what Hughes, Ellison, Baldwin, Claude Brown and Sterling Plumpp would refute: Since Norf is up, An' Souf is down, An' Hebben is up, I'm upward boun'. �Lucy Holloway's poem is interesting for another reaso~: coming, as it did, at the thrust of the lenaissance, it represented a throwback to the dialect and min1. strel traditions which most of the New Negro writers were trying to break. And although Johnson (James) and Hughes worked in dialect, their major efforts were decidedly different from those of the Dunbar school. Reading ~Holloway's poem, however, one is immediately reminded of Dunbar, Campbell, Carrothers and IlnM l 111811 , Davis. Yet, a final reason for using the example of Lucy Holloway is to lead into at least a partial listing of the poets who published in magazines, regional anthologies and newspapers during the Harlem Renaissance and afterwards. among the dozens of lesser and unknown poets we mention the following: From Gladys May Casely Hayford (born in West Africa), Allison Davis, Esther Popel Shaw, J. Mason Brewer Eleanor Graham Nichols, Corrinne E. Lewis, Mary Effie Lee, Edward Garnett Riley, Albert Rice (a member of Georgia Douglas Johnson's writing workshop), Carrie W. Clifford (The Widening Light, 1922), Marcus B. Christian, Winston Allen, Mae V. Cowdery, Tilford Jones, Adeline Carter Watson, Will Sexton and Edward Silvera. Some of these occasional and newspaper poets made temporary "splashes" and moved on. Mae V. Cowdery won a Crisis poetry prize in 1927 and published a volume of her poetry in the thirties. and Silvera are the most important. ~~ Of this group of poets, however, Christian Christian (1900-) was born in Houma, Louisiana, and~primarily self-educated. For a while he served as supervisor of the Dillard University Negro History Unit of the Federal Writers' Project. He later re...,ceived a Julius Rosenwald Fellowship to complete an historical study begun on the project before going to work in the Dillard Library. His poems �appeared in various anthologies and magazines. And his available work has both general and racial flavor and shows him to be a skilled word-handler. Craftsman" is about artistic excellence. The artist--presumably the poet--must work with "consummate care" and be "free of flaws." above everything else. ever. "The This is so because art is The poet knows that if he writes well, he "lives" for- Christian employs a form--the sonnet--that is consistent with his high calling. Another sonnet, "McDonogh Day in New Orleans," is a celebration of the beauty of Blackness. Detailing the difficulty a poor Black girl has in trying to get the kind of clothes she needs, Christian finally has her attired "Like some dark princess" wearing "blue larkspur" coupled with "yellow marigold." True, she looks good going to school But few would know--or even guess this fact: How dear comes beauty when a skin is black. 11-silvera (1906-1937) lived a productive, if tragically short, life. He was born in Jacksonville, Florida, attended local public schools an~duated from Orange High; he then went to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania where he participated in sports and wrote poetry, some of which was included in Four Lincoln Poets . His poetry also appeared in magazines and anthologies. Much of Silvera's poetry is quiet and sparse--reminiscent of Cuney, his friend, Horne, and many of the introspective poets of the period. But his work does carry the prevailing themes of Renaissance poetry. "Jungle Taste," for example, celebrates the Africa of old-~ dcn4.-emm Africa before the appearance of the "civilization" Fenton Johnson · • The "Coarseness" in the "songs of black men" does not sound "strange" to Silvera. Neither does the "beauty" in the "faces of black women" seem unusual. men alone can "see" this "dark hidden beauty." Yet Black In "Forgotten Dreams" only a "heap" of entangled thread now lies where once a beautiful dream had been spun. Here, �Silvera seems to be lamenting the loss of something--maybe viewing his approaching death. Likewise, in another poem, "On the Death of A Child," he again uses the "spun" image. The child comes without a "voice" to announce its arrival. lark sings, but "shadows" have already "foretold" that death is near. had been "spun" and the end comes. Hughes and Bontemps anthologies. The The "shroud" Silvera's and Christian's works appear in the Silvera's poetry also appears in Kerlin's Negro Poets and Their Poems. The dominant themes in poetry of the Harlem Renaissance--cultural reclamation, stylistic experimentation, romantic engagement with Africa, a presentation of the rawness of Black life--can also be found in the fiction, drama, painting, music, criticism, and belles lettres of the period. is Locke's The New Negro. Due we I prose (fiction and non-fiction) • The best documentation of these items - sht to wentia~ S ome of the major names in 5 1 also wrote poetr1; Jean Toomer, Eric Walrond, Jessie Redmond Fauset, Rudolph Fisher, Nella Larson, Zora Neale Hurston, McKay, Hughes, Cullen, Walter White,+ t DuBois, Charles S. Johnson, Carter G. Woodson, Bruce Nugent, John Matheus, Cecil Blue, Montgomery Gregory, Arthur Huff Fauset, James Weldon Johnson, E. Franklin Frazier and Arthur A. Schomburg. D. Renaissance Fallout: Negritude Poets and Pan-African Writing Claude McKay's influence, as a novelist (Banjo), on leaders of African nationalism has already been noted. kind, nor the last. But McKay's impact was not the first of its During the 18th and 19th centuries, Africans in the Western Hemisphere had exchanged ideas and made pacts with each other and with their fellows of color in Africa. In Chapter III we noted this pervasive influence as seen in documents, the establishment of African societies and the African Methodist Episcopal ( I 3f,t/ �Church, the founding of Liberia, and the daring and courageous example of the West African Cinque. We also noted the arrival in the United States of a number of West Indian, Caribbean and South American Blacks--a flow that has remained unabated up until this very day. We call immediately to mind such names as J1111t Russwurm, ?lauoas Garvey, McKay, and Stokely Carmichael. The poet John Boyd, dis- cussed in Chapter III, was a Bahamian. ':t however, that the Pan-African flavor was most It was during the 19201s, dramatically and thoroughly demonstrated. Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association which claimed thousands of followers and members, was in. full swing by the time of the 11tiiii'i"1 Renaissance. DuBois was the driving force behind four Pan-African Congresses which met successively between 1919 and 1927 (in Paris, London and New York). And the predominant themes in ~naissance literature were reclamation of the African heritage and celebration of the beauties and talents of African peoples. Consistent with our study, however, is a consideration of one of the most f rtttt,Sf.Ch a~CA.$-4 5 important spin-outs from the Harlem Renaissance: the Negritude school o f ~ - uJ!lldi• Martinique, Capetown, Paris, Dakar and Algiers. As natives of French- controlled colonies, these young Black students and intellectuals were trained in French schools and shared dual citizenships. (This practice represents a throwback to the Creole poets, many of whom were educated in France.) the Negritude poets' activities here. I But we only summarize Chief among them are Aim~ C~saire (1913-) • I I of Martinique, Leon Damas (1912-) of French Guiana, and Leopold Sedar Senghor (1906-) of Senegal. More information, including examples of Negritude poetry, can be found in Jean-Paul Sart's "Orphee Neir" ("Black Orpheus") which prefaced I I Leopold Sedar Senghor's anthology of African and West Indian poets: ~ JlOJ.rlelle , p..o,,~u~. .17:~.8£~ !:.~ ~al&ach&,,\1£.l~ m & . a ~ (Paris, Anthologie de 1948). Although �the important preface has appeared in various hard-to-get translations, it appeared in book form for the first time in C.W.E. Bigsby's The Black American Writer, Volume II: Poetry and Drama (1971). For further study see the works of Franz Fanon, writings of Senghor (see also, L~opold S~dar Senghor and the Politics of Negritude, Irving L. Markovitz, 1969), and the numerous anthologies MG\V'te Coil,"51 of African poetry by Langston Hughes,,\Keorapetse Kgositsile, Wilfred Cartey, Rainer Schulte and Quincy Troupe, and Mercer Cook and Stephen Henderson's The Militant Black Writer in Africa and the United States (1969) .fllft.JJ ~,t Is m,,f'exl,11usfr11e • Negritude has been eloquently and illustratively defined by Scfre, Senghor, Cook, Paul Vesey (Samuel Allen) and others. The term (roughly corresponding to Black American Soul) refers to the mystique of Blackness which pervades the thought, actions, creativity and general life-style of some Africans. Senghor calls it a philosophy of humanism; Vesey finds elements of it in the Afro-American church and in the works of artists such as Baldwin and Ellison; Sartre notes that "From Haiti to Cayenne, there is a single idea: ''reveal the black soul. is evangelic, it announces good news: Black poetry Blackness has been rediscovered." The first creative work to emerge from this French-speaking sector of ~naissance inI fluence was Leon Damas' Pigments (1937). Like the other works that followed, Pigments extolled Black beauty and lamented Black suffering. r urra The influence of Hughes is more evident in Damas than in other Negritude poets. Damas, freely admits in conversation that he (and his compatriots) owes much to Hughes who offered prizes to African writers and helped expose African literature to the world. Pigments heralded the arrival of Negritude. Its style, reminiscent of Hughes, is "sharp, slangy, tense and fast-moving" and was revolutionary to French poetry when it appeared. I I Cesaire published Cahier d'un retour au pays natal (Return to My Native Land) in 1938. Senghor has published Chants d'ombres (Song �of Shadows, 1949), Hosties Noires (Black Victims, 1948), Chants pour Naett (Songs fot ' Both Cesaire and • ~eett. 1949), Ethiopiques (1959) and Nocturnes (1961). -tf\f R~riO.I~ n nC' ... • Senghor have been heavily influenced by jazz, blues and poetry of"HarlemA Exposed to these forms in the salons of Madamoiselle Nardal between 1929 and 1934, they found Afro-American expression liberating and "fertilizing." Rene' Maran afforded them similar exposure after 1935.) (The salons of Also contributing to this convergence were the efforts of Mercer Cook who, as statesman and scholar, played an important part in bringing the works of Black Americans to their African and Caribbean contemporaries.</'senghor's great poem about New York has immediate ties to both the ienaissance and the impact of Harlem on him. As in many of his poems, Senghor designates the instrument(s) to accompany the piece. he chooses "Jazz Orchestra: solo trumpet." For "New York" New York's beauty at first "confused" Senghor, but after a couple of weeks in that city one grows accustomed to buying "artificial hearts." He is ecstatic about Harlem Harlem! I have seen Harlem Harlem! ••• Senghor writes of the African landscape, warriors, love and his admiration for Black women. As president of Senegal, he presided over the First World Festival of Negro Aj..ts, held in Dakar in 1966.,Damas deals with problems of color and class in his poetry and defines Negritude in a series of rolling, vigorous stanzas in free-verse. His other collections of poems include Poemes ' negres ' sur des airs africains (1948), Graffiti (1952), Black-Label (1956) and Nevralgies (1965?). ~tl6.Ae$esped,-llf Like other Negritude poets, Damas read the poetry of _thel\... mU:e£)foaat -:r~.., (critics seem to agree, however, that the Africans and Caribbean poets surpassed their American brothers and sisters) Damas' cynicism and irony can be detected in the . following titles: "Almost White." "Enough," "S.O.S.," "Position," "Good Breeding," and Damas satirizes the Black middle-class and the Black habit of �straightening hair and using bleaching creams .'/similar themes can be found in ' . who also employs free-verse and makes great use of irony. the poetry of Cesaire Return to My Native Land catalogs all the scientific things that Blacks have not -th€ Y'd.l.e invented, but later gives them credit for being the backbone of/\.buman,\e.,;mt ee. ' Cesaire has served as mayor of Fort de France and a deputy to the French National Assembly, representing the independent revolutionary party of Martinique. He quit the French Communist Party in the 1950~ and has since been active in African nationalism. His other collections of poetry are Les Armes miraculeuses (1946), • Sole,:1-l cou coupe' (1948), Corps perdu (1_9 50) and Ferrements (1960). I I Cesaire, Damas and Senghor have also written drama (mostly about Black historical figures) and essays on Negritude and Pan-African liberation. I Damas is currently living in Washington , D.C. where he teaches literature at Howard University and Federal City College. The Negritude Movement in poetry--best recorded in Sai=re'5 articles and in Norman S. Shapiro's Negritude: Black Poetry from Africa and The Caribbean (1970)--encompas sed several other important Black areas and figures: Ernest Alima (Cameroon), Joseph Miezan Bognini and Bernard Dadi~ (Ivory Coast), Jean-Fernand Brierre arid lle»e' Depestre (Haiti), Siriman Cissoko (Mali), David Diop (Senegal, a , great poet killed in an airplane crash in 1956), Jocelyne Etienne and Guy Tirolien (Guadeloupe), Camara Laye (Guinea) and Emile-Desire Ologoudou (Dahomey), to name just a few. In other Black French-speaking t e rritories, the Negritude 1 concept took hold under different ham.es. In Haiti it was called Indigenism. The Harlem Renaissance and the subsequent concept of Negritude influenced these poets in various ways and to greater or lesser degrees. &n ifiem s s But the influence is there. ~-..e.ve.y; 31 5 , emotio~ and politicA9'i~the poets bear greater resemblance to71ie,JJ\ 1 tAvnfe.t1ptt-1? ~ Afro-Americanj\than in a.N:". styles and technj.ques. This interchange among writers H and thinkers of the Black world has~ tide (more on this in Chapter VI). s eLLed. /\to its current rich and important �THE EXTENDED RENAISSANCE: • Some c r itics ~ --="' ~ 301 s, 40 s, 50 s ~the Harlem Renaissance f as simply the peak of nearly a century-long Afro-American push in art, belles lettres and consciousness-raising. And, as observed earlier , there is also divergent opinion over whether an actual "Renaissance" occurred . But, arguments aside, the stock market crash of 1929 is PeNN as'ff\e generally ~ • d as the official end of the«1esignate~Renaissance--since white ~uuJ,c. patronage ended and the~writers had not developed followings among the f grass roots. C' critics Important here also are positions ~aken by two ot,.who of the era~ Sterling Brown and J. Saunders Redding/ ,)!oth,\feel the ~ , _ . was primarily a fad; Brown •■•-addt\to Harlem as a "show-window" and Redding claimed the writers mistook Harlem for real Black life: First of all, Negro writers, both poets and novelists, centered their attentions so exclusively upon life in the great urban centers that the city, especially Harlem, became an obsession with them . Now Harlem life is far from typical of Negro life; indeed, life there is lived on a theatrical plane that is as far from true of Negro life elsewhere as life in the Latin Quarter is from the truth of life in Picardy. The Negro writers' mistake lay in the assumption that what they saw was Negro life, when in reality it was just Harlem life . . ~-.L.-·- •..-,.::.::-... ...,_ -~ .. • I,;,- ·~,tir....W,-~• • -~··:..-,__.,..,.._ __.... __ _: - - L L ..-' • -•--' ' • "" (To Make A Poet Black) By way of parallel, it is instructive to note that a leading contemporary Black I~ critic, Addison Gayle, Jr., accuses Black writers of the 1960s and Jf=D of being similarly remiss. In the September, 1974, issue of Black World, Gayle discuss ~ �"The Black Aesthetic: 10 Years Later" and attemptfto lay out a blue-print for "Reclaiming the Southern Experience." l-\1s llttl 5 claim that hardly any of the new Black literature is rooted in the South shows him to be less familiar with recent Black writing than he should be. (See, for example, the works of Dumas, Alice Walker, Pinkie Lane, Arthenia Bates, Alvin Aubert, and others.) But, generally, his thesis, derived from John Oliver Killens's statement, "We are a Southern people," is solid and well-taken. Gayle's and Redding• s comments ought to be measured against Donald Gibson I s vie~of the "New'•poetry as an ''urban'' product The works of Black poets in the three decades following the 1920s .._..._... ou • 66.,.r'O r«ervofl"i i Pl ~ and rich. iJ ~"o~ · Q,. t-lc.,~ · ' C.rO>S•Uc.Tion o~ · · · The Great Depression was felt world-widep t!l technical and thematic by m4nBlacks, whites, poor The droughts, referred to in Cuney's "Hard Time Blues," the ravages workers'p~ of the Boll Weevil, the plight of the sharecroppers, the wwMai••:f:>.~;'nionization, and the attraction of the Communist Party (with its cieo of racial unity and equality), all inspired and informed Afro-American poetry of the thirties, forties and fifties. So did lynching, unemployment, Black history 'cultural reclamation and protest; but the tendency, in general, was to seek the deliverance of "all men." McKay, Hughes and others (in the twenties fL,~1ld wi~ Communism. Desperately the~liei!l•-•·21Woin~g throes of racis~ikc1:=Pml!!!f:!s~~ Afro-American I""':"' 0,. ~o.i;;;it.t,te!: artists, intellectuals and writers not only becf\me Communists, but,au f bairn ts, integrationists, Pan-Africanists • seekers of the American Drea~- ) civil servants or model citizens. Few of the writers, however, followed the example of Richard Wright or W.E.B. DuBois who~T~:~!t the Party. -l~t ::tt}~.. the Depression in the thirties, the stances cast against -.n .. u.Wo.~ll,_,Ain the forties, and Korea and McCarthyism in the fifties. Compared to the first three decades of the century, relatively little Black 4see his Modern Black Poets ( ] I "Introduction."). • �poetry was published in book form between 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 Hughes and Cullen, most of th ~ pens were silent during the thirties. Several ~ ,;:nr □ s o ~N'oets, however, made their debuts. Frank ) made major lMpaO"i ) and Sterling A. Brown (1901-h-Oh? l • ~ ...-r.ls: <1.nd '811.•w wa..s n ·ae,ii..citeal!llfWM.,.,...,.._..+.!IM!l'lll'lilM!ffll!•rill~liliil!lil!L /\ Robert Hayden (1913-all Davis (1905-- ~w~'c\ in~e.l ) also made first Melvin B. Tolson (1900-1966) and Margaret Walker (1915-- appearances in the thirties but they sustained lengthy and productive careers. Fiction writer Richard Wright (1908-1960) was an occasional poet who joined the thirties group. A second wave of poets, some occasional and all "transitional," appeared in the forties, fifties and early sixties: Dudley Randall (1914-(1915-- Long Madgett (1923-Lance Jeffers (1919-(1929-- ) , Ray Durem ), Gloria C. Oden (1923-- ) , Naomi ), May Miller, Helen Johnson Collins (1918-), Russell Atkins (1926-- ), James C. Morriss (1920-- ) ' ), Raymond Patterson ), Oliver Pitcher (1923-- ,I Sarah E. Wright (1929-- ), Myron ), Bruce McM. Wright (1918-- ), Samuel Allen (also Paul Vesey, 1917-- (1915-fqli,3), M. Carl Holman (1919- ), ), Margaret Danner ), Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-- ), Pauli Murray (1910-- O'Higgins (1918-- Owen Dodson (1914-- ) 4 and /Mt"1btl-.i ). • • • • • •7fMos~of this transitional group did ~ not get a real hearing until the sixties;~hey will be looked at as a group in Chapter VI. of- Dozens,\others published or wrote occasionally. Of the poets writing in the thirties, Brown separates them into "new realists" and "romantics." The word "romantic" seems to be analagous to "library;" and both are used to speak somewhat disparagingly of poets thus categorized. The "realists" and writers of protest included Welborn Victor Jenkins (Trumpet in the New Moon, 1934), Frank Awtonj Marshall Davis and Wright. ~ose concerned with "romantic escapes" were �Alpheus Butler (Make Way for Happiness, 1932), J. Harvey L. Baxter (That Which Concerneth Me, 1934; Sonnets for the Ethiopians and Other Poems, 1936), Eve Lynn (No Alabaster Box), Marion Cuthbert (April Grasses, 1936) and Mae Cowdery (Lift Our Voices) . The romantics wrote about nature, delicacy, love, quaintness and their work reflects # more 11 booka . 11 learning than anything else. Brown said that Jenkins' work deserved "an original place in Negro poetry" but Trumpet in The New Moon is out of print; and Jenkins' poetry is absent from every anthology of Afro-American poetry. His poetic sketches of the Black life encompass prac- tically every important facet. Though owing much to Whitman and Sandburg, Jenkins' work is still important enough to be reissued as well as anthologized. Wright, often called the father of the modern Black novel, was a poet in r.) his own right. and difficult. No other American writer's personal od4yssey has been so bleak V' From poverty, orphanhood, educational deprivation and racism, he emerged as one of the most influential and dominant forces in American literature. Not only did a so-called "Wright School" of ~ riters result from his efforts, but countless white writers also imitatedAU-~• ~· most discussed novel, Native Son (1940), eas a Pack of ♦ hi U11 His •I ssl:nti@11nu 1t • summed up the emotional and psychological history of Black urban America over the preceding 20 years. e► w,tifi/16' ~ ch;ol:iclel the hopes (and - disillusionments) of Blacks "Northboun'" to seek the Promised Land. As a poet Wright deserves more than • passing interest. the Communist Party in the thirties and remained a member until 1944. He joined His poetry, protest coupled with calls for unity among Blacks and whites, was �published in various journals and news organs of the period: Literature, New Masses, Anvil, Midland, and Left. Much of International 1a1■·-11111-..;J~~s quoted in Dan McCall's The Example of Richard Wright (1969) and his poems appear in The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry (Ellman and O'Clair), The Negro Caravan, The Poetry of Black America, American Negro Poetry and other anthologies. ii lg] t ,....iorn near Natchez, Mississippi, and experien~an erratic educational and ' w~ home-life pattern/ ~tij7ffb~illillill■t~j~5~9..lb~slilliE•••~Jlll!l!f•••t•a~12~2!1111•l■E,;•t••t•1•1•1••1-1• nnrlu z dnn Hffsrent ~~ l(ederal Writers' Project during the Depression (becoming a friend to Davis, Margaret Walker and others). 1 Ia He died in 1960 in Paris where he had settled (at the suggestion of Gertrude Stein) and joined the Existentialist group of writers led by Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. His poetry is in free verse and the Japanese haiku form--which he discovered late in his life. His haikus are harmless ellip- 0F~t1 tical statements, as haikus~re. ~eJ/ Aare be . rarely racial in flavor. a poet But his protest poetry of the thirties showfhim to of unmistakable talent and sensitivity. "I Have Seen Black Hands" owes debts to the American school of poetry developed by Whitman, Fenton Johnson, Masters, Sandburg, Hughes and others. ~4 poiem In •AWright catalogs the services rendered and corresponding disservices received by Blacks. He announces that I am black and I have seen black hands, millions and millions of them-and that these "hands" have reached naively, creatively, harmlessly, softly and with strength, out to each other and to do the white man's bidding. Despite their stamina, vigilance and dependability, these same hands are the last put to �work and the first idled. They held the "dreaded lay-off slip." They suffered from "unemployment and starvation." And they grew nervous and sweaty, and opened and shut in anguish and doubt and hesitation _. and irresolution ..• Wright continues, as in his prose works, to develop a psychological portrait of the abused and dehumanized Blacks. There is a drive and an incremental swell, reminiscent of Margaret Walker's "For My People," as he recalls having seen "black hands" grip prison bars, knotted and claw-like under the lynch rope, or "beat fearfully at tall flames." But Black hands and white hands will someday merge as "fists of revolt" and create a new "horizon." Here, of course, 19 Wright Blacks and whites to become Communists. "Between the World and Me," however, sustains a different angle of the theme begun in "I Have Seen Black Hands . " A Black man has been lured into a wooded area and seduced by a white prostitute; the narrator becomes the lynched body whose remains are • . . dry bones ••. and a stony skull staring in yellow surprise at the sun •••• Making use of awesome, horrorfying images and clashing, brilliant colors and ~ t-HJflncft"9-' sounds, the poem recounts the most insignificant details of the events andA of the lynching: And the sooty details of the scent rose, thrusting themselves between the world and me . . . . There was a design of white bones slumbering forgottenly upon a cushion of ashes. There was a charred stump of sapling pointing a blunt finger accusingly at the sky. �There were torn tree limbs, tiny veins of burnt leaves, and scorched coil of greasy hemp; And upon the trampled grass were buttons, dead matches, butt-ends of cigars and cigarettes, peanut shells, a drained gin-flask, and a whore's lipstick; Scattered traces of tar, restless arrays of feathers, and the lingering smell of gasoline. The poem continues, as the narrator, who "stumbled suddenly upon the thing," becomes one with the victim. technique. It is a fascinating and highly appropriate poetic Owing much to the psychological school of writing, but indicting the cosmos (as Dunbar does in "The Haunted Oak"), "Between the World and Me" states that the lynch victim is every Black. And 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 Black on White (1966) David Littlejohn calls Wright's poem and Robert Hayden's "Middle Passage" "the two finest poems by Negroes." Sterling Brown's poetry also falls into the category of realism though not in the political sense with with which it is applied to other writers of the era. Like Cuney, Wright, Davis, Hughes and others, Brown in Southern Road (1932) depicts the harshness and starkness of Black misery but his poetry is "chiefly sov~~ an attempt at folk portraiture of Snaff f!t] •~characters." A highly respected critic and scholar of Black folk literature, Brown approached his "portraits" as a student of the linguistic and thematic materials with which he worked. He was born and �reared in Washington, D.C. At Williams College, he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in 1921 and in 1923 received an H.A. from Harvard. Since that time Brown, the son of educator-parents, has had a long and distinguished career as writer, editor, teacher, and professor of English at Howard University. He has also taught at New York University, Vassar College and Atlanta University. 1939 he was Editor off Negro From 1926- Affairs for the Federal Writers' Project, and in 1939 he was a staff member of the famous Carnegie-Myrdal Study of the Negro. The recipient of numerous awar<ls, Brown is the author of The Negro in American Fiction (1937) and Negro Poetry and Drama (1937). In 1941, he served as senior editor of The Negro Caravan (with Arthur P . Davis and Ulysses P. Lee), probably the most influential and definitive anthology of Afro-American literature ever published. In the twenties Brown began an unbroken tradition of publishing articles, reviews and criticism in various journals, newspapers and periodicals. Perceptive, relentless and seemingly alwars in focus, Brown performed important surgery on Black folk culture and its manifestations in the poetry, music and language. His findings were published in Negro Poetry and Drama, where he also concluded that the New Negro Movement (1914-1936) produced the following five "major concerns" among the poets: (1) j( rediscovery of Africa as a source for race pride; (2) /use of Negro heroes and heroic episodes from American history · J (3) P"ropaganda of protest; (4) -ktreatment of the Negro masses (frequently of the folk, less often of the workers) with more understanding and less apology/• (5) _,knd franker and deeper self revelation , Brown's own poetry revived interest in Black dialect from a vigorously different angle than before. Cullen (Caroling Dusk) and Johnson (The Book of American Negro �Poetry) had forecast the doom of dialect poetry. and Johnson reduced it to two stops: Cullen said its day was over humor and pathos. (Interestingly, Arthur P. Davis, in From tbe •.JJA.t~ IQ.ltU, repeats Johnson's position ! ) took the However, Brown ~r,~d1,that dialect has limitless possibilities if poets and writers only have the courage and the ingenuity to work with it. Of the debate and con- flict over dialect poetry, he said: Dialect, or the speech of the people, is capable of expressing whatever the people are. And the folk Negro is a great deal more than a buffoon or a plaintive minstrel. Poets more intent upon learning the ways of the folk, their speech, and their character, that is to say better poets, could have smashed the -r,iey mold. But first they would have had to believe in whatA_were doing. And this was difficult in a period of conciliation and middle class striving for recognition and respectability. Brown himself used his knowledge of folk culture to interpret the people through poetry. And he considered this approach "one of the important tasks of Negro poetry." Some observj\rS see a contradiction in Brown's dazzling academic achieve- e ments and his poetic work in the folk materials. But current young scholars and poets could learn much from Brown's example. Wagner (Black Poets of the United States) points to the irony and humor in Brown asking Johnson to write the ~ ntroduction to Southern Road. For, in doing so, Johnson was literally forced to take back much of his own criticism of dialect poetry. Indeed Johnson had to admit to Brown's formidable achievement with the folk forms. Before Southern Road, in The Book of American Negro Poetry, the elder poet and critic acknowledged that Brown was "one of the outstanding poets �of the younger group"; for the "best work" Brown "dug his raw material from the great mine of Negro folk poetry," thus expressing the folk idiom with "artistry and magnified power." Kerlin (Negro Poets and Their Poems) ranked Southern Road as a first volume with Cullen's Color and Hughes' The Weary Blues. j Even from-aE au11 J •• Senegal, Africa, ~as comefp"raise -~Brown in the form of ;;;;;;a;, Senghor's assertion that Hughes and Brown are "the most Negro" of Black American poets. There is always the temptation to compare the two poets but, as Wagner suggests, Brown is the "antithesis of Langston Hughes" since Hughes is the poet of the city and Brown the bard of the soil. In his closeness to the soil and his serious studies of Black folk culture, Brown has been compared to Johnson and Zora Neale Hurston (see Jonah's Gourd Vine and Mules and Men). The folk idiom, coupled with drama and word-portraits, provides the meat of Brown's work; though it must be mentioned that he also writes in conventional English--with marked success. His poetic universe is generally drab--with occasional flashes of wry humor. His is the poetry of hard times and suffering. He expresses skepticism in face of religion and God; and ironically there is no reference to Africa as is the case (almost thematically) with most poetrtof the period. ·,r-. 4me~tC'-..J Brown seems to be saying the fight is her7' not in an Africa of mind or fact, and that the Black man is pitted against forces of nature which alternately work for and against him. Writing during thek)epression years, Brown was concerned with the deadly cholera, the boll weevil, the ravages of the flooding Missouri river, the plight of the sharecropper and tenant farmer, and white racism. It is clear that, for Brown, the hope (if it is there) for the Black man lies in his own stamina, his own historical endurance and strengths. the poet infuses h Consequently, J strength.sand defianceswith folk rhythms--especially the dramatic narrative and the contrapuntal pattern which incorporates italics 331' �for emphasis and the various sounds of men at work, play, prayer, dance or battle. "Strong Men" is perhaps the best example of Brown's style. Using a line from Sandburg-- "The strong men keep coming on"--he actually borrows exact phrasings, aphorisms, bits of parables and parts of secular and religious songs from the folk culture. The formal English narrative is set in dramatic and musical relief through the use of the technique described above. Steeped in a tradition that spans Whitman, Fenton Johnson, Masters and Eliot, Brown catalogs the numerous injustices Blacks have suffered; he interjects "The strong men keep a-comin' on" or "keep a-inchin' along" or "Walk togedder chillen." Even though Blacks were "dragged" from their native land and degraded in every possible way, they kept "Gittin' stronge~ ~e.I r •a ]. Ii t\1Wle -v>. "After winter" "Southern same message t-..1.n "Strange Legacies" , '!' ' Road" (a near-paraphrase of a work song), "Ma Rainey," and the six-part sequence "When De Saints Go Ma'ching Home." is what Brown gives his characters. to "stagger" but none to halt! What DuBois called the "dogged strength" As Margaret Walker suggests, there is room Reminiscent of "The Weary Blues," "When De Saints" depicts the "Trouble, Trouble" deep down in the "soul" of a Black singer. But that trouble, like the "weariness" of Hughes, is a collective trouble--the weight, the fatigue, the burden of the folk. We hear it everywhere in Black expression, from Bessie Smith to Marii Anderson, from Paul Laurence Dunbar to Paul Robeson, from Fenton Johnson to Harvin Gaye (Trouble Man), from the "sad" and "sorrow" songs of the slaves to the blues singers of the river towns and Depression years. After the singer in Brown's poem had played his various sad and sin songs, he alw~ys played one in which he stepped out of the role of "entertainer." would then give forth his "chant of saints." He Anticipating his arrival in heaven and others who would be there, he carefully describes what each of the entrants �will be wearing. It is a gala affair--initiation into heaven--and most of the arrivals come in the clothes they wore in life on earth. are not allowed in heaven. The sinners, of course, They include Sportin' Legs, lucky Sam, Smitty, Hambone, Hardrock Gene and others. Brown also wrote in the ballad form ("He was a Man"), conventional verse ("Effie" and "Salutamus"--a sonnet) and the blues form popularized by Hughes in The Weary Blues. His Black men are on the run (from a mob or police), in trouble with whites as a result of an arrogant act or response , getting killed, trying to figure out how to feed the household, or being assaulted by natural disasters. In a large number of these poems there is sorrow, devastation, catastrophe, violence, death, tragedy, social disruption, chaos, ruin, need, pain, skepticism and the paranoia inherent in Black life. "He was a Man" depicts how a Black man beat a white man (who drew first) to the draw but was lynched in the tradition of handling Blacks. Despite the fact that "strong men" keep coming, "Strong Men" is a poem replete with negatives. "Sister Lou" is a longing for heaven as a respite from the hardships and racial injustices suffered here on earth. "After Winter" is the portrait of a Black man "ragged" as "an old scarecrow" whose "swift thoughts" are about the food, drink and space he must obtain for his family. "Ma Raine1 " ("Mother of the Blues") is therap~tic in her words and her delivery. ~~ 1- 1~~ Fenton But she i@acJ• merchandise. Johnson's ivmonarch" who presides over sacks of The people come to Ma Rainey to "keep us strong." and feel sad when she sings. But they cry And on goes the Southern Road with the exception of the Slim Greer story-poems and the lover-man themes which nevertheless feature men who must either love quick and run o~ those reminiscing about their loves while they swing the hammer on the chain gang. predicaments. Slim Greer finds himself in various Most memorable are his visits to heaven and hell ("Slim in Hell"), �his absurd effort to pass for white though he is dark "as midnight" ( 11 Slim Greer") and his bout with the Atlanta law that requires Blacks to laugh only in a "telefoam booth" ("Slim in Atlanta"). Brown's really great achievement, however, is seen in the brilliant "Memphis Blues." Here the poet asks what difference is it to Blacks whether Memphis is destroyed by "Flood or Flame." Memphis, Babylon and Nineveh are all the same: De win' sing sperrichals Through deir dus'. Forecasts of doom can be seen in much American literature--but Black writers have 1h°TT11:Sai--u carved out a special place for thernselverThis allows them to place their racial predicament in relief against Christianity or Christianization. that this concern runs like a spine through Black poetry: Cullen, McKay, Hughes an'Jl certainly Brown~ and white. ~~ ; or 8u And here, of course, is the contradictio~ We have observed Dunbar, Fenton Johnson, God is alternately Black ,iecause the God of the 4 whites (the oppressoi;J cannot be truste~ and the Black God seems somewhat help,, less against a white power structure, of which Brown says~ J Ola Le 1f t, M • They don't com~ 9v ooe~ - But the Having published only one book which is just being reissued (1974, with~ew Introduction by Sterling Stuckey), places Brown in a rather difficult and sometimes t naccessible position. appraisals of his work . ~ But there 1 - ~been good, if few, ~ Jean Wagner takes a long look at D (Black Poets of the United States); Brown takes a short, but helpful, look at himself in Negro Poetry. So does Redding in To Make a Poet Black. Also helpful is Stephen Henderson's "A Strong Man Called Sterling Brown," Black World, XIX �' (September 1970), 5-12. Benjt'mAn Brawley (The Negro Genius) assesses Brown as poet and critic as does Blyden Jackson in Black Poetry in America. Charles Rowell, a young critic-teacher at Southern University, Baton Rouge, has prepared a yet unpublished criticism of Brown's poetry. (Barfsdale and Kinnamon). See also Black Writers of America Brown's work appears in most anthologies of Black literature and poetry. One characteristic of Black poetry of the thirties was a cry for unionization of Blacks and whites. Brown's "When De Saints Go Ma'ching Home" allows room in heaven for a handful of whites who befriended Blacks. According to the Marxist/ Communist-influenced thinking of the times, downtrodden peoples--of whatever color--were in the same boat. . ~ Their struggles were.._ the same. One finds this feeling in Frank Marshall Davis' tt "Snapshots of the Cotton South" which pain~a rather pathetic and depressing picture of voteless Blacks who "lack the guts" and 11 po 111 whites who "have not the bra;i.ns" to fight the rich plantation owners and the police. The poems also reek with irony and satire--a Davis trademark. Even "':'\ though racial "intermingling" is "unthinkable," syphiJlis is passed from the u.,.. "shiftless son" of a plantation owner (a lynch-mob leader) to a washerwoman who gives it to the chief of police who gi ves it to a young mulatto cook who gave~it to the mayor of "Mobtown" who gaves it to his wife. Currently living in Hawaii where he is a salesman, Davis was born in Arkansas City, Kansas, attended local public schools and studied journalism at Kansas State College where he was the first recipient of the Sigma Delta Chi Perpetual Scholarship. He later left school for Chicago to do newspaper work. In 1931 Davis went to Atlanta to help establish the Atlanta Daily World. Re- turning to Chicago, he worked with the Associated Negro Press until the late 1940s when he moved to Hawaii. In 1937 he received a Julius Rosenwald Fellowship �to write poetry. -He has published four volumes of poetry: Black Man's Verse (1935), I Am the American Negro (1937), Through Sepia Eyes (1938), and 47th Street (1948). Davis established himself early as a socially-minded poet who combined his journalistic training with an innovative free-verse form to create interesting lyrics. (Gwendolyn Brooks later developed a form known as verse-journalism.) Stephen Henderson (Understanding the New Black Poetry) notes the similarities between Davis'.poetry and that currently being written by Chicago-area poets. The influence of Masters and Sandburg can be seen in much of Davis'# work; but his poetry is highly flavored with Black themes and (sometimes) idioms. Hughes he is the poet of the city. Like But he renders believable pictures of Black "society" and the hard times of southern living. In "Snapshots" he warns whites that. death~e boll weevil do.-.'not n i b b l e ~ 'nigger cotton." Ironically placing the "Democracy" of death and natural disasters alongside a hollow American "Democracy," Davis is able to turn the poem into a piercing sword of social criticism. Ironies also spine poems like "Robert Whitmore," "Arthur Ridgewood, M.D.," and "Giles Johnson, Ph.D."--bourgeois Blacks destroyed by status-climbing. ·whitmore, having reached the peak of social and business success, dies when he is mistaken for a waiter. Dr. Ridgewood, forced to choose between the life of a poet and a doctor, dies from a nerve disruption caused by worry over rejection slips and money problems. do labor; he dies of starvation. Dr. Johnson will not teach and cannot The great tragedy, in this stream of poetic ~ ideas,~the story of the poet• "Roosevelt Smith." Smith could be Davis himself or possibly Countee Cullen or Melvin Tolson--or any number of Black poets who wrote as they were dir~cted only to end up having "contributed" nothing to "his nation's literature." Smith's first book is attacked by white critics for imitating Sandburg, Masters and Lindsay. His second book, written after he had done first-hand �study in the South, is criticized by Blacks for being too sordid. Critics dis- missed his third book, an experimental effort, as not being consistent with the depth and breadth of the philosophical 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 fourth book. background. He ought to use his rich African Of his fifth book, critics were suspicious: since it contained no traces of anything done previously by a white poet, then it must be "just a new kind of prose." The poet then became a mail carrier where he had time to read in the papers that Black Wt'iters had contributed so "little" to American literature. Davis also wrote free-verse utilizing 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 category of "mystic e~capist" by tkL 3I g In his first volume, Davis strikes vivid picture~.:.,e );i; i L9'1t in pieces like "Chicago's Congo," "Jazz Band," "Mojo Mike's Beer Garden," "Cabaret," ' "Lynched," and "Georgia's Atlanta." In "Jazz Band" he anticipates the work of literally dozens of poets of the sixties (Neal, Crouch, Cortez, Lee, Baraka, Harper, the Last Poets, Carolyn Rodgers). And certainly one recalls Hughes' • "Jazzonia" and "Jazz Band in a Parisian Cabaret" when one hears a line like Play that thing you jazz mad fools! and the steady hammerfng of Plink plank plunk a plunk. Everybody and every place has th~ blues since Blacks brought the sound to town: Chopin, Wagner, London, Moscow, Paris, Hongkong, Cairo, Dios, Jehovah, Gott, �Allah, Buddh~so on. Everyone can partake of the happy-sad sound being Puke Fl liagcotr would 1 tor cal J birnseJ f av "ecurnsaj ral played by the "black boy . " Apd Davis seews to hr '9,it " 1. aadczstcsd thl!! ■ 2r?2pt close study of his work has yet to be done. for his work: rre] 1 . Unfortunately, a But Davis had many things in mind one poem is designed to be read aloud by eight voices. There is a brief, but good, assessment of him in Wagner's book; Sterling Brown sets forth poiqt\lll.... f.:,_ I crisp and ~ / \ friticism. Benj ~m~n Brawley discusses Davis's poetry (Negro Genius); but he appears all too infrequently in anthologies. For a current look at Davis see Dudley Randall's interview with him in IUad ~ ' XXIV (January 1974)} 31-1./f, Robert Hayden has one of the longest poetry writing (and publishing) records of any living American poet. His poems have appeared in numerous anthologies, newspapers, periodicals, books and pamphlets since 1940. Born in Detroit, Michigan, Hayden attended local schools and Wayne State University, and in 1936 "graduated to the Federal Writers ' ProjecS:' heading research into local Afro-American history and folklore. He resumed his training in 1938 when he enrolled at the University of Michigan, where he received a teaching assistantship, and did advanced work in play production, creative writing and English. taught English at Michigan for two years. poetry in 1938 and 1942 and during this Hayden received an M.A. and t!Jo..r--neNI 2h the Hopwood award for He -+ ui time • had an opportunity to study with W.H. Auden, whose poetry his own sometimes reflects. In 1940 his first book of t.,.J poetry, Heart-Shape in the Dust, was published. t\)fe joined the faculty of Fisk University in 1946 , al!B 1 E2 Ci &LIS ;~ring the sixties he became involved in a series .,o . f "meaningful encounters with proponents of a black literary ~ sthetic" (Barksdale and Kinnamon) which resulted in his leaving Fisk and joining the faculty of the University of Michigan (1969). Hayden has received Rosenwald �and Ford grants and in 1966 his Bal,lad 9f Remepibra~<;.~ (1962,\ Paul Bremen;} was awarded the Grand Prize in the English poetry category at the First World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar, Senegal. In presenting Hayden with the award, the festival committee cited him as a remarkable craftsman, an outstanding singer of words, I a striking thinker, a poete pur sang. He gives glory and dig- nity to America through deep attachment to the past, present and future of his race. Africa is in his soul, the world at large in his mind and heart. In 1948 Hayden collaborated with Myron O'Higgins in publication of The Lion and the Archer. His Figure of Time: Poems appeared in 1955 and Selected Poems was published in 1966. Words in the Mourning Time, with its portraits of violence ,T and destruction, came out in 1970\ .-.~was nominated for a National Book Award (1972). ' - The Night-Blooming Cereus, showing Hayden as a reflective lover of nature and a de eply religious poet, was published in 1972 by Bremen. He has also written and produced plays (Go Down Moses) and during the forties he was drama and music critic for the Michigan Chronicle. Hayden's work appears in practically every anthology of Afro-American literature or poetry published since The Negro Caravan. His editorship of anthologies includes Kaleidoscope: Poems by American Negro Poets (1967), Afro-American Literature: An Introduction (1971, with Burroughs and Lapides), and The United States in Literature (1973, with Hiller and O'Neal). The latter work contains many of Hayden's seminal ideas as well as brilliant crystalizations of Black and general poetry movements in the United States. His individual poems have appeared in Opportunity, Poetry and ~tlantic Monthly. Order. Curr~ntly, he is poetry editor of the Baha'i magazine, World �Although, as a poet, Hayden has maintained a steady balance between racial concerns and the modern poetic tradition, he is what Sterling Brown would call a library poet. Classical allusions, obscurantism, surrealism, and complicated syntax go hand in hand with experimental blues poetry and muted anger. ~ Bontemps said that the term "Negro poet" was particularly "displeasing" to Countee Cullen; and Hayden (a Cullen admirer), in Kaleidoscope, rejected being judged "by standards different from those applied to the work of other poets." The Black poet should not be limited to a racial utterance, Hayden believes. ( Ironically, a poll of Black poets today might easily show that a great many of I/. ,, them feel the same way--even though such is not suggested by the popular image of the contemporary Black poet :'\ , ;/ \ t> , s. , .. o 1->rue.n Speaking of his"influences in Interviews with Black Writers, When I was in college I loved Countee Cullen, Jean Too~er, Elinor Wylie, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Sara Teasdale, Langston Hughes, Carl Sandburg, Hart Crane. I read all the poetry I could get a hold of, and I read without discrimination. became a favorite. his style. Cullen I felt an affinity and wanted to write in I remember that I wrote a longish poem about Africa, imitating his "Heritage." was pretty imitative. All through my undergraduate years I As I discovered poets new to me, I studied their work and tried to write as they did. young poets do this. I suppose all It's certainly one method of learning something about poetry. I reached the point, inevitably, where I didn't want to be influenced by anyone else. my own voice, my own way of seeing. J Hayden notec, i I tried to find I studied with W.R. Auden �in graduate school, a strategic experience in my life. I think he showed me my strengths and weaknesses as a poet in ways no one else before had done. Hayden thus establishes himself as a poet of the book as opposed to the raw experience--vis a vis a a Hughes , TI Brown, k g I f l JJ Davis, is.aa?~~ soLute. o..rid Margaret Walker, and numerous others, although such a division-~t many variables. .....~cording to = H- Davis, in From the Dark Tower, S6maf P. ,i' · if s I\.• blatant protest and 1n ~lven~ Hayden has repudiated his early poetry-- •• btf •f lt\<L foll IC liJ..1- 71. consider e:tfh,'_$ ■1i9 31 I ~ poetry shows Hayden asAtmitator of the older Harlem Renaissance poets and under the influence of the CommunistSocialist thought of the 1930s and 1940s. In "Prophecy" he depicts destruction and tbe people returning to the "ruined city" to rebuild a new society. .-..e• •L+-L~':i;: •rec:o.U.s: "Gabriel" i"~••••r. 1, a..J/.colloquialisms (like cL~th drama of Gabriel's k••' · Sterling ~the f:Ln~l moments in :the ;"Ue o· Qabt'1:"el,t "Black Gabriel" .._~hanged for leading slaves From forgotten graves, •••• italicS Brown), Hayden recreates the terror and s_ Black and golden in the air, Gabriel dangles from a noose above Black men who Never, never rest "Speech" is just that--an harangue calling Black and white "brothers" to fight the common oppressor, presumably totalitarianism, fascism and greedy over-seers. "Obituary" is a sensitive and pained reflection of a "father" who lived Prepared for wings. Among these early pieces (found in Caravan and Hayden's first volumes), "Bacchanal" is especially interesting--for it collects the new dialect into the kind of social statement S:torlh@ Brown~erfected. There is irony in using "bacchanal" to ea �describe a Black factory worker getting High's a Georgia pine to forget that the factory closed "this mawnin." can never rest, is seeking real "joy" on earth. The Black man who, in "Gabriel" But, minus money and woman, his ,"bacchanal" becomes a weighty blues statement--not the revelry of ancient Greek or Roman party life. One finds none of these tJff'~in S~lected f.'2.em~- Instead there is the polished Hayden of "The Diver," "A Ballad of Remembrance," "Sub Specie Aeternitatis," In the Mourning Time. Hayden has obviously elevated his protest themes . To be sure, ~ JIIJ&-!\does make_ his social comment, as does Cullen. t.o..r..,,e5 none o ~ the Vt"geney o P (Mourning) t{_ C But his "Zeus Over Re~yen f D" Hughes ' "Dream Deferred" or "Ask Your Momma." ~ "Runagate" and "Middle Passage" address with subtlty and allusion the concerns of -.e. Dodson ("Lament"), Margaret Walker ("Since 1619") and Frank Marshall Davis ("Snapshots of the Cotton South") .\ fr'!den brings a fine and intense intellect to his poetry--regardless of subject matter. His output has been relatively small, considering his long career, but Words in the Mourning Time proves that his intensity has not lessened. And he must be admired for sticking to his W id, lu.v aesthetic convictions and his unswerving devotion to poetic craftsmanshipl\ yand in hand with and general . •••••••••••1!1111• his enduring interest in history, racial His manuscript of poems dealing with slavery and the Civil War, The Black Spear , won him the second Hopwood award. The idea for a book-length series of narrative poems on Black history--"from the black man ' s point of view"-- ' came to Hayden after he read Stephen Vincent Benet's long narrative poem, John Brown's Body (1927). The Black Spear never emerged as a book, but remnants of �it can be found in section five of Selected Poems. list ;,_q I Il 11 • 8 ruiH'~lack history, Hayden champions such persons as Nat Turner, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Cinquez, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. shared the burden of the Black struggle: He also includes whites who William Lloyd Garrison, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, John Brown, John and Robert Kennedy, and others. Hayden's history poems, however, reflect the complexity and disturbances inherent in man's continuing struggle. In a non-racial poem like "The Diver" there can be floating, plunging, piercing, blurring, disillusionment, wreckage, drunken tilting, "numbing/kisses," and other suggestions of dramatic tension between the real and assumed, between the shadow and the substance. same "feeling" . come$through in poems of racial flavor. But the "Middle Passage" certainly bears this out, as Blyden Jackson notes in "From One 'New Negro' to Another" (Black Poetry in America,, Jackson and Rubin, 1974). Situated, as it were, "in the rocking loom of history," "Middle Passage" is at once Hayden's and Black America '.r achievement. &Mil i r , Tj i\19 ipening with the names of slave ships-- Jesus, Estrella, Esperanza, Mercy--the poem criss-crosses the vast geographical, chronological and spiritual web of racial horror since slavery. o.n,..s,ir,vtl&n_eAN~tJ the ships ejg · . ~ --=l!~i!ffllneM&t!e- c!ontradic ~ ht£ l.!t!!&iM)pj reminiscent of the expletive "Jesus, have mercy•' 4nd daily in Black communities. 1721 and The names of"'- C • 33 ~e.t"Ve.$' I~ I 31 and....., ~£~) But this Jesus will have no Mercy-- · Ima nf Cl ; as the albatross around the neck of Christian slavers. Any middle passage is exciting as well a~ dangerous--since it represents -U4Jdl(tS the peak and the unfinished quest. Henc~~~~middlJ'passage suggests both the horrible and brutalizing experience of slaves aboard ships crossing the Atlantic and the incompleted "adventure" of Blacks in America. The poem also �satisfies much.of the demands of modernist l poetry, "Middle t's ~LA'1id ~ " in fact i JilP ( s 1t5tylistically ~ ~~uch poems as Eliot's The Wasteland, Pound's Cantos, Crane's The Bridge and YUi I J II 3 4 Williams' Patterson. Especially is it akin to The Wasteland in its use of allusion, fragments of obscure information (old documents, letters, conversation, etc.), typographical vari~\SfnetLwt11 atio~ and th~ (lHoC. I Cf~ nS., H.1..viilt BEens foeMJ atr~fter its 'tll 111 sharp and arresting opening, weaves together objective narration, notes from a slave ship's log, sections from a ship officer's diary, testimony at a court of inquiry (into a ji:"1839), the tale of an old sailor melted from the &own/'- ~ paraphrasings Q? • i!ie. /ible J illlk revolt aboard the Cuban slaver Amis tad/ ~ose bo.,es•&a.•iia&B ,1.ae &&PIH)& of a Shakesperean text and familiar expressions and live religious services. imaginable disaster and conflict: a. u7 oHcaoaa,lit 1uao .. ■ a "fever The poem depicts every storms, re·b ellions, suicides, a plague that causes blindness ("opthalmalia"), the lusty crew members sexual exploitation of female slaves, the "nigger kings" who sold the Africans into slavery, descriptions of the smel:band sounds of dying, and the hatred/respect the slave shiW surviving spokesman has for rebellion-leader Cinque/. Gimost 100 years before "Middle Passage," James M. Whitfie'id had honored this same revolutionary in "To Cinque.J The idea of . the r1_1ade man, a "voyage" which takes one "through death" into "life," recurs in Hayden's poem: here, again, the sense of one meandering through a "wasteland" in search of the right society, the sane environment. Indeed in much Black American writing, mirroring sometimes the literature of larger America, there is the assertion that the new man arrives only after paying the dues of being brutalized and oppressed. Even in everyday life, Blacks are often intolerant of others who have not "gone ·through" the fire and brimstone of depravity and �alienation. Thus, for Hayden, the "middle passage" is both spiritually and physically a "voyage" through death in order to achieve life. In the middle passage the slaves are half way between their African homeland and America. They will not be returning to Africa and yet they know nothing of the life "upon these shores." Too, the middle passage symbolizes the initiation of everyman into the awesome awareness and responsibility of adulthood--and his own mortality. The middle passage is where we all triumph or perish, just as in the wasteland one must create a new world or drift with the debris. However, the caretakers of slaveships crossing the middle passage are as acutely aware of their mission as are the reflective slaves (and poets). death. They are also bringing life through They bear black gold, black ivory, black seed. ' and Mercy All this occurs against the pervasive irony of the ship names Jesus and the double . irony of slaver's spokesman who renounces Cinquez for rebelling against the crew: ... true Christians all, ..•. While the "Middle Passage" places Blacks somewhere in the middle of things, "Runagate Runagate" continues the irony 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, the slave-trackers, the auction blocks, the "wanted" signs, the I brandings on the cheeks, the driver's lash--all re-live the terror, the nightmarish nature of Black "life" after the middle passage. _ For Blacks, then, the initiation continues beyond the first death (the enslavement). The anxiety and "never, never rest" life of the slave is dramatically captured by Hayden who employj ~-:ich 1)-:t..D.i.D~..e tapestry of language, syntax, color, imagery, narration, anJf'7v;jGz., alongside the symbolism and "sweep" akin to modern poetry; added to this is the dramatic �use of italics. The poem celebrates the courage and endurance of escaping slaves and honors Black and white abolitionist leaders. Hayden allows the reader to re-live the experience of the runaway slave and the accompanying tension-filled hide-and-seek drama. We hear and see the runaway in the opening line. By a~ing the use of punctuational breaks, Hayden achieves a "rush'·' of language very similar to the relentless "drive" of Black oral expression and to the "never, never rest" feeling he established in "Gabriel." The runaway Runs falls rises stumbles on from darkness into darkness and the hunt is on, as the escapee reflects on the "many thousands" already channeled through the Underground ltilroad. We see and hear the mixed jubilance and fear of the slave who vows that he will never return to the auction block and the driver's lash: And before I'll be a slave I'll be buried in my grave Keeping with the trend of modern poetry, Hayden introduces incidental notices and data: an announcement describing runaways (including age, dress, brandings, and a suspicion that they can turn themselves into quicksand, whirlpools or scorpions), wanted posters, and names of prominent abolitionists of the day. Typographically and syntactically, the poem is designed to be read without significant pauses) so that the non-stop hurtle of the slave toward freedom actually occurs in the text; it is, Blyden Jackson suggests (thoughf of "Middle Passage") "as if it repeats history." Especially notable is Hayden's treatment of Harriet Tubman, the greatest of \l:iderground Railroad leaders, who was wanted "Dead or Alive" and who was known to level a pistol at a doubting runaway: �Dead folks can't jaybird-talk, she says; You keep on going now or die, she says •.•. "Middle Passage" and "Runagate Runagate" are only two of Hayden's magnificent poems. Other poems in the historical vein are "Frederick Douglass" (an ex- perimenta l sonnet without rhyme), "The Ballad of Nat Turner" ("The fearful splendor of that warring."), "O Daedalus, Fly Away Home" ("Night is juba, night is conjo."), and "A Ballad of Remembrance" (a surrealistic, complex and erudite poem). Hayden poems (prior to Words) capture supernaturalism ("Witch Doctor"), folk life ("Homage to the Empress of the Blues," "The Burly Fading One," "Incense of the Lucky Virgin, 11 and "Mourning Poem for the Queen of Sunday• ? and folk reminiscences ("Summertime and the Living .•. ," "The Whipping," "Those Winter Days"). Words in the Mourning Time, which we will return to briefly in Chapter VI, reflects Hayden's general and specific concerns as a poet. Again, he judiciously handles the spectrum of themes, subjects and styles that assures him a place in the world of western as well as Afro-American poetry. Poems like '·' 'Mystery Boy' Looks for Kin in Nashville," "Soledad," "Aunt Jemima of the Ocean Waves," (,Ji.w 1'1 and "El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz," ....... Hayden . in touch with the times and willing to share his poetic vision with revolutionaries, pacifists, cultural nationalists and Black pride advocates. On the other hand he is at home with poems such as "Locus," "Zeus Over Redeye, 11 and "Lear is Gay"--which mirror his reading, travels, broad concerns and personal friendships. Qf tOPiGS is also s]earlu tb@FC • in the 196Os jolted him. Hayden admits that the battle over aesthetics And while it is clear that the fight took place more �outside of poetry than in (see Chapter VI), Hayden has not recanted in his position that the Black poet not be limited to racial utterance. course, has his right to his own opinion. Hayden, of But, like John Ciardi, Richard Wilbur, and Robert Lowell, and other poets of the academy, his trek has not been easy or devoid of controversy. And despite statements Hayden makes out- side of his poetry, poems like "Middle Passage" and "Runagate Runagate" stamp $i t he. , s. .,.. AP-t'o-itw1e"'rCA~ pos) him as a gifted handler of Black themes and materials. that he will be known• J n, 1 '/\ -u- fs not likely for work that lies drastically outside the passage, pace or plight of Black Americans. - Much needed critical attention is just beginning to come to Hayden. is treated in Davis',f From the Dark Tower, He Gibson's Modern Black Poets ("Robert Hayden's Use of History," Charles T. Davis), Jackson and Rubin's I. Black Poetry in America, O'Brien's Interview with Black Writers, Barksdale!and Kinnamon's Black Writers of America, and How I Write/I JI Phillips/s:llli Lawson Carter ~ 1972). 1 g 6!,_ayden, Judson See also Rasey Pool's "Robert Hayden, Poet Laureate," Negro Digest (Black World), XV (June, 1966), 39-43; D. Caller's "Three Recent Volumes," Poetry, CX (1967), 268, and Julius Lester's review of Words in the Mourning Time in The New York Times Book Review, January 24, 1971, p.4. Dudley Randall displays good insights into Hayden in "The Black Aesthetic in the Thirties, Forties, and Fifties" (Modern Black Poets). And there is a sensitive treatment of the poet in James O. Young's Black Writers of the Thirties. Having helped make the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes continued his vast and imaginative poetic output into the thirties, forties, fifties and si(ties. He published four books of poetry in the 1930s, three in the 1940s, _ . two in the 1950s, and two i$6os, in addition to dozens of short stories, �essays, novels, plays and autobiographical writings. These things he accomplished along with his travels and his dedicated work on behalf of Blacks. But it would be "much too casual," notes Hughes' • friend~ Bontemps, simply to dismiss him as "prolific." For Hughes was a "minstrel and a troubador in the classic sense." (Langston Hughes, Donald C. Dickinson, 1972) Hughes worked rapidly, turning out prodigious amounts of writing, a fact, Blyden Jackson reminds u5;which caused some to deny him a place alongside "serious" Black writers like Ellison, Wright and Baldwin. Hughes always involved himself in "contemporary affairs"--even during the Renaissance when Cullen, McKay and other~ roamed the Elysian fields of Africa '1'Jl1~ /el'1dencf WQS 'PA.1'>7 of-the f"ed~Oh W"Y. or pined away in the "dark" tower. il\aj, --••••--~Redding (To Make A Poet Black) .-111111:• poetry but little invrtiPov,mLy qoo"; w;t itqpened 1mpc,;,lantnew ~oo.ds. complained that Hughes employed rhythms in his "tr,ueJ ht'i ea.1-1 Ly woi,.t_ ,.,, e-,_pe.y,imenT<.tL tellect. A, C>-.V\~fldt Ar1 d ,,.....,the thirties and forties--with their step up in leftist everi and radical activities--placed Hughes in the position of having to forge{\newe~ protest weapons from his "weary blues." noted: illses.l\!lsdJ:wghasd.• • + •no James 0. Young "His poetry was popular because it could be read easily by people of all ages and backgrounds." new Black poets: In the sixties, similar comments would be made of the Haki R. Madhubuti (Don L. Lee), Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, David Nelson, Arthur Pfister, &i I I w?,TQv-.s Clnd. Othe.tiJJ 7verri'o>'U O ~ Cl.e~iheT,c.! o...side C.oN~(bvTe.J im menset.y, LH::e t\ u9tie.s d~ ~ A>reTuem 1~--Hi Q popv(a.J"131/\.9 of ,sua.d: poe:Tiiy • ,thete... )In J\IS early ye.a.'r'-Sj 1/J however, Hughes 'f poetry was considered "decadent" s(,'Pf and "unacceptable" to Communist critics who. ·wanted him to MMlef\from strict . o.nd racial themes • l fhampion the fights of proletarians everywhere . Hughes made wo fiK.!. /.Jk.,e ,./Jt~1 the switch-over andAScottsboro Limited (1932) show. the impact Communist 'I thought on him . The pamphlet was dedicated to Black youths on trial for allegedly raping two white prostitutes in Scottsboro, Alabama . Hughes places the boys alongside such revolutionary saints as John Brown, Lenin and Nat Turner. The �effect--resembling aborted efforts of some martyr-making poets of the 1960s-was to make the boys, "ignorant pawns" though they were, "militant proletarian heroes . " The poem-play "Scottsboro Limited" shows "Red Voices" convincing Black youths that the Communists are on the side of Not just black--but black and white . 1uughes published widely during the thirties in Party presses. In Good Morning Revolution (1973, forward by Saunders Redding), Faith Berry has compiled his "uncollected writings of social protest." They give many clues to Hughes ' social concerns during the three decades following the Harlem Renaissance. He callA6 for a union of "workers" in Germany, China, Africa, Poland, Italy, and America-through the pages of New Masses, The Negro Worker, The Crisis, Opportunity, International Literature, Contempo, _A_f_r_i_c_a_S_o_u_t_l_1, The Workers Monthly, New Theatre-., and American S,.pectator. he In "Good Morning, Revolution," Tl Qf tells personified revolution that We gonna pal around together from now on. Section titles of Good Morning Revolution show Hughes .to be acutely attuned to the problems and needs of oppressed peoples--long before Franz Fanon, Stokely Carmichael and Eldridge Cleaver--and in sympathy with Third World struggle: Section I, Revolution; Section 2, Memo to Non-White Peoples; Section 3, The Rich and The Poor; Section 4, War and Peace: Section 5, Goodbye Christ; Section 6, The Sa i l or and The Steward; Section 7, The Meaning of Scottsboro; Section 8, Cowards from the Colleagues; Section 9, Portrait Against Background; Section 10, Darkness in Spain; Section 11, China; Section 12, The American Writers Congress, and Section 13, Retrospective (including "My Adventures as a Social Poet 11 ) . Iconoclastic and sacrilf gous, Hughes incurred the wrath of many Black leaders �with his poem "Goodfbye Christ" published in the Baltimore Afro-American in v 1932. Addressing Christ, Hughes noted that You did alright in your day, I reckon-But that day's gone now. And "Christ Jesus Lord God Jehovah" is told to "make way" for a new deity, who has no religion, and whose name is Marx Communist Lenin Peasant Stalin, Worker, ME-Religious leaders especially condemned Hughes's "blatant atheism." But Melvin Tolson, coming to Hughes' 4 aid, said that the young poet was simply showing that the Christian offering of a better world after death had little meaning for the world's suffering millions. Hughes was never a member of the, Communist Party, but oF lt,ic.,,.,_ many other Black writen~: his wot-It~ S4t111e,l l,,f.OV'/ pa-ol.eT• Tolson, Wright, Hayden, Frank Marshall Davis, Margaret Walker, Ellison . While his poetry and other writings of communist-oriented social protest were appearing in radical publit,,1 j(e cations, Hughes continued/~ Sterling Bro~developing and experimenting with Black folk materials. He painstakingly pointed up the contradictions in the promises and realities of American Democracy, assailed social inequality, lamented Black and white poverty, ~ailed against double standards, attacked racial segregation, satirized the Black bourgeosie, and immortalized the beauty of everyday Blacks. So much of Hughes' f fight is caught up in "Let America Be America Again," first published in 1936 in Esquire, and included in A New Song (1938). It is immediately reminiscent of Walt Whitman--in its sweep--and recites, in the manner of Hayden's "Speech" and Tolson's "Rendezvous with America," the multiple ills and ingredients of America. Throughout the poem, as he catalogs the various ethnic stocks and *j\Qfvolt'\ contributions, he interpolates the haunw t'America never was America to me. "J... �1/,B:-~~14'::f;-e;,s interest in Black music and folk materials was being worked more artfully into his work. He carried his interest in Blues to his work in jazz taiTe ► l(ecording his poetry with Charlie Mingus and others) and the B{3iop era is strongly reflected in his poetry and his writings (see the Simple stories). Especially is music evident in Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951) where, according to . . . . Wagner, "jazz has strongly influenced the tone and structure of these poems." It was from this volume, too, that Lorraine Hansberry would get the title for her prize-winning play: Raisin in the Sun. The most famous poem in the volume is "Harlem," in which the Black American is likened to a "dream deferred." Five precise similes help Hughes draw explicit comparisons between e ",e_r, raisins, sores, rotten meat, syrupy sweets, heavy loads, and the ,a.-present "dream." Perhaps, Hughes notes at the end, the dream will "explode." Hughes was not "perfect," II but he remained an experiment,r throughout his writing career. Ask Your Mama--Twelve Moods for Jazz (1961) was published after 40 years of experimentation in verse forms. synthesis we referred to earlier: and themes. It is indeed the attempt at the that of jazz, blues and related folk idioms Contemporary white poets, E.E. Cummings and Kenneth Rexroth, had chosen to place all letters in lower case and Hughes did just the opposite, capitalizing everything. Dedicated to Louis Armstrong--"the greatest hortn blower of them all"--the volume is an extension of ideas attempted in The Weary Blues, Shakespeare in Harlem, and Montage of a Dream Deferred. The driving social protest is there, but the indignation is muted as in his earlier work. A recession in larger America If IS COLORED FOLKS' DEPRESSION. The work is punctuated by the line~IN THE QUARTER OF THE NEGROES"and Hughes continues �the Black poet's concern with history: honoring Black heroes and race leaders, displaying the beauty of Blackness and recalling the rights of passage. ~~ M oJ.so \l'\C:.lvcie~ e-,.Ttk\n've ~ oTes on s~11~ dnd Mllsc'ccil.. «.uompa.nlwieJftpor t"h-e l)oernl. Politician, organizer of sharecroppers, poet, dramatist, teacher and raconteur, Melvin Beaunorus Tolson was born in Moberly, Missouri, to the Reverend Mr. and Hrs. Alonzo Tolson. Tolson lived his young life in various Missouri towns, publishing his first poem at the age of 12 in the "Poet's Corner" of the Oskaloosa newspaper. He graduated from Kansas City's Lincoln High School (1918) where he had been class poet, director and actor in Greek Club's Little Theater and captain of the football team. Throughout his adult life, Tolson maintained an active interest in sports, dramatics and debate clubs. He attended Fisk and Lincoln Universities--graduating from Lincoln with honors and winning awards in speech, debate, dramatics and Classical literatures. also captained the football team o.:fJinc..olh He • In 1924 Tolson, continuing a rich and varied career, began teaching English and speech at Wiley College, in Marshall, Texas. There he wrote prose and poetry, and directed drama and debate groups which established a 10-year winning streak. Tolson interrupted his work at Wiley to pursue 1FJ•l Ill. al'\ . in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia Universit~where he -- ,, • , '.' 'h•• •" -- 'TA e met V.F. Calverton, editor ofAModern Quarterly. Later, in 1935 at Wiley, Tolson ' s ~<l, career as a debate coach peaked when his team defeatedAnational champions, University of Southern California, before 1100 people. And in 1947, the same year Tolson was appointed poet laureate of Liberia by President V.S. Tubman, he became English and drama professor at Langston University, Langston, Oklahoma where he also served as mayor for four terms. At Langston he directed the Dust Bowl Players and dramatized novels by Walter White and George Schuyler . A revered and feared teacher and organizer, Tolson became a legend in his own time . Hardly �MY a student at ~ deep-south Black college had not heard of Tolson's work as poet, dramatist, debate coach and educator. His column, "cob~<t, u and Caviar," was a regular in the Washington Tribune during the thirties. Tolson published three volumes of poetry: Rendezvous with America (1944), Libretto for the Republic of Liberia (1953), 111111 Harlem Gallery, Book I: The wi--oTe A-n'1rnber oPUl'\PUbL\sheJ 'MveLs~~ PLA.yJ. Curator (1965) /\ His work . . . appeared in The Modern Quarterly, Atlantic Monthly, Glho Comma~ Groun9, ~oetry ~ and other periodicals. He won numerous awards and citations, among them first place (1939) in~:ational Poetry Contest sponsored by the American Negro Exposition in Chicago (for "Dark Symphony"); the Omega Psi Phi Award for Creative Literature (1945); Poetry magazine's Bess Hokim Award for long psychological poem, "E. & o,.r~ O.E." (1947); honorary Doctor of Letters, Lincoln Universit~ wa l-.a&e permanent Bread Loaf Fellow in poetry and drama (1954); District of <L"f ,,,, Columbia Citation and Award for Cultural Achievement in Fine ArtA . . . first appointee to the Avalon Chair in Humanities at Tuskegee Institute (1965); and-tht.. annual poetry award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters including a grant of $2,500 (1966), the same year he died following three operations for abdominal cancer. ~otl-i As a Black poet and intellectual in the mid • s t · • the many-pronged mant@ of his .I and "q1 century, Tolson wore century predecessors (Prince Hall, Benjamin Banneker, James Whitfield, Alexander Crummell, Frances w~ E. ~ Harper and others) who served as teachers, abolitionists, revolutionists, defenders of what they believed to be decent in the promise of America, and character models for Black communities. Tolson's predecessors fought for the right to be called humans; he fought the battle of integration. As Tolson lay dying, other, younger poets were fighting the battle of self-determination-albeit using the same tools employed by poets and intellectuals of the past two centuries. So, it is indeed ironic (and sad!) when a young writer like Haki R. �Madhubuti (Don L. Lee) complains that Tolson is not accessible to the everyday reader--see review of Kaleidoscope: ~ 9f , Jfl 94. Negro Digest JSifJ J (January, 1968) , But Joy Flasch points out -(Melvin B. Tolson) 1972) that Tolson was aware that he was not writing for the "average" reader but for the "vertical" audience. tl~Tt·st In "Omega" of Harlem Gallery, Tolson asks if a serious~ ·•P should "skim the milk of culture" and give those demanding immediacy and relevancy a popular latex brand? Tolson did not live, as did Hayden, f L !1 g Brown, ii aaniu1, Redding, and others, to make Dodge City contact with proponents of the "Black Aesthetic" of the 1960s. But some opponents have continued to rake him over the coals of responsibility. 1966 Black poet Sarah Webster Fabio (Negro Digest, December I ; 1i '.; H), challenged Karl Shapiro's statement (Introduction ~ Harlem Gallery) that Tolson "writes in Negro." His poetic language is "most certainly not 'Negro,'" " she averd, noting that it is "a bizarre, pseudo-literary diction" taken from stilted "American mainstream" poetry "where it rightfully and wrongmindedly belonged." White critics and writers joining in the assault on Tolson included Laurence Lieberman and Englishman Paul Bremen (of the Heritage Seriei. Lieberman takes exception to Shapiro's statement, saying that he teaches Black students from all over the world, who are steeped in Black language, but who do not understand Tolson (review of Harlem Gallery ) · Au:umn, 1965) The Hudson Review, Yet Tolson's publishers had high hopes that he might get Wt~ the Pulitzer Prize for Libretto ian wet\dol~n 8Nok.s.,who ~ileA 1n1'\,i~ (t.Tt lqC,Os f~p o.-ren.T~ oF~• IL.Ad~. aefttie1il, 1h~1'hotJqht JLarlw ,a,ll.f.rY sl\o"U h,11e t'«.elved-ih-e o..~o.N:l, Re-writing and re-thinking his poetry over a period of decades, Tolson 1o.\'• became more difficult as he made adjustments to fit modernist trends in poetry. The starSof English poetry were Eliot, Pound, Yeats, Crane, and Stevens, and Tolson admired and patterned his work after them. Yet throughout his poetic life, �he maintained an "enormous love for people'.' which was reflected in his everyday 1",e. work as well as in his poetry. Rendezvous with America as Tolson's commitment to love and do battle with America. f\ title indicates America has cancer and promise and Tolson performed operations while he feasted on his nation's delights. His title poem, "Rendezvous with America," reflects the Whitman influence and Tolson's awesome word skills, technical virtuosity and musical ear. He enumerates the races and types of people who also must rendezvous with America. He sees how Time unhinged the gates to allow the beginning of America, noting such landmarks as Plymouth Rock, Jamestown, and Ellis Island, which he juxtaposes with ancient sites like Sodom, Gomorrah, Cathay, Cipango and El Dorado. The "searchers" came to America which is the Black Man's country, The Red Man's, the Yellow Man's, . The Brown Man's, the White Man's. America flows, Tolson believes/ is An international river with a legion of tributaries! t') A magnificent cosmorama with myriad patte1is of colors! A giant forest with loin-roots in a hundred lands! A cosmopolitan orchestra with a thousand instruments playing America! His manipulation of traditional form, coupled with what he called the three S's-"biology, psychology .•• sociology," or the synchronizing of sight and sound and ~ in a poem--yielded much poetic fruit in his long years of writing and re-writing his poetry. Rendezvous with America is not a great first book but it marked him as an able handler of unique verse forms. His major themes (history, �Black presence in the world , religion, hatred for class structures, and the plight of the underdog) areJIL jJ:"a'~n a variety of forms: sonnets, rhymed quatrains, ballads, free verse forms, and special two-syllable lines . Known as the iconocalst, Tolson used his poetry to di -stool pomposity and those who manipulated everyman's sufferings from behind a cloak of high office . Music and art inform much of his poetry--another reason why his allusory writing has been criticized--as in "Rendezvous" and "Dark Symphony," the most popular poem in his first book. In "Rendezvous," in addition to his musical structures, he lists America's melodies by associating factories, express trains, power dams, river boats, coal mines, and lumber camps with musical terminology: "allegro," "blues rhapsody," " bass crescendo," "diatonic picks," and "belting harmonics." "Dark Symphony," immediately musical and racial in its title, is separated into parts along musical lines and terminology: Part I: Allegro Moderato; Part II , Lento Grave; Part III, Andante Sostenuto; Part IV, Tempo Primo; and Part V, Larghetto. "Rendezvous" and "Dark Symphony" are patterned after the ode form (which Tolson would expand on in Libre~ and Harlem Gallery) . "Dark Symphony" carries the same theme as "Rendezvous"--people pitted against their injustices--but the latter poem is more racial in flavor and subject matter. Located , temporally and spiritually, between the concerns of Whitman (the "sweep") and John Steinbeck (Grapes of Wrath), "Dark Symphony" opens by reminding Americans that "Black Crispus Attucks"(<Hed for them\_:Boston Comroo~ Before white Patrick Henry ' s bugle breath asked for liberty over death . A strongly masculine poem (as is so much of Tolson ' s work), it moves robustly to recite the deeds of "Men black and strong." Part II tells of the "slaves singing" in the "torture tombs" of ships in the middle passage, the swamps, the " cabins of <lea th~ and "canebrakes . " In the remaining �parts, the Black American, speaking through the collective "we," vows not to f;.od "forget" that "Golgotha" has been,\-=-ii or that "The Bill of Rights is burned." The New Negro wears "seven-league" boots and springs from a tradition that produced Nat Turner, Joseph Cinquez ("Black Hoses of the Amistad Mutiny"), Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman ("Saint Bernard of the Underground Railroad"). Grapes of Wrath and Native Son are invoked as indices to the suffering and the breeding of slums. And, finally, the historical concerns of the Black poet: Out of abysses of Illiteracy, Through labyrinths of ties, Across waste lands of Disease We advance! Brilliant, esoteric, complex, innovative, and able to span the world of Black /olk idiom and academic intellectualism, Tolson always punctuates his undaunted ~ lyricism with ribald humor and thigh-slapping uproar}usness. However, Paul Bremen desparagingly referred to Tolson as posturing "for a white audience with an ill-conceived grin and a wicked sense of humor ..• an entertaining darky using almost comically big words as the best wasp tradition demands of its educated house-niggers." Englishman Bremen.) s~-'t (Maybe, one might,r-4-, Tolson was "even" too deep for the Nevertheless, the poets of the academy apparently loved Tolson and more than one of them tried to get him deserved recognition before he died. W,lt,amJ William CarlosAsaluted Tolson in his fourth book of Patterson; Allen Tate wrote a now famous~. bPt5:Alcf-il\ to Libretto; Shapiro introduced Harlem Gallery,"i\k seven ·r launching Tolson into the same curious fame that Howells brought to DunbarA.• years before; Robert Frost, Stanley Edgar Hyman, Selden Rodman, John Ciardi, and Theodore Raethke, all tried to "bring Tolson to the general literary consciousness, but with little success" (Shapiro). �Tolson's severest critics usually have in mind Libretto or Harlem Gallery . Rendezvous has been out of print for several years and many of the younger Black poets and scholars have not read it--as is the case with Road (1932) which has just been reprinted. Brown's Southern But, any casual look at Tolson ' s work will confirm reports that he is not digestible in a single reading. Even before the erudition of Libretto and Harlem Gallery, Tolson accustomed himself to the allusion. Indeed, his strongest weapon is the literary or historical reference--the mark of the library poet, the learned person. In "An Ex-Judge at ct,J- .)&til'iieo.se.s the Bar" Tolson is at his finest as he •@wbz ego humor, allusionA 1.ronyt with philosophy and social commentary. bar. This ex-judge is at a "drinking" And rich in oral power, like most of Tolson's poetry, the poem surveys the history of a white 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-One for the you in me and the me in you • • •. reflects the Black American's dexterousness with oral language and Tolson's rich background as storyteller and debate coach. The couplet contains the kind of musical, seemingly non-sensical statement that Black men love to exchange during fierce verbal sparring matches--even though the judge is presumably white . Drunk, the judge re-lives his war experiences and, in a vision, sees the "Goddess Justice" l""~i:u,w'1 ;1~ whom someone "blindfolds/• . .,\the lawyers lie and railroad defendents before him. But Justice "unbandaged" her eyes and accused the judge of lynching a Black man to "gain the judge's seat," even though, ironically, he fought in the last war to "make the world safe for Democracy." The judge, seeking consolation and implying that no one is perfect, is finally moved to self-evaluation, repents and orders �another round of drinks: Bartender, make it straight and make it three-One for the Negro ... one for you and me. "An Ex-Judge at the Bar"--with its ironies and double entemlres in the very title--is a poem that slips away from the reader. never sure, that one has the meaning under control. One thinks, though one is The poem refers to Ceasar, Pontius Pilate, the Koran, the Sahara, "September Morn" (a painting by Paul Chabos), -French language words, Flanders field, and Macduff in Shakespeare's Macbeth. Certainly these are not the ideal ingredients for a poem directed to the "people." On the other hand, for the reader ready to do battle with history and world knowledge, Tolson proves quite rewarding. Dudley Randall ("The Black Aesthetic in Thirties, Forties, and Fifties"--Modern Black Poets) states, with a strained air of seriousness, that: "If the reader has a well-stored mind, or is willing to use dictionaries, encylopedias, atlases, and other reference books," Tolson's work "should present no great difficulty." Randall had in mind, specifically, Libretto, a section of which appeared in Poetry along with the book's preface. In this long poem--constructed loosely around the ode form--Tolson celebrates Liberia's centennial. "Tolson used all the devices dear to the New Criticism: According to Randall, recondite allusions, scraps of foreign languages, African proverbs, symbolism, objective correlatives. Many parts of the poem are obscure, not through some private symbolism of the author, but because of the unusual words, foreign phrases, and learned allusions." Randall goes on to point out that reading Libretto is like reading other "learned poets, such as Milton and T.S. Eliot." However, reading Tolson is not exactly like reading other learned poets, for he places Black information in front of the reader. Ile bends the ode into a~ �' Af"~·Arnq_r-1~&0 ~musical structure and celebrates the Black past. Continuing a pattern set in poems like "Rendezvous with America" and "Dark Symphony," Tolson separates Libretto along lines of theVestern musical scale: Do. Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti, Specifically, Libretto acknowledges the 100th birthday of Liberia, founded in 1847 by the American Colonization Society for free men of color. "Rooted in the Liberian mentality as fact and symbol," Libretto traverses the kaleidoscopic range of African history: the magnificent ancient and Medieval kingdoms, European exploitation, various theories as to the reason for the question-mark-shape of Africa, the origins of Black stereotypes, Africa's contributions to the world, the impact of Christianity, Islam and other religions. All this Tolson does with what Allen Tate calls "a great gift of language, a profound historical sense, a first-rate intelligence." Tate also pondered, as did Emanuel and Gross (Dark Symphony, 1968), "what influence this work will have upon Negro poetry in the United States." More than slightly recalling Howells, in his endorsement of Dunbar, Tate says "For the first time, it seems to me, a Negro poet has assimilated completely the full poetic language of his time and, by implication, the language of the Anglo-American tradition." Relentlessly posing the one-word question "Liberia?" and reinforcing the nation's existence in "fact and symbol," Tolson opens Libretto with lofty erudition and color. The fifth stanza of Do, after the initial "Liberia?" and accompanying recitation of ·what the nation is not, addresses its citizens thusly: ~are Black Lazarus risen from the White Man's grave, .,_Without a road to Downing Street, Without a hemidemisemiquaver in an Oxfordftave! Later in - - sectio,Tolson excerpts a chant from "The Good Gray Bard of �Timbuktu": "Wanawake wanazaa ovyo! Kazi Yenu Wanzungu!" IljlJJQI Hayden has been called one of the most skilled craftsmen since Countee Cullen; but Tolson without a doubt has sustained the most powerful poetry which adheres rigorously to the tenets of the modernists. His Libretto is the drama of "The Desert Fox" and the German "goosestep" across Africa (Mi); of the snake, "eyeless, yet with eyes" (Fa); of "White Pilgrims" and "Black Pilgrims" who sing "O Christ" that the wors'f will "pass!" (Sol); of "Leopard, elephant, ape" and "A white man spined with dreams" (La); of a "Calendar of the Country" to "red-letter the Republic's birth!" (Ti); and of ."a professor of metaphysicotheologicocosmonigology" who is also a tooth puller a pataphysicist in a cloaca of error a belly's wolf a skull's tabernacle a f/13 with stars t-a muses' darling a busie bee de sac et de corde f-a neighbor's bed-shaker a walking hospital on the walk)•.. (;,,,.J. ~,2) The symbols, the syntax, the grammar and the language tumble on placing /-Quai d'Orsay, White House, f-Kremlin, Downing Street. in the catalog• while Again black Aethiop reaches at the sun, 0 Greek. (Ti) The history of world wars, the gossip in high circles ("Il Duce's Whore"), the concoction of enumerable languages and book-buried erudition, reveal Tolson as a complex and difficult modern poet. The tragedy, Randall and others have �pointed out, is that as Tolson wrote Libretto and Harlem Gallery, white scions of the modern verse were turning their backs on erudition for a more common, everyday language in poetry. Trapped in the middle (he held on to Harlem Gallery for more than 30 years), Tolson continued to labor in the best tradition of the modern poetry to the disbelief of contemporaries--who, like Cummings, Rexroth, and Hughes, were influenced by Bfi','op and a freer language structure. Tolson's sustained scholarship and complex allusions are reinforced by the addition of scores of footnotes which cite the works of such as Dryden, Shakespeare, Emerson, Tennyson, Lorenzo Dow Turner (Africanisms in the Gullah Dialects), J.A. Rogers (Sex and Race), V. Firdo~si, Gunnar Myrdal, Aeschylus, Bocca~o, Baudelaire~ and hundreds of others. The work ends (Do) in a use of mystical and technological symbols which examine "Futurafrique" and "tomorrow .•. 0 ... Tomorrow." Tolson's career is a terrifying example of the confusion that can occur in the Black literary artist. When he first sent the manuscript of Libretto to Tate (who was across town at Vanderbilt with the "Fugitive" poets while Tolson was #e while poet at Fis k) , • ,rejected it saying he was not interested in "propanganda from a Negro poet. "1Flasch), 1 E 1 Ji) Tolson then dill igently re-wrote the manuscript . ~u'3(A._.rt to subscribe to the ~~intellectual, technical, and scholarly demands of the modern poets (Tate, John Crowe Ransom, Eliot, Pound, Robert Penn Warren, Donald Davidson, and others). it. He sent the manuscript back to Tate who agreed to endorse In 1920, Tolson had stumbled upon 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--causing him to spend 30 years searching for his own voice. Harlem Gallery (the first of a planned five-volume epic) provides another example of the chaos in Tolson's poetic life. In 1932, he completed a 340-page manuscript called "A Gallery of Harlem Portraits" which was turned down by �publishers. When the derivative ode, Harlem Gallery was finally brought out in Rendezvous and Libretto. 1966, Tolson had published two newer manuscripts: , -th-t poe.-t'l Harlem Gallery had been placed in~ l I 11 ''trunk' for 20 years--a period during which he switched from the Romantics and Victorians (and Masters after whose Spoon River Anthology "Portraits" was modelled) to the Moderns. Tolson said he1!:~ead and absorbed the techniques of Eliot, Pound, Yeats, Baudelaire, Pasternak and, i believe, all the great moderns. God only knows how many " little magazines" I studied, and how much textual analysis (sic) of the New Critics." A staggering poem, Harlem Gallery "is a work of art, a sociological commentary, an intellectual triple somersault." (Flasch) It meets the vigorous intellectual, scholarly, and stylistic whims of modern poetry, but at the same time is "impossible to describe." Yet it is Tolson's crowning achievement in more ways than one. First it continues his fascination with Black and general history. Second, it pursues Tolson's intense interest in both the psycho-dynamics of the Afro-American character and the artist; he is particularly concerned with the plight of the ~ol\ -wieati@ta. century Black artist (hence Book I, The Curator). Third, it provides one of the most powerful and authentic links between the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The very title of Harlem Gallery gives it a Black setting; and the fact of it ' s being conceived and initially drafted during the Renaissance indicates that Tolson labored over the years (from the stand point of memory, technique and subject matter) in the after-glow of the literary f lowering watered by McKay, Cullen, Toomer, Hughes, Fisher, Johnson, and Locke. Fina~ly, the characters in Harlem Gallery are Black: the Curator, Doctor Nkomo (Bantu expatriate and Africanist), Mr. Guy Delaporte (president of Bola Bola Enterprises), Black Orchid (blues-singer and mistress to Delaporte), the �half-blind Harlem artist John Laugart, Black Diamond (ghetto-promoter of the Lenox policy racket), and Hideho Heights (the light-skinned poet of Lenox Avenue). The Curator of the Harlem Gallery is an admixture (continuing concer~begun in Rendezvous) of races ("Afroirishjewish"), 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 those of their race who attempt .to "pass." Tolson noted that since thousands of light-skinned Blacks passed over, there is a standing joke among Blacks which asks "What white man is white?" Harlem Gallery, then, is designed to parade the Black "types" (ultimately everyman types) through the gallery of life as it is shaped by the view of the literary genius: Tolson. Specifically, the book is a hu~ answer to Gertrude Stein's charge that the "Negro suffers from nothingness." Black history. All of his poetic life, Tolson worked to reconstruct Now, in Harlem Gallery, he was coming with speed and poetic pre- cision from his corner of the syntactical and semantical ring to do battle with Stein's charge. In the Introduction to Harlem Gallery, Shapiro explains in part the reason why Gertrude Stein would herself be so ignorant. Whites do not get a chance to read about Black achievement since "Poetry as we know it remains the most lily-white of the arts." Libretto may have pulled "the rug out from under the poetry of the Academy" but "Harlem Gallery pulls the house down around their ears." Assailing Eliot and others for "purifying the language," Shapiro praised Tolson for "complicating it, giving it the gift of tongues." Tolson certainly gave Harlem Gallery the "gift of tongues." He uses tidbits from the range of world languages; but his work is more sustained and coherent than in Libretto. Both story-line and language are more accessible in Gallery-- with its interpolation of rich Black speech and musical terminology into stilted academic language and form. Set up musically, with each section bearing the �Le1Ti oflh~ name of a~Greek /lphabet, Gallery shows Tolson again displaying his amazing technical virtuosity and his merger of the ode form with related Black orally-derived structures: blues, jazz, Spirituals, folk epics and oral narratives esatchmo" in Lambda / ,..,, "The Birth of John Henry" in XI). The verse pattern in Gallery owes some debt to Do in Libretto with its tapered typography and irregular line organization which either forces the reader to speed up or slow down to catch the rhyme. Alpha opens describing the spice of Harlem as "an Afric pepper bird" before the Curator tells us that I travel, from oasis to oasis, man's Saharic up-and-down. The grand sweep and intellectual storage of Tolson are gathered f~om line to line, between lines, in the margins, around and throughout the poem. Recalling the verbal jousting in "An Ex-Judge at the Bar," the Curator assesses his "I-ness," his "humanness" and his "Negroness" and this recipe mixes with the pepper bird's reveille in my brain where the plain is twilled and twilled iA plain. The academic stilts are shortened for the sake of understanding (Beta): one needs the clarity the comma gives the eye, not the head of the hawk 's4wollen with rye. Like Hayden's "Middle Passage," Gallery views the physical and spiritual predicament of the Black man: what has he gone through, how much more can/will he li,w long? The answer is that man may have to endure suffering take, how long? forever--but if he is doomed to suffer, he is likewise "doomed" to survive. The �Curator is told that others have suffered and survived. the artist create in their suffering. ~ mmo.) Cur~ t ells him that: The Afro-American and So the "Afroirishjewish Grandpa" of the UBetween the dead sea Hitherto l-and the promised land Hence looms the wilderness Now: although his confidence is often a boar bailed up on a ridge, somehow, the Attic salt in man survives the blow of Attila, Croesus, Iscariot, t-and the 'lli.tches Sabbath in the Catacombs of ~ Bosio. ✓, ertainly this survival theme is close to the heart of the Afro-American and the artist. Artists are often among the first to ple~ for clemency, for free expression, for truth. The Spirituals and the vast body of ~ folk expression reaffirm the Afro-American's faith in man and the quest for survival. Acknowledging this aspect of Black expression and strength, Tolson (and Hayden: "Mean mean mean to be free.") incorporates the rich blast of ~ folk materials. In heaven (Lambda), Gabriel announces that " I ' d be the greatest trumpeter in the Universe, if old Satchmo had never been born! " And the birth of John Henry is an epic birth--akin to that of Jesus, Buddah, Mdhammed, and others . The night John Henry is born an ax of lightning splits the sky, and a hammer of thunder pounds the earth, �and the eagles and panthers cry! Reciting a soul-food menu at birth, John Henry 1' I want some ham hocks, ribs, and jowls, a ot of cabba some hoecakes, jam, and butter milk, a platter of pork and beans!' ' (!!) Tolson remains at home in synchronizing the Afro-American and Western heritages. In Gallery his forte is still the literary allusion juxtaposed with history or religion (as in Libretto); but he loves to ascend the stu~ Fy mountain of academia 1n,11u and then suddenly drop into the midst of ghetto-'i'rury,_w ii. ~~(Zeta) from thoughts that tilt like "long Napalese eyes" to a "catacomb Harlem flat" (grotesquely vivisected like microscoped maggots) /o the "Elite Chitterling Shop" (Eta) which contains the "variegated dinoceras of a jukebox" (singing the "ambivalence of classical blues"). Meanwhile, Doctor Obi Nkomo, "the alter ego" of the gallery, speaks Across an alp of chitterlings, pungent as epigrams, The Doctor returns to the theme of survival and free expression: d The lie of the artist is the only lie for which a mortal or a god should die. " ever-present need to synthesize (and yet separate) the three ingredients of man {biology, sociology and psychology--extending into the three S's--sight, sound and sense) recur in the poem (Eta) as the artists paint the seven panels of man's trid t' mensionality f--in variforms and varicolors-since virtue has no Kelvin scale l----since a mother breeds J-no twins alike, .•• �and since no man who is 1$!.._judged by his biosocial identity ~to a Kiefekil or a f artufe, an Iscariot or an Iago." tHence Tolson extends, sometimes in camouflf ge, his ideas about man's similarities and differences. different: To be sure, he is saying that Black men and white men are but that the differences are not significant enough to keep them from working together for the mutual good. This particular stand, which laces the work of Hayden, Tolson, Hughes and early Gwendolyn Brooks, is not one that will remain popular among poets who subscribe to the Black Aesthetic of the 1960s. N~vertheless Tolson dug underneath the hysteria and the ideological neatness to probe the time-honored questions about man. Gallery) finds Psi (a much-anthologized section of b ~~ doing battle with anthropologists, the D.A.R., the F.F.V. (First Families of Virginia), Uncle Tom, the Jim Crow Sign, the Great White World, and Kant, in an attempt to answer the question "Who is a Negro?" and "Who is a White?" '/lrolson ' s work contains great satire; and great wisdom in the satire. To be misled by his incredible and dazzling wor{ play is to miss the essential Tolson who warned the coming generation that, although Uncle Tom was "dead," they should beware of his son--"Dr. Thomas." Suspicious of fame and wealth and desiring to see no ~f4)laced over another (in, privileb;e), Tolson remarked after John Laugart's murde1{ that among those things remaining Clad infamy, the ~iamese twin -- o f fame. �Are we priviledged, here, to see a sneak (30-year~ ) preview of Watergate? We do not know what would have been Tolson ' s fate as a poet had he come to his own comfortable style as a young man in the Harlem Renaissance. nearly fifty when he sent Tate the manuscript for Libretto. , He was fty oll is quite an Aage for a poet to be still at odds with his craft--or to have _.. f(.l~wj,n-' work over-seen by aAcritic. tt Nevertheless Tolson, not admitted (as Shapiro noted of Black poets), to the "polite company of the anthology, " had to get his voice imtttEt:il4tt ~,:idnt>.et4l~nl em'ifidnal (JfJJ,;, "together" without the/'.aid available to the "Fugitives" or those in/\molding ofjh~ Few Black poets at the time were attempting Tolson ' s I 1n GIt (t in pt1J;y BlacksA-had J 1 12214 declined during the forties centers , , . modern poetry . feat l9f!••t•2•;•1111■--.:g •·-•*-•--•L and fifties--and there is much evidence that Tolson generally intimidated other Black scholars and intellectuals with his vast knowledge and great talents . Like poets of other generations, he was a part-time poet, expending much of his energies on students and school-related work. Randall has pointed out that unless Black poets imitate Tolson--and thus keep him apparent and interesting--he will not exert a major influence on Afro-American poetry . But, as Barksdale and Kinnamon note, a poet of Tolson ' s range and power ca0ot go unnoticed for long . Criticism of Tolson is sparse . Tw V f United States Authors Series, Joy Flasch's Melvin B. Tolson, in the offers good insights into Tolson ' s techniques. Barksdale and Kinnamon give brief criticism in Black Writers of America . Randall appraises him in the article on Black poets of three decades following the ..... onteur," Renaissance in his "Portrait of the Poet as Rai (January, 1966) 54-57. Negro Digest, XV, 3 See also "A Poet ' s Odyssey," an interview with Tolson (conducted by M. W. King) in Anger, and Beyond (1966) ~ j\tviews Lte.be . . mo..~) f: ~Lee,. EQT _8sue rsl 1usss; Margaret Walker ' s poetry and life provide a rich and J,y rewarding jolt in the writing activity of this period: her For My People (1942) i blo �was the first book of poetry by a Black woman since Georgia Douglas l Johnson's volumes of the twenties; the poetry departed in theme and technique from the prevailing mood of poetry by Black women; and she had the rare opportunity to imo~o"A~ le, t-A1it-fli1e cfuring her most -f ~ rcirf years, with such Chicago-based writers as Wright, Davis, Fenton Johnson, and T: g tn u Hughes. Like other writers of the era, her experiences included the Depression, World War II and McCarthyism--along with various racial and politically radical perspectives on contemporary life. Margaret Walker was born in Birmingham, Alabama, the daughter of a Methodist minister father and a school teacher mother, both university graduates. She attended church schools in Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisian1;,eaie•• receiving her B.A. from Northwestern University in 1935. m1@i wlitsn going }41w1111<e.• ts wrJ ~ 1e • next four~ years as a typist, newspaper reporter, editor of a short-lived magazine, . fM'\Q WAi4ht and with the Federal Writers' Project (like Hayde~ in Chicago. In 1939 she entered the University of Iowa (after short stints as a social worker in Chicago and New Orleans) where she received an .LA . in 1940, her thesis being a collection of poems. ~ She jjaall, obiained ~ / \Ph.D. in creative writing from Iowa in 1965 a., after submitting Jubilee, a novel, in lieu of ...,.Adissertation. Jubilee received the Houghton Mifflin Literary Award in 1966 and has been translated into several languages. 8,c~ I qc.,.o ~ I '- t'" - Margaret Walker (Mrs. Firnist· ~ James Alexander and the mother of four children) was~ professor of English at Livingston College in North Carolina, received the Yale Younger Poets award in 1942 (For My People), was awarded a Rosenwald Fellowship for Creative Writing (1944), served as visiting professor at Northwestern University, and became a member of the English faculty at Jackson State College where she is currently director of the Institute for the Study of History, Life, and Culture of Black �People (since 1969). Arthur P. Davis says that "Miss Walker is a better poet than she is a novelist," and one can hardly quarrel with him . . . h. quality of poetry in In addition to For My People, she has sustained a I Prophets for a New Day (1970) and October Journey (1973)--both published by 4 Randall's ~ Broadside Press in Detroit . 3 Although some of the poems in Prophets for a New Day were begun in the thirties and forties, "most of them," according to the poet, were written during the sixties. them in Chapter VI. SY Srief comment will be made on f "For My People," the title poem of her first book, first Told by Owen Dodson at a College Language Association meeting (Howard University, in 1942) that she was winning the Yale Younger Poets Award, . . he~ ' 7Fio..i s"1-e that she "had not even submitted11..;;"--manuscript 'and ~ ~ · \,,.er,-.\.IOLv,.,..e. Ila ghe had won and · • ' she recalls ' thought he was crazy." . t(included a sensitive Forward by Stephen Vincent Ben~t who praised her "Straight-forwardness, directness, reality," and noted that such qualities are "good things to find in a young poet." ' Benet also observed that: It is rarer to find them combined with a controlled intensity of emotion and a language that, at times, even when it is most modern, has something of the surge of biblical poetry. And it is obvious that Miss Walker uses that language because it comes naturally to her and is a part of her inheritance. Indeed "inheritance" is the key word to unlocking the fruits and juices of Margaret Walker ' s poetic storeroom. Her own experiences, as the daughter of religious parents , of growing up in the South, of being nurtured on the oral tradition, of developing a careful and sympathetic ear for the folk expressions, are all served up again through the poet's "honesty," "sincerity," "candor " and �tremendous technical abilities . Margaret Walker ' s verse does not employ the ().., oblique , ~btruse, and learned scalings sometimes evident in Hayden and Tolson . And she is quite at the oppo s ite end of t he spectrum from the lady- like lyrics of her predecessors: and Ann}Sp encer, Gwendolyn Bennett/\ Alic e Dunbar Nelson. . . Indeed when· ·measured against the tradition establ ished by most of · She :.. certainly her female prede-cesso~s, her work is startling. ,\ · bears some kinship to her forer unners-sisters--especially to Frances Harpe r, in theme and usage- - but her language, lines, and narration are more .related to the work of Black poets Fenton Johnson, Wright, James Weldon Johnson, H ghes and Davis, and white r poets Masters, Linds~t and Sandburg. During an exchange with Nikki Giovanni (A Poetic Equation: Between Nikki Giovanni and Mar garet Wal ker, 1974) 'V~a.ttet alker But to get back to this business of language . Convers ations sai d : In the twenties and thirties, for the firs t time we had the use of black speech from the streets . We were responsible for that particular urban idiom going int o the American language. ~ /\. ; i"kk.i G.iovanni. answere d wit . h '!- perceptive . . ,L se.rvr1ii6,,,• ••111&~!E!lc•••--••iw..t•Or.> • It was the first time because we were becoming urban . I think one of the things we forget when we start out critiques is that we could not have had a street language earlier . been plantation and southern and rural . Speech had And as we move to the cities during the ~igration period , we developed a street language . M,i~tre t "I think that ' s an important .point , " 'iiiiihAYlalker noted, moving on to indebt herself and the whole modern Black poetic folk tradition to Hughes . So it is clear that Margaret Walker, the southerner , gleaned from Blacks "up" South. (North) the kinds of rich linguistic complements needed to draw the magnificent portraits in �For Ny People. The title poem sets the tone of the book and establishes the poet's intellectual, aesthetical, philosophical and historical considerations: the acquisition and employment of knowledge of her past; the exhortation of her people ("The Struggle Staggers Us" but "Out of this blackness we must struggle forth"); the celebration, specifically, of the Black folk heritage and language; esteem for her religious (especially supernatural) and spiritual needs. Revealing in both its style and its content, "For My People" is a majestic poem containing "'"tol.soniA.I) P the now-famous Whitman sweep of words and ideas with aa4ordering JA the disorder: For my people everywhere singing their slave songs repeaf~ their dirges and their ditties and their blues anaJjubilees, praying their prayers nightly to an unknown/god, bending their knees humbly to an unseen power; Continuing from this first stanza (note the similarity to Fenton Johnson's) the poem views "my people" adding their "strength" to the "gone years" and the "now years." It sees them, as it traverses the physical and spiritual history of Blacks, as "playmates" in Alabama "clay and dust;" as "black and poor and small and differentl5') as youths who "grew" to "marry their playmates" and "die of consumption~ as "thronging 47th Street in Chicago and Lenox Avenue in New York and Rampart Street in New Or leans\)') as),"walking blind 1y spreading j oy" ; as blundering and groping and floundering{_;," as "preyed on by facile force of state and fad and/novelty, by false prophet and holy believer\J)and "as all the adams and eves." Finally, in the last stanza, she gives this ringing cry for a more aggressive Black push: �Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born. a bloody/peace be written in the sky. Let Let a second generation/full of courage issue forth; let a people loving free7dom come to growth. ' Let a beauty full of healing/and a strength of final clenching be the pulsing in/our spirits and our blood. Let the martial songs be/written, let the dirges disappear. Let a race of men now rise and take controL For My People is a small book (only 26 poems) but it is one of the most influential by a Black poet .,"Dark Blood" follows the opening poem, reaffirming Margaret Walker's belief in the "forms of things unknown"--as Wright it. "Bizarre beginnings in old lands" constituted the "making of me." succulent imagery unfolds: putS Giliiill• Luscious, "sugar sands," "fern and pearl," "Palm jungles," "wooing nights,' in contrast to the "one-room shacks of my old poverty." But the "blazing suns" of the poet's conjured up birthplace will help reconcile the pride and pain in me. Strongly reminiscent of the Renaissance poets' infatuation with Africa, but ending on the realistic note of the poet's localized "poverty," "D..:trk Blood" I certainly meets with Ben~t's notion of "reality." The skepticism, the doubt, the scent of sacrilige--found from Dunbar forward-bring tension to "We Have Been Believers": ••• believing in our burdens and our demigods too long . And now (recalling Dunbar's "Sympathy"), the "fists" of the believers "bleed" against the bars with a strange insistency. The str engt h , begun in the first poem, is carried through "Southern Song" and �"Sorrow Home." With incantation and incremental refrain "Delta" tells of the collective "struggle." Strains of "Believers" course through "Since 1619" where the poet again re-traces the Black odyssey: How long have I been hated and hating? The speaker, longing to see the rich "color" of a "brother's face," assails racism, poverty, i gnorance, violence, and laments spiritual desolation. War, poverty, disease and other heirs of the Depression are the themes of "Today" which speaks of "children scarred by bombs," "lynching," and "pellagra and silicosis." A different "stride" of this poet is seen in the second section of For My People. "Molly Means," "Bad-Man Stagolee," "Poppa Chicken," "Kissie Lee," "i alluh Hammuh," "Two-Gun Buster and .Trigger Slim," "Teacher," "Gus, the Lineman," "Long John Nelson and Sweetie Pie," and "John Henry" are fresh treatments of authentic stories from Black communities in· America. "A hag and a witch," Molly Means had seven husbands and Some say she was born with a veil -on her face .••. The incremental refrain ("Old Molly, Molly, Molly," etc.) gives dramatic and psychological power to the poem as Holly's work with the "black-hand arts and her evil powers" are catalogued. Stagolee, apparently "an all-right lad," Till he killed that cop and turned out bad, quite possibly had killed "mor'n one" white man. The "bad nigger" type found in all Black communities is the portrait drawn of Stagolee: Wid dat blade he wore unnerneaf his shirt •••• Stagolee mysteriously disappe:@, though his "ghost still" stalks the shore of the Mississippi River. Poppa Chicken was a pimp who, in the American tradition of Black-on-Black crime, "got off light" for killing a man, and Bought his pardon in a year; •.• �Also a Black prototype, he had plenty women ("gals for miles around"), expensive rings and watches, fancy clothes , displayed a coolness ("Treat 'em rough"), and when he walked the streets The Gals cried Lawdy! Lawd! Kissie Lee is a throw back to Ha-rd Hearted Hannah (who would "pour water on a drowning man,"): She could shoot glass doors offa the hinges, .•. f,u. luh Hammuh recalls Dolemite , Shine and others. He was so "bad" that He killed his Maw of fright •••• The cultural folk types parade before our eyes, much after the fashion of "Slim" and other characters in Sterling Brown's Southern Road. Margaret Walker ' s con- tribution, as does Brown ' s, lies also in the area of history and linguistics: for both are chroniclers of such. But ■ II 45'4~ I for the verse forms to convey Black folklife. 'P•"'i~1Ql 0~ WU't'\e,v. IV\ ~~p,ems. 11 " surpasses Brown in her search A-. ll ~-er-o I lr-QntC(l Yf Y~ 1,ri \.- ,s Little. um«.llJflf;, Big John Henry tales can be found in practically every American community. Margaret Walker places her man in Mississippi where he feasted on "buttermilk and sorghum. 11 As a Big Boy type (Wright, Hughes and others), he assaults the world through physical prowess. He is the best cotton picker, stronger than a "team of oxen," the champion boxer; he can anchor down a steam boat with "one hand," is taught by the "witches" how to "cunjer," and is undaunted until a "ten-poun ' hammer" split "him open . " The ballad, appropriately, is the primary form of the poems in this section. The third section of the book contains six sonnets, capturing remembrances and vignettes. The poet brings her own rhyme scheme, stanzaic pattern and line-stress variations to these pieces. "Childhood" recalls that of all the many human and natural pestilences that invaded the lives of the poor, including �the "hatred" that "still held sway," •.• only bitter land was washed away. "Whores" are told that their labors are ~ndignified and warned (a dash of deep-woman concern •.• feminism?) that as they grow older they will find that their bodies, in this world of turbulence, will neither give "peace" to men nor "leave them satisfied." Ending, rightly it seems, with "Struggle Staggers Us," For My People reminds Blacks that there is room to "stagger" but none to halt: Strugglr between the morning and night. This marks our years; this settles, too, our plight. There are few volumes of poetry published since For My People that can be con- o.r-1 sidered • e.r Blac\~-in the complex sense of the word. From the red clay of the children's playgrounds to the teeming treachery of urban fusilages; from the quiet fear to the piercing cry of the hungry; from the deeply (unquestioning) religious to the iconoclastic and the heretic; from the healthy racial to the good dose of modesty and naivete--it is all here. A wonderful sensitivity and a rich bank of poetry for all times. A link to the writers of the Renaissance, Margaret Walker has had contact with the twenties poets like Hughes, Bontemps, Fenton Johnson and Gwendolyn Bennett, as well as with later bards: Danner, Margaret Burroughs and Tolson. Dodson, Hayden, Gwendolyn Brooks, Margaret For My People, in the end, stands as the rich digestion (synthesis) of the main currents of the Renaissance and the aesthetic considerations being debated by Locke, Cullen, Johnson, Brown and Redding. wd-ker. Margaret~may have produced the volume of poetry many of the older writers wanted to write. Without being self-effacing or "unrealistic" about her plight as an Afro-American, she poetically reconstructed one of the most balanced pictures �of ~ Black humanity without lessening or profaning her obvious self-love . ~~A\V\~ J Brodn, in Southern Road, avoided even mentioning Africa--perhaps f\ the romantic escapades of some Renaissance poets . -1h1on1' 11 /l,,J b-e CA.u~e he.. Wlt.4 ,wew--.r O s• PUS Op i~u $ Pfat.loJ.. However, he deserves no/\.praise ,,,,.,, "' for that aspect of his ~ - I\Tolson and Haydent (both~~d:11-11111!1'4: poets) we.re oPterl poised in the wings which often required a signal from the academy before they could "slip the eagle ' s claw. " Hore critical assessment of Margaret Walker ' s work is needed. and KiHnamon make important comments in their anthology . Barksdale A Poetic Equation (Giovanni and Walker, 1974) is extremely helpful in getting to the grit of the poet's ideas. There are seminal comments in Paula Giddings ' "A Shoulder Hunched Against a Sharp Concern ' : Some Themes in the Poetry of Hargaret Walker," Black World, XXI (~ecember, 1971), 20-25 . _Liter atµ+:~, See also Whitlow's Black American Young's Black Writers of the Thirties, essay in Black Poetry in America, Jackson's •!J!J!I• Gibson's Hodern · Black Poets, and Gross'• Dark Symphony, Negro Caravan, Redmond's "The Black American Epic: Emmanuel's Davis '• From the Dark Tower, Its Roots and Its Writers/' Contemporary Black Thought (Chrisman and Hare), 9t ti a1 Henderson ' s Understanding the New Black Poetry, and Gayle's Black Expression and The Black AesthetLc. the most celebrated Black poet of all times, 1 Gwendolyn Brooks~ continues to make her home in Chicago where she presides as ~Ldt"' Sfll-ff$UifOMM of the New Black Poetry. She joins Tolson, Hayden, Randall, Margaret Walker and others as poets of "transition"--those who helped continue the literary light of the Renaissance into and through t he Depression, World War II, Civil Rights and Black Powerism . Born the daughter of laboring-class parents in Topeka, Kansas, Gwendolyn Brooks was reared in Chicago where she attended public schools, f �graduat i ng from Englewood High School in 19 34 and Wilson Junior College i n 1936 . Wilson represented the final step in her f ormal educa t ion and in 1939 she married Henry Blakely • i ur ,Pt -wen&> off S S he had a son and a daughter . • i, .·lft-too ~ be9CA.tt wtsi 11111 ,oe1t.y ttt#ae "'JfAand by the time she was in her late teens she had published two mimeographed community newspapers-one being the Champlain Weekly . numerous publications : Since the early 1940s her poetry has appeared in Poetry, Black World, Common Ground, Saturday Review of Literature , Negro Story, Atlantic ~1onthly, and countless others. jolted tbe Jiterani and i.a P a tbs 1 OS Os lat ¢ 6£22 lilbid II :: 1111 i ,is dnatcs when sl ,"" b dag & t Ia ■ a r r1 moo€ ii bill HJ£ Ph Jiid llOii 00111 be S&1d abb&C Eli@§@ llidCC@IS Iii caapca I igaif · l!S Dks l i .,;<c • t shifts Rrndcid "'; 61.• Her first book of poetry , A Street in Bronzeville (1945), won the Merit Award of Madamoiselle magazine and her second volume , Annie Allen (1949~ garnered for her the coveted Pulitzer Prize (1950) as well as Poetry's Eunice Tietjens Memorial Award . The recipient of a $1 , 000 award from the Academy of Arts and Letters and two Guggenheim fellowships for study (1946 and 1947), Gwendolyn Brooks' f list of awards and citations is so long it would take s.everal p.ages to list; them all. She has received over a dozen honorary doctorate degrees , served on special arts and cultural councils, been listed among the most influential and important Americans in numberless compilations , regional, and national acknowledgements. FIi i . She has won the Poetry Workshop Award, given by the Midwestern Writers' Conference (three times: 1943-45), the Friends Literature Award for Poetry (1964), the Thormond Monsen Award for Literature (1964) . --..ln1969 sbe announced that she would award two prizes of $250 each to the best poem and best short story published each year by a Black writer in Negro Digest (now Black World). Institutions where she has taught �include Columbia, Elmhurst, and Northeastern Illinois State College, all in Chicago; the University of Wisconsin, the College of the City of New York, and many other public and private schools. For some, however, her crowning achieve- ment was her selection in 1968 as Poet Laureate of the state of Illinois (succeeding Carl Sandburg). Other volumes of poetry are The Bean Eaters (1960), Selected Poems (1963), In the Mecca (1968), Riot (1969), Family Pictures (1970), Aloneness (1971) and The World of Gwendolyn Brooks (1971, poetry and prose) . include A Portion of the Field: and For Illinois, (1968). Special publications the Centennial of the Burial of Lincoln (1967) The poet has also written some much-praised poetic Maud Martha, ..a,~ (1953) and Bronzeville Boys and Girls (1956). fiction: Her work as an editor has been equally impressive: and Jump Bad: A New Chicago Anthology (1971). A Broadside Treasury (1971) Her pre-Black Movement poetry is most readily accessible in Selected Poems which contains her three earlier books and a~~ section. Selected Poems shows 8 2 1&1511 Pr~ brooking the stream between the integrationist-plea-bound writers and the firm, acrid, and adamant voices of the 1960s. Sometimes called the "most careful craftsman since Countee Cullen," she was (and to some extent remains) greatly indebted to the modernist school of America n poetry: Eliot, Pound, Crane, Ransom, Joyce (influenced, as she says, by The Dubliners), Stevens, Frost, and Auden. Reading these poets and the Black « 1hl ones (Dunbar, "a family favorite," Hughes, Cullen, Johnson, and othe~Renaissance) fAI ..JII) f r ~ 1 I d her w·.-....,.•·• -••11t ~"ovioed development and ~igti i f ic ant choices. results were a bewildering array of technical proficiencies for the thematic and psychological_. l~v-i,Ls tin her poetry. u.y which'(: , d l The a base Usually working with what George Kent calls appropriate "distance," this poet carefully sculpts �poetic gems from the granite and the cheap rock of urban Black America's experience: tenement housing, returning unsung war heroes, joblessness, con- sumption, murder, endless poverty, love, man-woman relationships, womanhood and motherhood (especially), nobility of the economically-pressed and deep religious devotion. fuw&iJ.t/.(~ Commenting on the effect of the distance and what ~/(Brooks was able to perceive and achieve with it, Kent says (Blackness and the Adventure of Western Culture) she mastered .•. such modernist techniques as irony; unusual conjunctions of words to evoke a complex sense of reality (Satin Legs Smith rising "in a clear delirium"); squeezing the utmost from an image ... , agility with mind-bending figurative language, sensitivity to the music of the phrase, instead of imprisonment in traditional line beats and meter; experimentation with the possibilities of free verse and various devices for sudden emphasis and verbal surprise; and authoritative management of tone and wide-ranging lyricism. And one is struck, in reading, watching, or talking with the poet, by her intense, yet relaxed love-affair with words. Her prose is poetic; her manner is poetic. 1/.rn Report from Part One, her autobiography, she discusses her life as poet, mother, wife and traveler. There are valuable insights into the woman who shifted from "Negro" to "Black" in 196 7. a dozen poems. Report also pr/\vides her own explication of at least About poetry writing she says: So much is involved in the writing of poetry--and sometimes, although I don't like suggesting it is a magic process, it seems you really have to go into a bit of a trance, self-cast trance, because "brainwork" seems unable to do it all, to do the whole job. The self-cast trance is possible when you are �importantly excited about an idea, or sumise, or emotion. Certainly the "trance" quality is found in the early and later Gwendolyn Brooks. One has only to compare a poem like "the preacher: ruminates behind the sermon" (A Street in Bronzeville) to "Malcolm X" (In the Mecca) to see the staying power of the mystic, the seer and the entrancer. vibrant yet static poetic sculpture. Bronzeville is a It came in 1945 under the influence of _;:Fm the poet's wide reading and experimenc'"8. James Weldon Johnson had helpfully critiqued her work and the results, she acknowleges, were that she became a surer, more precise poet and critic. The couple in the "kitchenette building" are products of "dry hours and the involuntary plan" who smell "yesterday's garbage" in the hall. After the fifth child has finally emerged from the bathroom We think of lukewarm water, hope to get it. The memorable poems in Bronzeville are "the mother," "the preacher," "of De Witt Williams on his way to Lincoln Cemetery," "The Sundays Of Satin-Legs Smith," "the ballad of choco late Mabbie," and selections from a series of sonnets called GAY CHAPS AT THE BAR. The mother recalls abortions: You remember the children you got that you did not get, and pledges her love to the dead children. she "loved" them "all." Even though she knew them "faintly" Taken from their "unfinished reach," the aborted lives "never giggled or planned or cried." Ruminating "behind the sermon" the preacher--revealing deepening levels of concern and psychic distress--wonders how it feels "to be God." The god of the world the preacher discusses from the pulpit is perhaps not the god of the "real" �world. Consequently the preacher "ruminates" on whether anyone will Buy Hirn a Coca-Cola or a beer, Pooh-pooh His politics, call Him a fool? Being god has to be lonely, "Without a hand to hold." ~e Witt Williams is carried to the cemetery behind the refrain: Swing low swing low sweet sweet chariot. Nothing but a plain black boy. li!f.: W e know ; he may have been anything other than plain. But if he were just "a plain black boy" we will celebrate the places where he hung out (pool hall, show, dance halls, whiskey stores) and was known (47th street, under the "L"). De Witt's journey is the Black American (south to north) ody ssey depicted by it ~ Wright, Baldwin, Claude Brown, and company: Born in Alabama. Bred in Illinois. Ile was nothing but a Plain black boy. Satin Legs Smith is another cut off the block of the Black Experience. In immortalizing him, CJ 8e.sfkie,~oins a host of Black bards, known and "unknown," who have acknowledged the importance and influence of folk culture. Probably like De Witt Williams, Smith comes from a "heritage of capbage and pigtails." He is reminiscent - t:oppa Chicken (of ~ Hargare~lker~} . ag s The analogy, in the opening lines, is to a cat who is "tawney, reluctant, royal." Rising in the morning Satin Legf s relfes himself of "shabby days" when he "sheds" his pajamas. He bathes, puts on the best body scents, and goes to a wardrobe that, when listed, sounds like a replay of the whole era of the zoot-suiter and the Be-boppers: diamonds, pearls, suits of yellow, wine, "Sarcastic green," �I) and "zebra-stripfed cobalt,"; wide shoulder padding, ballooning trousers that ....;,,,/ taper, hats that resemble umbrellas, and "hysterical ties." He is enmeshed in his image and blots out the reminders of poverty and ugliness. does not hear"; "sees and does not see." He "hears and Loving his music and his lady, he takes his date to "Joe's Eats" after which he retires (at home) to her body-"new brown bread ... soft, and absolute." It is a mosaic-like study complete with the down-home versus Promised Land theme. t< The Negro Hero/( ("to suggest Dorie Miller": a World War II Navy cook turned hero) "had to kick" white men's "law into their teeth" before he could "save them." Being Black, it was not safe, even in the thick and thin of battle when the ship was going down, to come up from the galley and save the white sailors. Instead of jumping over-board and leaving them to their fate, like Shine, this hero invoked their "white-gowned democracy" and fought at their side despite ~ 1:S 4 rfe-he-:,hte.d. •~statement by a southern white man:fia' Indeed, I'd rather be dead; Indeed, I'd rather be shot in the head Or ridden to waste on the back of a flood Than saved by the drop of a black man's blood. "Negro Hero" symbolically reflects the Black American doing his duty, believing in Christianity and Democracy, to the best of his American self. As a theme, the idea was lofsing ground among Black writers; but it would be some years before ~ resentment of such "heroics" would be blatantly expressed. Experimental "soldier sonnets" appear in the final section of Bronzeville (GAY CHAPS AT THE BAR). In "gay chaps at the bar" the soldiers' training does not prepare them to repel air attacks, e- To holler down the lions in th~ air • . �In "the progress" the phrase is questionable when the soldiers hear the march Of iron feet again. The Pulitzer Prize-winning Anni~ . Alleu shows Gwendolyn Brooks sustaining her balance between the modernist influences and her own intuitional phrasings and interest. Some might call it the least Black of her volumes especially since it contains the enigmatic and diffusive "The Anniad." And while her "children of the poor" series re-states the plight of the "unheroic," she is nevertheless generally more withdrawn than in Bronzeville. Yet the titles of both volumes signal her continuing interest in, and empathy with, "every day people." In her first volume, she had written extensively about women ("the mother," "choce late ~bbie," "the hunchback") and she opens Annie Allen ~ with NOTES FROM THE CHILDHOOD AND THE GIRLHOOD. deal with a neat life in "the parents: Her neat words and stanzas people like our marriage." "white Venetia tl blind" sits "pleasant custards." Behind a "Sunday Chicken" is a humorous comparison between carnivores who eat human flesh and those who eat chicken. Iler excavating of poetic jewels from non-hero types takes her through the death of an "old relative," and "the ballad of late Annie," too "proud" to find a man good enough to marry. The reader is encouraged to avoid easy solutions in "do not be afraid of no": It is brave to be involved, To be not fearful to be unresolved. And condescending people in high stations are brought low in "pygmies are pygmies still, though percht on Alps." · The high and mighty sometimes feel they are better than others, and ~--=•-- Pity the giants wallowing on the plain. But unbeknowing to the "percht" individuals "'e. "no alps to reach." �~"THE ANNIAD" contains 43 seven-line stanzas, adapted, so Miss Brooks says, from the Chaucerian Rhyme Royal. As a modern poem, it places the author in the 111t1,.y middle of the modernist tradition with other Black poets: • M1U.ea. Hayden, Dodso~,cnd ,u,l"IOWUJ O'fhfN. Tolson~ .. At l east on· e level o f comp 1 en· t y is · revea1 ed in the app earance of '" words and phrases like: "paradisaical," "thaumaturgic lass," "theopathy," and references to "Prophesying hecatombs," "Hyacinthine devils sing," /\Plato," "Aeschylus," "Seneca," "Mimnerrnus," "Plin'f' and "Dionysus ." the poet ' s own admission, "THE ANNIAD" is " labored, a poem that ' s very interested in the mysteries and magic of technique . " With Hayden ' s "The Diver," the poem carries you deeper and deeper into the underbrush . . of self and psyche. Annie becomes Anniad, the poet ' s way of giving another unheroic character id the stature of the heroic--this time the Iliad. ¥ When you think of Annie (Anniad) you are told to Think of sweet and choco late, .•. The blurred imagery and perceptions of Hayden's diver is again anticipated in the line What is ever and is not . (Remember Satin Legs hearing and not hearing, seeing and not seeing?) Full of magic, history, lore, mythology, supernaturalism, "THE ANNIAD" plunges through the mental and spiritual spheres, and "crescendo-comes," Surrealist and cynical . Anniad is needed, hungry, courted, and won, as she descends and ascends the "demi-gloom" of life, of now and then . Just as you were to Think of sweet and choco late at the beginning of the poem, you are to Think of almost thoroughly Derelict and dim and done. �as the poem closes. And, perhaps it was all--after all--a dream as Anniad stands Kissing in her kitchenette t The minuets of memory. APPENDIX TO THE ANNIAD includes the now-famous invention, "the sonnet-ballad," in title and in type. The traditional sonnet is enlivened--given a ballad stance and temperament; the young woman whose soldier-boyfriend is dead wonders what she can use "an empty heart-cup for:J CThe achievement of Annie Allen, however, is THE WOHANHOOD and especially the five sonnets on "the children of the poor." Childless people "can be hard" since they will not, like those with children, Hesitate in the hurricane to guard. In number two, a mother as ks what she can give to poor children. The fourth sonnet, seeking perhaps to resolve the surreal dream, advises the poor to "First fight. Then fiddle." There is nothing wrong with rising "bloody," For having first to civilize a space Wherein to play your violin with grace. It is t he same unmuted call to militancy rendered by Margaret Walker in the final stanza of "For My People. ,ff'i/Beverly HillS, Chicago" takes an interesting look, through Black and poor eyes, at the people who "live till they have white hair." To say Beverly Hills anywhere is to evoke images of splendor and richness, of glitter and high life. The denizens of Chicago's Beverly Hills "walk their golden gardens" as the poor sight-seers drive through the neighborhood. the "ripeness rots" though "not raggedly." Decadence is neat, says the poet: •.. Not that anybody is saying that these people have no trouble. Herely that it is trouble with a gold-flecked beautiful banner. Here �The poem's theme is one that is dear to Blacks in their daily conversations: that whites, especially rich whites, do not really live; that they are mannikins, (/Jlt/,.Q fif.'s" for the well-landscaped life; that they are inhibited and not free in their expressions. These people, the poet reminds us, also "cease to be," and sometimes Their passings are even more painful than ours. But they often live "till their hair is white." They also make "excellent corpses," as it were, "among the expensive flowers." Nevertheless the poor sight-seers have been changed, noticeably, by what they have seen, and the change t}\e- is noted in~'little gruff" tone5 of their voices as they "drive on." The Bean Eaters finds the poet leaping back into the transitional breach where sh:'fo':s battle with problems and enemies of the unheroic. She gathers up the pride, passion, despair, disillusionment, joy and anguish of "bean eaters" and related gourmets. The book opens with an elegy to her father ("In Honor of WAik,,. l.4M$T.,, David Anderson Brooks, Hy Father") and, reflecting debts to Margare, . \Huglfes, /ivil fights, Black music, and the Beat Hovement, moves through a tumultuous spectrum of vignettes and perceptio~s: "My Little 'Bout-Town Gal," "Strong Men, Riding Horses," "We Real Cool," "A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi." "Meanwhile, A Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon, " "The Last Quatrain of the Ballad of Emmett Till," "The Chicago Defender Sends a Han to Little Rock," "The Crazy Woman," and the powerful saga "The Ballad of Rudolph Reed." The death of David Henderson Brooks has left A dryness upon the house •••. Absence of the man, who "loved and tended," gives the poet pause, makes her recall how he translated "private charity" of the old time religion into "public love." �The narrator's "'bout-town gal" gallavants with "powder and blue dye" while he waits with the moon. Watching the western movies, the speaker in "Strong Men, Riding" (not reminiscent of Brown's poem) realizes that the westerns are products of Hollywood, that the strong men are "Too saddled." Meanwhile the speaker has to deal with real life--the fears, the dark, and is "not brave at all." The irony, of course, is that the viewer is often braver. Eating beans "mostly," the "old yellow pair" in "The Bean Eaters" putter around their apartment, recalling their lives "with twinklings and twinges." Desolation and tragedy of another kind comes to the dramatis person{of "We Real Cool" in which the poet employs a Hughesian jazz pattern with jagged rhythms reminiscent of Beat poetry, Babs Gonzales and King Pleasure. The poem recites the "live-fast-die young" pattern of many urban Black youths: We real cool. Left school. Lurk late. We We We Strike straight. Sing sin. We Thin gin. We Jazz June. We We Die soon. The longest poem in The Bean Eaters ("A Bronzeville Mother Loiters In Mississippi. Meanwhile, A Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon.") is a collage of journalism, day-dreams, fairy-tale history, and racial horror. The mother of slain 14-year old Ennnett Till (lynched in 1955 in Mississippi after allegedly �making "passes" at a white housewife) toys over the remains of her son and her damaged faith; at the same time a white "mOther" (victim) muses over the "crime" and recollects childhood fairytales of the "Dark Villain" pursuing the "milk-white maid" (rescued by the "Fine Prince"). The white mother 11•111•••••-•• dares to doubt the need to lynch young Emmett as she imagines she is sexually assaulted by the "Dark Villian." The poem9 includes news reports of the crime, the lynching, as well as accounts of the tr~l and the "acquittal." In "The Last Quatrain of the Ballad of Emmett Till" Emmett's mother "kisses her killed boy" while sitting in "a red room" and "drinking black coffee." mother's grief, the poet gathers Unable to describe the the blurring pain into a metaphor: Chaos in windy grays through a red prairie. In Again combfng journalism, history and mythology with "contemporary fact," Gwendolyn Brooks portrays one of the high points of the fivil ;{ights era in "The Chicago Defender Sends a Nan to Little Rock" (1957). People in Little Rock, the poet tells us in the opening lines, have babies, comb their hair, and read the papers like other Americans. She then etches out the contradictions and ironies in the "Soft women softly" who "are hurling spittle, rock." These "bright madonnas," like those with "eyes of steely blue" in McKay's "The Lynching," become "a coiling storm a-writhe." The last line of the poem, e . The loveliest lynche~• was our Lord. e toet1now s nkts has since been repudiatedjlllllJIWIII• "~ r slavery and dehumanizF feels that the greatest tragedy, of Blacks, makes for more important and urgent "news" than the crucifixion of a white Jesus. ~ ..I-the book Later, in ~he~sectli1)f' a woman who refuses to sing in May because she feels A May song should be gay. �D is admonished, after she ch'}fes to sing a "gray" song in November. her "The Crazy Woman. •1one Critics call of the more well known poems in Bean Eaters is "The Ballad of Rudolph Reed" who, along with his wife, son and "two good girls," was "oaken." Rudolph Reed, seeking the Promised Land in the , orth and riding on the crest of the new push for integration, buys a home in a white neighborhood because he wants to avoid falling plaster and the (ghetto) roaches Falling like fat rain . But the times are not quite right for integrated housing and the Reed family experiences violence when they move, in: the first two nights. rocks are thrown through their windows The repetition and incrementatipn are almost ironic in the ballad as Reed, filled with grief and anger when one of his daughters is finally hit with a rock, goes to the door with a thirty-four and a beastly buw er knife. He attacks four white men before he is finally slain and kicked by neighbors who It is an unpleasant story; but as a chronicle of the themes and consciousness of a poet, it places Gwendolyn Brooks on the threshhold of the new militancy, some of which is unveiled in the New Poems section of Selected Poems . like "Riders to the Blood-Red Wrath" and "Langston Hughes" show her with struggle and the spiralf ing fury of social unrest. . Poems concerned At the same time, she ~ salutes a white poet, as in "Of Robert Frost," and continues her practice of &,ve,-se , & mining the unheroic for poetry in a section oft(II A Catch of Shy Fish . S stylistic efforts like The "ride!~ (perhaps a parody of the purple sage riders) lurch into the breach of human struggle and social chaos. They are the freedom �riders--seeking what is "reliably right"--conducting sit-ins, wade-ins, lie-ins, sing-ins, pray-ins and voter registration drives. called them "shock troops" of the My scream! RJ !ff "revolution." Carmichael has oP-therll OneAstates: unedited, unfrivolous. My laboring unlatched braid of heat and frost. I hurt. I keep that scream at what pain: At what repeal of salvage and eclipse. Army unhonored, meriting the gold, I Have sewn my guns inside my burning lips. And he goes on to remember kings. A blossoming palace. Silver , Ivory. The conventional wealth of stalking Africa. This rider recalls his past, projects his future, and surveys the state of the world, from China to Israel. He is going to make the "bloody peace" asked by 1N6lker Margare\ Democracy and Christianity Recommence with me. And I ride ride I ride on to the end-Where glowers my continuing Calvary. With his "fellows," he intends to see the battle through, To fail, to flourish, to wither or to win. We lurch, distribute, we extend, begin. "To Be In Love" is also to extend and "fall" along a golden column Into the commonest ash. Diverse, explicit and splendid, the poems in this section achieve balance as 39 3 / �salutes two senior bards--Frost and Hughes. Frost has Iron at the mouth. And With a place to stand. he has much more than immediate physical space, but a permanent position on the world's poetry totem. As "merry glory," Hughes Yet grips his right of twisting free. His "long reach" encompasses "speech," "fears," "tears" and "sudden death." Hughes' f job is not done, and as a "headlight" he must press on, Till the air is cured of its fever. fJ.L(.O The poet~ returns to her garden of non-heroes in poems about garbage men, the sick, old people, stern women, and "Big Bessie" who "throws her son into the street." Sculpture, precision, explicitness and terseness are key words to remember when approaching the poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks. Not primarily of the academy, but often sharing some of its virtues and faults, she has been free to deal primarily with pictures swirling around her during childhood and adulthood in Chicago. Sometimes her poetry about night life and the South carries a forced ,#- feeling, since these are not things she is in intimate contact with, but ~~is always skillful and economic. Her world has not been "wide" in the way that Tolson and Hayden have been "wide." But it has been deep and multi-layered, complex and womanly, tragic and profound. Her poetry has not, at this writing, inspired a book-length study but she has been the subject of much critical treatment. here since bibliographies are widely available. Selected studies will be listed For example, CLA Journal, XVII �(September 1973) ~ (a special issue on Brooks, Hayden and Baraka), lists a 12-page 1 bibliography. She is represented in every anthology of Afro-American poetry, beginning with Poetry of the Negro (1949 ed.) and in many general American anthologies of poetry and literature. Helpful are '=IIIIP Kent ' s "The Poetry ~ of Gwendolyn Brooks" (Black".Aand the Adventure of Western Culture, 1972); the critical entries in E Davis ' . From the Dark Tower; (1974); essays in - ck Writers of America (Barksdale and Kinnamon); Jackson ' s essay in Black Poetry in America ex) Gibson ' s Modern Black Poets ;AReport from Part One, ..._ autobiography th'( /)11 t-"fi (19 7 2) ♦ Owen Dodson ' s first volume of poetry, Powerful Long Ladder (1946), was one ~ of the casualties of the diillnterest in Black poetry during the post-Renaissance and war years . The book did not go entirely unnoticed, however, for Time magazine described it as standing " peer to Frost and Sandburg and other white American poets who are constantly recited in our schools . " Powerful Long Ladder appeared in the midst of Dodson ' s busy (and successful) career as dramatist and teacher . His interest in writing and drama began in his youth in Brooklyn, New York, where he was born and attended public schools, He went to Bates College, obtaining a B. A. , and Yale where he was awarded the M.A. in drama. While a ~ student at Yale two of his plays--Divine Comedy and Garden of Time--were produced. Since those years Dodson's work in drama and writing has been prodigous . He taught drama at Spelman College in Atlanta and was commissioned to write a play on the Amistad mutiny for Talladega College . He directed summer theatre at Ham~ton Institute, the Theatre Lobby Washington, and at Lincoln University . Dodson fina lly settled at Howard University as drama instructor, later becoming head of the department and remaining the1_until 1969 • . �In 1949, he took the Howard University Players on a successful State Department- • sponsored tour of Scand, navia and Germany. His novel, Boy at the Window, was published in 1950, and his short story, "The Su!Ilmer Fire," won a Paris Review prize (1961) and appeared in the Best Short Stories f~om that publication. received many other awards and forms of recognition: He a Rosenwald fellowship, a General Education Board Fellowship; a Guggenheim grant to study and travel in . Cl Italy (1953), and a Maxwell Anderson Prize for"-.verse play. libretto for Mark Fax's opera. He also wrote the He has completed a number of manuscripts in poetry and prose which have never been published. One of his most recent exciting works was The Dream Awake (1969), a cultural history of Black Americans, released by Spoken Arts, and consisting of color films, records, textbooks, illustrations, and other materials which show the range of Dodson's talents and interest. 1970, his second volume of verse, The Confession Stone: In Song Cycles, was published; but the poems were written before 1960. About his work as a poet, Dodson reports with some dispirit in Interviews I have written three books of poetry. The first was--I would say--somewhat propaganda, but the third was filled with stories, diaries, and remembrances of Jesus. They are really framed in diaries by Mary, Martha, Joseph, Judas, Jesus, even God. This, I believe, is my most dedicated work .... I have written and fought somehow in my writing, but I know now that the courage and forthrightness of writers and poets will change something a little in our dilapidation. "l,.Pt>rre_f(o That "first" voiiJmeN-s obviously Rq__werful Long Ladder; but Dodson does not have �to depreciate the work since it will hold him in good stead as a poet. There is not one poem in the book which cannot be aesthetically or stylistically called "poetry." And this is not a claim that many poets can make. influences can c tot, be traced to the American modernists. Dodson's stylistic And there is no doubt that, in his recurring despair, he shares sentiments with Eliot, Pound, Auden and Yeats. Yet, in his lilt and his language, he also pays his debts to Hughes, Dunbar, Cullen (whom he eulogizes), James Weldon Johnson and the whole web of Black folk and spiritual life. Dodson's note of despair, which pervades the book, is sounded in the opening poem ("Lament") where the lynched boy is addressed: Wake up, boy, and tell me how you died: What sense was alert last, .•• Relying heavily on his experiences and interests in drama, Dodson carefully underscores the repulsive act and the guilt. In an italicized section he gives details that recall other poems on the theme: the Mississippi drank itself one night, the bridge from which you hung threw it~ arms up, folded into mud like an old obscene accordion, the crowd dispersed counted on its fingers one by one •.•. The invisible Black viewer of the lynching, going beyond the actual act to the nature of death itself, gets curious about the last moments, and questions the dead boy: Tell me what road you took, What hour in the day is luckiest? The narrator wants a sign ("the acrostic, the cross, the crown or the fire"), �something to make his own way easier, bearable: O, wake up, wake! f-we said several strains of Black and modern poetry can be seen in Dodson's work, not the least among them being the folk idiom. Sterling Brown. In "Guitar" he reminds us of The six-string guitar has a "lonesome" wail and cannot "hold its own" against the howl of a Georgia hound. And the guitarist-singer Ain't had nobody To call me home From the electric cities Where I roam. An adaptation of the blues motif in style and theme, it employs incremental refrain and the ambivalent drive-sulk of This somber tone of Dodson's persists in_poems like "Sorrow is the only Faithful One" ("I am less, unmagic, black"), "Black Mother Praying" ("black and burnin in these burnin times"), "The Signifying Darkness," and there are tinges of it even in celebratory poems such as "Pearl Primus" and "Poem for Pearl's Dancers." But the grand statement of poetry is always lurking or leading ("Pearl Primus"): "the sun is like a shawl on their backs," and "pistoning her feet in the air." In "Someday We're Gonna Tear Them Pillars Down" a woman complains: They took ma strong-muscle John and cut his manhood off •••. The Blacks in "Rag Doll and Summer Birds" sit in their cabin (like "The Bean Eaters") "waiting for God." The fire in the stove goes out, the newspapered walls, "telling of crimes," curl up and In the Blackness stars are not enough! ~Included in Powerful Long Ladder are three verse choruses from Divine Comedy. �Dodson was the first Black dramatist to exploit the meaning of the Father Dt•vine movement in verse drama. When a cult leader is gone, the drama contends, the people are forced inward to find a replacement. Divine Comedy is bizarre, with shifting uncertainties, horror, violence, religious extremism and racial intensity. The first chorus asks (in a refrain): Cancel us. Let doomsday come down Like the foot of God on us. A character called "One" notes that We are clear and confused on many issues: ... A "Girl" says I dance without legs. "One" reminds us that War, war will bomb your eyes open. In the Star Chorus, a "Blind Man" beseeches the others: Don't leave the blind to wander Where the wind is a wall! Cullen, one of Dodson's heroes, had suggested that Blacks were not made "eternally to weep" ("From the Dark Tower") and Dodson has a "Young Man" say This shall not be forever. In the section called Poems for My Brother Kenneth, Dodson delicately recalls remembrances of his dead brother. The somber tone and weightiness return as the poet, addressing his brother, asks for some answer to the "long tanks" that "creep" and the "dark body of the ruined dark boy." There was no reply: But: �You gave me a smile and returned to the grave. In Interviews with Black Writers Dodson claims that Cullen did not die from disease but "was pushed into death" by "us because we did not recognize the universal quality of what he wanted to say." (ill In his eulogy, "Countee Cullen," t ~ Review section) Dodson bids farewell to his friend who died in 1946 by likening his plight to that of Socrates' f : We hear all mankind yearning For a new year without hemlock in our glasses. Later)t,I "t)runken Loverj' we find that this is "the stagnant hour." interest in o •••• jlob¾ihl\is {w,es seen f◄ i8 And Dodson's in "Jonathan's Song": Jew is ndt a race Any longer--but a condition. Finally, Dodson closes the volume appropriately with "Open Letter" wherein he asks for tolerance and understanding in a time of war, hatred, domestic violence and racism. 8 JJ -fhitpoe:/ "[onathan's Song" i.. alignedl\l · ff with the jews being massacred -;.. in Germany: I am~art of this: .•. ~ "Open Letter" calls on the universal brotherhood: /\. Brothers, let us discover our hearts again, Permitting the regular strong beat of humanity there To propel the likelihood of other terror to an exit. (}.A_ The war is almost over, he says,/\'planes stab over us." The word "hallelujah" can be understood in the language of All the mourning children and The torn souls and broken bodies will be restored . \ �when war has ceased forever . Signaling his non-black "brothers," a tone and posture quickly fading from Black ,,....._ poetry, Dodson challenges theml : Brothers, let us enter that portal for good When peace surrounds us like a credible universe . Bury that agony, bury this hate, take our black hands in yours. It was the "We Shall Overcome" call that would die in the mid- sixties, though a few (Hayden, Hughes and others) would continue to walk the difficult tight-rope of universal brotherhood. poetry. l There are fine rhythms and keen perceptions in Dodson's °'"e,11:6111 brltei-~ t<viowyt • His technical skill surpasses many Black and white poets who1 ~ &llt, The Confession Stone: Songs Cycles, though published in 1970, cont'ains work done in the forties and fifties. Dodson has described it as being "filled with stories, diaries, and remembrances of Jesus . " It is a strange "cycle," which moves among "The land of the living and the land of the risen dead." The groupings (many written to be sung) are "The Confession Stone," "Mary Passed this Morning," "Journals of the Magd ~ ene," "Your Servant: Know You're Lonely," "Dear, My Son," and "Oh l1y Boy, Jesus." Judas," "Father, I The cycles recast fiblical stories surrounding Jesus Christ and the crucifixion, updating them by adding contemporary language (Black idiom at times) and technology. In poem.!_ of "Confession Stone," Jesus is quieted with the words \)t N V~III shushhh, you need the rest. ~ if he knows "Lazarus is back?" In V Jesus' .,- mother vows to save him from the cold and icy Jerusalem ground: Let me rock him again in my trembling arms. 0( �"Mary Passed '[his Morning" contains "letters from Joseph to Martha." Number I is a poetic telegram: Martha Mary passed this morning funeral this evening stop Near six o'clock tell the others stop Raising bus fare for you stop '(/:rt signed Joseph is clear after a while that Dodson is reliving the life and times of Jesus ttlso through Black characters; he~ses the old search for the Promised Land motif l:l't!it (Eright, Ellison, Baldwin, Brown). In number I of "Journals of the Magd~ene" 'if> e. p~oTttgonls-t 1f gi 3 (\vows even to "crucify myself" in order to be with him. Amen. Writing a letter to Jesus in number I of "Your Servant: Judas," Judas says Dear Jesus, I killed myself last night. The "cycle" is completed as Dodson ends the small volume with the opening poem: "Oh My Boy: Jesus" Johnson's "Creation": and the mother saying, in the maimer of the preacher in "rest on my breast." Of Dodson's frequently anthologized poems, "Yardbird's Skull" (a tribute to sax9phone player, Charles "Yardbird" Parker) is one of the most enduring and ti IIJ, powerful. writers: Parker (1920-1955) is also saluted by other poets and Cuney and John A. Williams, to name just two. He is a major figure in the development of jazz, American music and contemporary jazz literature. In statement and style, "Yardbird's Skull" ele~! cally captures the psychic and �rhythmic layerings and wanderings of "Bird's" horn . When "the bird" died, Dodson thinks, so did "all the music" and "whole sunsets" were deprived of t his great musician ' s voice. A skull becomes the metaphor for the historical corridors of music and Dodson's fingering of the skull, like Yorick of Hamlet, allows him to retrace Bird's journey to greatness: to air, to brotherhood which sired the music, to soaring birds, to Atlantis, even, and to Places of dreaming, swimming lemmings. There has been only slight criticism of Dodson ' s poetry. Barksdale and Kinnamon write briefly of him. ~ ~ is in most anthologies of Black poetry beginning with Kerlin's Negro Poets and Their Poems. Gwendolyn Brooks 'j winning of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1950 momentarily brought new attention to the poetic activities of Afro-Americans. But, though her name hung like anticipation over the decade of the fifties, the period in fact was dominated by fiction writers: "specially the articulate expatriate Richard Wright, Ralph EllisonJ and James Baidwin. Wright had es- tablished a tradition, and many were attempting to follow in his footsteps-including John Oliver Killens, William Attaway• and Chester Himesp."7Barksdale and Kinnamon). The works of the fiction writers, and their accompanying dialogue with Black and white critics and each other, helped develop "a national, almost global conce r n for the identity problems of American Blacks. Fiction writers also wrote in a diversity of styles , from nwright 1 s 11 school to Demby 1s "consciousnes However . e t s were wr .... ting awl publis ting, in variou s places, during the fifties, but most of their activities were part of the ground swell that would reach a crescendo in the sixties and seventies. Many of ~-t.::: pr1•8 can be found in such anthologies as Negro Caravan (1941), The Poetry of the Negro (1949), American Literature by Negro Authors (1950), Lincoln University Poets (1954), Beyond the Blues (1962), Sixes and Sevens (1962), Burning Spear: An Anthology ~ le �of Afro-Saxon Poetry (1963), and Soon One Morning: 1940-1962 (1963). New Writing by American Negroes, As individuals and groups, the poets continued to make their work available either to each other or to the small of the period (colleges, schools, churches). iiiiiik poetry reading audiences Hughes, Hayden, Gwendolyn Brooks and others, who had established reputations in the forties, continued writing• 0..+.t And the younger or lesser known poets of this/\transitional stage (Wright, r<'\ Danner, O'Higgins, Allen--Vesey, Randall, Dure'/\, Holman, Jeffers, Patterson, Atkins, Evans, and others) either published \'If\ little magazines or won various regional and national writing contests--primarily through schools and colleges. Opportunity, The Crisis, The Negro Story, Negro History Bulletin, Phylon and numerous college periodicals, continued to provide forums. Some of the poets who appeared in The Crisis during the thirtie.s and forties, for example, ~~ Grace E. Barr, Edna Barrett, Milton Brighte, Sophy Nae Bryson, Clarissa Bucklin, Lillian Byrnes, Polly Nae Hall, Alice Ward Smith, Paul A. Wren, Walter Adams, Ethel Collins, Edith M. Durham, and Max Reynolds. ,-.. Others - pub- lished in regional magazines or brought out collections of their own works .... : NoY Joseph Dickerson (A Scrap Book, 1931), Thomas A/kins (The Eagle, 1936), Leslie M. Collins (Exile, A Book of Verse, 1938), William Walker (who published 11 volumes between 1936 and 1943), Olive Lewis Handy, Claude T. Eastman, Nick Aaron Ford (Songs From the Dark, 1940), Haurice Fields (The Collected Poems of l:!sturice Fields, 1940), R.F . Boyd (Holiday Stanzas, 1940), folklorist J. Mason Brewer ( four books of poems), William Holmes Borderx (Thunderbolts, 1942), Anita Turpeau Anderson (Pinpoints: Group of Poems and Prose Writings, 1943), Aloise Barbour Epperson (The Hills of Yesterday and Other Poems, 1944), Mary Albert �Bacon (Poems of Color, 1948), Harrison Edward Lee (Poems for the Day, 1954), Willie Ennis (Poetically Speaking, 1957), Paul Vesey (Ivory Tusks, 1956), and Arthur Wesley Reason (Poems of Inspiration for Better Living, 1959). Q.rnt Stm'ltBL.tu,k) -the., " /J tu, Among white~poets, the fifties were aglow with the fervor ofABeat movement.JiP4',_d Kenneth Rexroth, E.E. Cunnnings, Lawrence F$"linghetti and Alan Gin~berg. Hughes, and Bob Kaufman especially, played a great part in introducing the Beats to the poetic lyrics of jazz and the jagged-lined interpretation of post-war blues of the "lost generation." Another influence on the beats was Russell Atkins who, with Helen Johnson Collins, founded Free Lance in Cleveland,, a.. a (l959). An avant-garde "little" magazine, it played an uns~ng part in the development of ideas and techniques of the New American Poetry. the "style" At the dawn of the sixties, c)Pe. of Black~ also figured prominently/ as - . ilways/lllllllh in the pacing of the literary and cultural concerns. The Be-Bop poet Babs Gonzales, . Lr' t-e d1ndt along with jazz-poetry narrators like King Pleasure, influenced theA~ of-' ~ Poet.Y. signaled a call for re-examination of I'\ the "ear" traditionally used in the silent writing of a poem. As the fifties closed, the precise passion of Gwendolyn Brooks and the troubador's gait~ ~1illv of Hughes hurled a dual, ifjf a 4a unified, challenge at Black poets. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Eugene B. Redmond Digital Collection Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document Text Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context EBRWritings_08_26to28 Title A name given to the resource First typed draft of Drumvoices: The Mission of Afro-American Poetry: A Critical History, Chapter V. A Long Ways from Home, p. 208-405, typed with handwritten edits Description An account of the resource First typed draft of Drumvoices: The Mission of Afro-American Poetry: A Critical History, Chapter V. A Long Ways from Home, typed with handwritten edits. 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