https://digitallis.isg.siue.edu/files/original/ef065bf72b1366e9deda6cf963c47d46.pdf d074750f9f4dba023b981659125bcd2d PDF Text Text CHAPTER VI FESTIVALS & FUNERALS: BLACK POETRY OF THE 196Os & 19 7Os They winged his spirit & wounded his tongue but death was slow coming Who killed Lumumba What killed Malcolm festivals & funerals festivals & funerals festivals & funerals & festivals & funerals .• . Jayne Cortez Overview The space between festivals and funerals can be infinite or it can be deathly short . her poem. - So Ja"'yne Cortez\ says} through the twistings and turnings in But whatever the space, or the pace, we all slip, slide, soar, and trip as we make our way between the polarities (assigned each at birth) +he Ktridol= ofl\life we live and the kind of death we die . 197Os often face• life and death "straight up" : Black poe~ of the 19 6Os and though, as we have seen, Black poets in o ther times did not cringe from the breaches of racial nightmares, violence , sexuality , unbeautiful language, wicked or religious folkisms, and the demands of music which each of them seemed to hear--albeit from "different11 drummers .• To attempt a discussion of contemporary Black poetry is to turn others ' tongues into flames: " Blasphemy!," "I was the first!," i �"We started it!," "That anthology was incomplete since it didn't include beaQh me!," "It all /fts3•a e. in this place or that place!, " "His/her poetry is not Black enough!," and so on. Nevertheless, the "smoke" from the sixties is beginning to clear and, while more hinl sight is needed, there are important observations that should be made. Hence in this chapter, the format will follow preceding ones--bvt J4.ta: with a 1118t :i.o s ae 1-e de-emphasis in biographical-critical notes on individual poets. eo.rl.it Most serious poets who began writing in the late fifties,11xties . andr{>e~ent1es, still have much growing and threshing to do . volumes really contain earlier poetry . Also many recent So it is not easy to evaluate (or even list) Black poetry produced over this period. Yet, historically speaking, certain undeniable trends have pccurred, and they look roughly like this: Black Poetry since the Harlem Renaissance (see Brown, Redding, Henderson, Jackson) has had cycling currents of "rage and " fire " though not the sustained gush witnessed in the mid and late sixties; Black poetry after 1945 expressed a belief (see Ray Durem) that white liberals were not really interested in mounting the ( 01-- 1oim5'aU -the "''o/'IJ "final" chariots of fire/ion behalf of Blacks (despite Communist Socialist pronouncements); t:ff.es Black poetry of the ~ -.vi six1ks _/ and earl) ,f:9680 provided a }f:i.vil ond PoL;J'itaL e.t:M o.T-e. ~1ghts groundswellAfor the volcanic burs ~ of the later sixties; In Black poetry of the early sixties there was planted the anvil which shaped the stylistic, attitudinal and linguistic character �of what is known as the New Black Poetry; Current Black poetry, despite "evolutions" and "changes," has not radically altered or laid to rest the best work of Hughes, J"o..mer. ot'" fe,nfc,11\ Johnson Gllii72RI, Davis, Toomer, Walker, Hayden, Brooks, Tolson and Dodsonj Except for what Stephen Henderson calls "tentative" answers, Black poetry defies all definitions (like Mari Evans' f "Black Woman")--splintering off into ennumberble directions, styles, forms, themes, considerations and ideas. f This chapter, all above considered ( ! )) will briefly sketch the ,r:; from the fifties into the mid-sixties. L,c._ ban ia15 Again, chronology will be ""'"•••~since many of the poets listed were writing in the forties and fifties; .rvh ffa.nud L. but most did not rece1ve~attent1on until the sixties. The sketch will include a general look at transitional poets (older and younger) as their work appears in about a half dozen anthologies (from I Saw How Black I Was, 1958, to Kaleidoscope, 1967) and what few volumes were being brought out at the (he examination (see Locke's and Bontemps' • divisions time. 1f>en ~ of the Renaissance)~takes up the poets who came to recognition under the banner of the Black Arts Movement and who loosly fall into the category of New Black Poetry. Older poets--Hayden, Brooks, Randall, Walker, and others--will be briefly re-visited to see if the "new" mood wrought any significant changes in their views and/or their poetry. we 10uch ~e,n ci--i-t'c.,,'-' m Thougll\.alae s Hiitii.,u~a. bi stow, this book is primarily a historical guide- designed to aid sad ½a; -{.aders in their exploration of Black poetry. Only a naive person �would attempt, at this stage, a full critique of the poetry of the 1960s and 1970s. However, there are stylistic patterns, similarities, and thematic clusters which will be pinpointed and assessed from time to time. Some of the most provocative of recent studies of contemporary Black poetry are Henderson's The Militant Black Writer in Africa and the United States i r,1,,q with Mercer ~oo~• Joy Flasch's Melvin Tolson (1972) ; and Understanding the New Black Poetry (1973); Sh~ rley Williams '• Give Birth to Brightness (1972); Gibson's GIiii Modern Black Poets (1973) and Jackson ' s and Rubin's Black Poetry in America (1974) . '3) 152 gq ] "] l 1 1er) :JI. Literary and Social Landscapet - L.e.~eL Assassinations, highApolitical corruption, upheaval, violence, change, .~_l"-s~!l~p .11 e!! ,,: a.LL • ideolog:i-es, flaming rhetoric --•/\ contemrQrary period. i!IIA d I2 N describe the Revolutions (of all kinds) mock and mold the world. From Cuba to Vietnam, Harlem to Chile, Pakistan to Watts, Nigeria to Indonesia, Kenya to Berkeley~ Jackson State to Kent State-- the facts and ovell'cast, h owevei,.) A~ riot symbols of change have been dramatic and violent .rf!~w~h ().r1 -tAwa.r ted ma.i or tie vt-ltJp me1its l[ i whe1-> ~ 9/\in the Black sphere/\ tneqlop was declininef[by the mid-fifties)' j?-.,1'' BLMt. and 7azz ' s greatest living interpreter, Charlie Parker, was dead. A)lusicians c.onlTh "ed.probing new forms under the leadership of Miles Davis, and vocalists"9 John Coltrane, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Wes Montgomery, Charles, ~ 1 ! , Ornette Coleman, Billy Eckstine, Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday, who died in 1959 . D~~tQ ~~v~, g,Llie - i,l],i?ft~n, Ray Ella . /\.Holiday's name and fame again reached a worldwide audience when, in 1972, Diana Ross, formerly of the Supremes, starred in the controversial movie, Lady Sings the Blues. Saxophonist Coltrane, a major influence on the current generation of musicians and poets, died in 1967. An innovator, he sparked new interest.$ in music wit1} j �aMOllJ,\6ffi•tui,mives) his "sHeets W of soun~',.a ppe fdl · • 1u t;;Q }ilq"am iaribucaa•nl!l ~~ The / iftiesAalso witnessed the maturation of/4hythm and /lues, popularized by Black radio disc jockeys . weaving 1· 1i 3 · 3 f 1 I gs J RF 1 g Inter- Jg Pl Ji social • - - • • commentaries with the news, they Resvtlf"'a lo. 1e,.-, anticipated the new oral poetry of the,.,ixties. )'tP±n ufifg from these broadcasting styles were programs like Bandstand (started in the late fifties). Young white America watched Blacks dance, listened to Little Richard and Chubby Checker, and tried to imitate it all on TV and in their homes. /I This 1/ period gave birth to the first white superstar Soul artist--Elvis Presley. •f~J..a••lllii·r.-•·-••-•~j~s-llllllih■iWE•t~a.xlliiil·..-~all!llll!t~e!lllll!t•l••-.::t c:fhe "f new lllack social music, and the dances accompanying it, freed white American youngsters from the prudish and self-righteous inhibitions of their foreparents. &ut"-fhti4 t. r~mG\m.S ~(>i!.t_tott('. tt eda.OC$ f:'rooM11\-f t-/t¥1"17~. Generally, American science and industry developed more rapidly than in previous periods. ~ Russia launched Sputni~k, a feat which was followed v by~erican-Russian science and space-exploration race which 9~ continues. new..s ~ Telt star paved the way for -••J-••~i@~coverage of global activities while h~v-e \!, biochemical warfare and atomic researchJ\.became the nightmares people live4 daily. The American literary scene was swamped with political novels, satire, writings on the war and experimental-j ournalistic prose. The "underground " newspaper emerged as a major vehicle for this new writing. · ,ii~ 1 · {f~r,-fii)'( · . 11 present. psyc h o 1 ogy ~-emp 1 aye d 1.n ~ar 1.er I\.W:J ti § s~s s t1. The symbolism and FI owever, t h e influence of the writers from the Depression and war years is giving way to gadgetry and a new wave of existential concern. Black, Jewish, Chicano, Indian and Asian writers are grabbing more of the literary stage.~ I$ ..r-een 1n the vie.w ethnit. s(.)ur-"'a.Ls o.ncl fubl,st.;.jco mp,u,re.s t-lsweu..as ntVJ inier-e~t estt:bL1'the.cl f ub Lish e"'s , 0 �5~A. Contemporary white and third world writers of influence include: John Cheever, N. Scott Hornaday, Ralph Ellison, Bernard Malamud, Frank Chin, John Hersey, Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, Ch~ a Achebe, Ernest Gaines, James Baldwin, Paul Chan, Flannery O' Connor, Albert Murray, Ishmael Reed, William Styron, James Ngugi, William Demby, Shawn Hsu Wong, John Barth, William Melvin Kelley• and Irvin Wallace. Black writers are included in the general listing because during the contemp.orary period, many of them achiev~d recognition on ~uh.'1bga.Clb}" "''.s ~l..5!.!''fil ( ) Sol.cl. ,~~- ..6J,. MU.Lioncop,e..r~ par with the best writers everywhere. J-teed el!iellllllfl[:lll=iil• was nominated in two categories for ihe National Book Award in 19 ]3'.l Aflt~mportant con- Amet-t'c.o,11, temporary/..poets are: Stanley Kunitz, Cyn Zarco, Robert Hayden, Richard Eberhart, Robert Penn Warren, Jose 1ontoya, Gwendolyn Brooks, Lawson Inada, Theodore Roethke, Karl Shapiro, Robert 1?rgas, llelvin Tolson, John Berryman, M\c.~~ c.H().y./!_ er Henry Dumas, Victor Hernandez Cruz, ~l ob~rt Uowell, Daniel Halpern, Richard Amir.I' Wilbur, Paul Vesey, James Dickey, Imamu1'!3araka, Sylvia Plath, William Bell and James Wright. Hayden received a National Book Award nomination in 1972 . art/Jf.s Many of the Black prose writers)~nd poets (some from the pre- and post-war schools) died during the contemporary period (Tolson, Bontemps, Hughes, Wright, Durem, Dumas, DuBois, Horne, Rivers, Toomer, Malcolm X, etc.). Indeed death, in one way or another, not only preoccupied writers (white and Black), but was often romantically pursued. Beat poet Kenneth Rexroth asked "Why have 30 American poets committed suicide since 1900?" Those poets not concerned ~e(F-des); ffi\,e, et., M enTs with death were investigating decadence or the • • • • • ~f society. The development of contemporary poetry cannot be viewed properly without understandi ng the "Beat" period . As a partial product of the Be Bop er, • - - Beat poets emulated the hip mannerisms and aped the "man alone" (drop-out) image associated with musicians. Be Bop was one way the Blackman used to fi ght the commercialization of his ar~ He also used it in playing �"Something," in the words of Thelonious Monk, "they can ' t play." (~, ,-..._ meaning whites). Important &n lllt Beat poets were Lawrence Fedlinghetti, Rexroth, All! n Ginsberg, and Gregory Corso, among the whites f.> and Bob o.. u116C ~ I ~,8; SpeL.MAll 7 among the Kaufman, Lef oi Jones, F ' fed Joan Blacks. The Beat Movement, which nurtured occultism, rejection of the Establishment and an existential view of life, was centered in New York's Greenwich Village and the San Francisco Bay area. Ir 'Al~•-••••·~~died in the early /ixties. Kaufman is viewed by many as the unsung patriarch of the era. $0Me.., ~ ~critics say major white poets of the movement enthusiastically took their cues from Kaufman's innovations, but were not so %, 7111d:.. 9'\in re- cognizing his influence. ltl J" (1261) • As a kind of spiritual heir to Toomer, Kaufman is a complex, sometimes fragmented, but brilliantly original poet. His work, like that of many of his contemporaries, is influence by Eastern religious thought and the occult. Stylistically, Kaufman has the "sweep" of Whitman coupled with the best techniques of modern poetry. He passionately experiments with jazz rhythms in poetry and often invokes jazz themes, moods and musicians. fvil Many Beat poets and enthusiasts later joined or were spawned by the {ights struggle which was intensified by several things: Martin Luther King's Montgomery bus boycott in 1955-56; sit-ins and other dramatizations of segregation and discrimination; the challenges of Jim Crow in travel in 1961 (CORE); the widening activities in SNCC (1961-64) and the March on Washington (1963). Other significant activities _enflamed and �inspired the hearts and imagination of Black American youth especially. The Muslims' (Nation of Islam) growth to 50,000 members by 1963 and the Congressional action on Civil Rights Legislation were two seemingly unrelated but strategically important events. The growing influence of the Muslims suggested that many Blacks no longer believed America was C.h{U')Qf..S sincere in its pledges to implementl\e~n when they became law. Qt.+'\ l\~(pA,,,f~ of='viol.fn,e, their distrust were the continued,\.ftlli•ge, night-ridings in the jouth; and harrassment of Blacks in public places and their homes. With the bitter taste of Emmi tt Till's murder still on their tongues, Blacks reeled under the killings of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner, Halcolm X, Medgar Evers, King, the Kennedy brothers, and the three Black Panthers r ~:1..1.e,, in a Chicago apartment). #.y 1966, however, Lci..A by police ha.J Black Power signs and slogansAbegdn to replace the "We shall overcome-Black and White Together" exclamations. • wetA1-t1nf Young Black America, •orttitofll, Afro hairdos and African jewelry, attended cultural festivals, back-tofJLM \<. pciwo• t ohFt~ntu; Africa rallies,f\'.'oetry readings, and _ . read (III community news published in revolutionary broadsides and tabloids. Rhetorical forays by H. Rap Brown and Stokely Carmichael, young SNCC officers, set off a flurry of state and national laws against inciting to riot and the transpor of weapons across state boundaries. or i r) • S~t.$ Ja rse and swal--l ~ties.\ignited in fthl flame'.: .-.... setAt he stage for gun battles between police and the often 14 "imagined" snipers. These conflagrations were repeated in scores of cities after Dr. King was assassinated in 1968. Watts poet Quincy Troupe captured the shock and horror, and chronicled the official reaction, in his poem "White Weekend": �The deployed military troops surrounded the White House and on the steps of the Senate building a soldier behind a machine gun 32,000 in Washington & Chicago 1,900 in Baltimore Maryland 76 cities in flames on the landscape and the bearer of peace still lying in Atlanta ••. In the last stanza, Troupe notecsi with curdling irony: Lamentations! Lamentations! Lamentations! Worldwide! But in New York, on Wall Street #At the stock market went up 18 points this writing, fallout from the Black Revolution reverberates around the globe. Black journalist Thomas Johns_!on reports Irish revolutionaries sing "We Shall Overcome." Posters and emblems commercialize everything from African hairstyles to the raised clenched fist--the initial symbol of Black unity and defiance. A wave of Black movies--called Blaxploitation-- ~f'~L~s, beginning with "white" experimental ~ i k e Putney Swope (1969). is capturing a multi-million dollar theater patronage. Black movies retrieved the crippled movie industry from the brink of disaster. Meanwhile, the murder, incarceration and political harrassment of Black men and women mat e them heroes and heroines in Black communities--yet ironically symbolizel the torment and "genocidal schemes" of America (see Samuel Yette's The Choice). 4 l'f �Criss-crossed by paradoxes, political contradictions, social revolts --- and religious _ . ambivalences , the Black community is nevertheless regenerated by its singers and performers. Black popular music has not only reached unprecedented audiences, but unprecedented money-making capabilities. wht<-~ }hythm and ,;6.ues, s!!i![tl to ha ~Adied about 1965 , gave way to "Soul"-"I ' ma Soul Han," Sam and Dave announced in the late Sixties. The Impressions told lovers that you "gotta have soul" and Bobby Womack reminded listeners that the "Woman ' s Gotta Have I.t " --presumably "Soul." W>ntcfL..1 '4fVf<.oti •..1 Black recording companies 11 are 11"'~1b oc, , the .... largest onef being M<Crown (Detroit) , and Hebb a Sten ,. Curtis Hayfield ' s soundtrack album Superfly (1972) sold more than 22,000,000 copies and Marvin Gay ' s What ' s Going On (1971) set records for album sales. Recently, however, Stevie Wonder has surpassed them all. Literally dozens of singing groups--modeled on the quartets and ensembles of the ( ifties-are releasing albums regularly. These folk or "soul" poets have become _,d r.~pt_~ more "conscious" in recent years and many now ~ ~essages and exaltations of Blackness . their songs with political Much of this new wave came on the heels of severe criticism by Barak~ who admonished the singers for doting on unrequited love. he st\,dJ ifteme, Like \t\ Too many)f{ire preoccupied"witht\' 'my baby ' s gone, goney(!) Black consciousness activity--and creativity in general--now flourishes . Related involvement includes: development of Black acting ensembles; opening of free schools and Black universities; establishment of Black Nationalist/ i ultural communes; increase in the number of Black bookstores and African boutiques; establishment of Black Studies programs on white and Black �campuses and, in some cases, quota systems for enrolling Black students; the escalation of Black deman~ for "cream of the crop" jobs such as tv ;, announcing and the hosting of variety shows; expansion and creation of new roles for Black newspapers, magazines and radio stations; formation of ~L ~D gzL1M1111lUm~NwlP""lnM112~0a""'lf!s~t~aw~~')\~JBlack Cong;essional caucus• and similar units i n ~ ano Lel ista'T"'"~ bo~lte.s professional~ · · and, finally and importantly, new engagement with Africa and her problems and possibilities. Indeed, future trips to Africa-- to the "Mother country" or "Homeland"--are discussed at all age and social levels. Much of this renewed interest is understandable in light of the emergence during the contemporary period of several African nation states and the increased fraternization among Africans and Afro-Americans. Malcolm X, ,tudel\ ' ~ r)d. ':) . ca~onized today by great numbers of Black~ntellectuals, did much to foster this current interest in Africa. Shot to death at a expelled from the Nation of Islam, and had formed a splinter group known as the Organization of Afro-American Unity. His Autobiography of Malcolm X (with Alex Haley, 1965), which (as he predicted) he did not get to see in print, chronicles' his odyssey as Malcolm Little, hustler "Detroit Red," Malcolm X, and El-Hajj Malik El Shabazz. h~s k.eet1 N-ionized by Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, Ossie Davis, Baraka and various other shcolars, activists and artists. Black poets, especially, have found Malcolm (and Coltrane) a limitless source of inspiration. can be seen in For Malcolm: A partial indication of his impact on poets Poems on the Life and Death of Malcolm X (1967), edited by Dudley Randall and Margaret G. Burroughs. Shabazz" Robert Hayden noted that: In "El-Hajj Halik El �He X'd his name, became his people's anger, exhorted them to vengence for their past; rebuked, admonished them , Their scourger who would shame them , drive them 4.tthe from the lush ice gardens of their servitude. First World Festival of Negro Arts, held in Dakar, Senegal, in 1966, Hayden was awarded the Grand Prize for Poetry . A major event, the festival was attended by experts, scholars , artists and enthusiasts of the Black Arts who gathered for 24 days to hear papers and discussions, view art exhibits) W cultural performances, and give prelim ' nary direction to the Black Arts Movement. one of the architects (with -- NegritudeI #/la clsair~ . . Damas) : f a philosophy of Black Humanism.•1•l•·•.-.-•N11s~n~s.e~§iiaa zrsu wt et tJJe esngj : · ard artjsts "C$k\e,rtSenghor,(senega~ ~ Presiding over the festival was znd Ills J Ii Q!l!Jd@ I J 1 & a I t . t · s te JJ es tr als Fr African-oriented publications such as Pr~sence Africaine and Black Orpheus have renewed their interests in Black American writers . Likewise, Black American journals and popular magazines (Black World, Journal of Black Poetry, The Black Scholar, Essence, Encore, Ebony, Jet, etc.) have begun to publish more materials by and about Africans . The revolution in the Black Arts was signaled by many events including the First Conference of Negro Writers in Harch of 1959. Langston Hughes was an important figure t here--as he was at the Dakar gathering seven years later . The First American Festival of Negro Art was held in 1965 and the Second AFNA ' �took place in November of 1969 in Buffalo, N.Y. Interlacing these and other conferences, symposia and conventions, were exciting developments and experiments in New York, Chicago, Watts, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Baton Rouge, St. Louis, Cleveland, Detroit and Washington, D.C. During these periods of social turmoil and artistic upsurge writers and poets often aligned themselves with ideological positions and regional movements. Consequently, Black Arts communes and regional brands of Black consciousness grew concurrently. Splits between older fvil f..ights workers and Black Nationalists were paralleled by splits between older writers and it younger pracw,oners of "Black Arts." The splits were not always clear-cut, however, for many older activists and poets joined the new mood in spirit, thematic concern and personal life style, while some of the younger writers retained the influence of the earlier moods. Complicating things even more • were the variants on the domtnant themes of each camp. Gwendolyn Brooks, Randall, Margaret Danner, Margaret Walker and John Oliver Killens are among the older group of writers who vigorously took up the banner of the new mood. rt.PL c...-t Younger writers whose works I{ J ., IJ/f'ome "tradition" include Henry Dumas (Poetry For My People, 1970 and Play Ebony Play Ivory, 1974), Conrad Kent Rivers (The Still Voice of Harlem, 1963, etc.), Julia Fields (Poems, 1968), Al Young (Dancing, 1969, etc.), and Jay Hright (The Homecoming Sinrrey, 1972) to name just a few. ~he creative promise of this period was dealt a severe blow by the untimely deaths of Dumas and Rivers in 1968) These poets are deeply influenced by the moods and preoccupations of the period (self-love, racial injustice, violence, war, Black ¢onsciousness and;{istory) but they work along tested lines and experiment within careful and thought-out frames of references. Most of the writers of the period �(their styles and ideologies notwithstanding) have found themselves engulfed at one time or another in heated debates over questions related to the vf.~\6 "Black Aesthetic," the relationship of writer to reader, Black,.__• white audiences, and the part politics should play in their life and work. At this writing, these discussions continue in most sections of the Black forld. The flurry of ideological and aesthetical debate among the poets (and other writers) has often been precipitated or attended by critical writings, historical ~ies, social essays and public political statements. Some of the individuals associated with initiating the plethora of rhetoric on the question of a "Black" aesthetic (and related issues) are Ron Karenga, 1 -~ " Gwendolyn Brooks, Barak.a, ~Ct-yleJ Edward Spriggs, , a, H~f IL" Fuller ..,S,.C,tlClgJf Redding, Cllllll!li~ t lison, ' P11 (Black World), Larry Neal, Ernest L•r,. Kaiser, Mel Watkins, Ron Welburn, - - ~ Randall, Lerone Bennett, Jr., Nathan Scott, James Emanuel, Toni Cade-Bambara, John Henrik Clarke, Don L. Lee, Ed Bullins, and Stanley Crouch . A number of important studies, literary and cultural, by Black and white writers, aided in whetting or prolonging the critical thirsts. are: -me~~ Some of tliaAimportant and/or controversial writings The Militant Black Writer: in Africa and the United States (1969), Cook and Henderson; Black Expression (1969) and The Black Aesthetic (1971) Gayle Jr., ed,; Muntu: Literature: The New African Culture (1961) and Neo-African A History of Black Writing (1968), Jahn; Langston Hughes: Black Genius (1971), O' Daniel, ed.; Black Poets of the United States: Paul Lawrence Dunbar to Langston Hughes (1963, French edition; 1973 English trans., Douglas), Wagner; Before the Mayflower (1962), Bennetta (196 ; Shadow and Act Ellison; Understanding the New Black Poetry (1973), Henderson; Colloquim on Negro Art: First World Festival of Negro Arts, 1966 (1968), �I Editions Presence Africaine; The Negro Novel in America (1965), Bone; Mother is Gold: A Study in West African Literature (1971), Roscoe; The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual (1967), Cruse; Native Son\: A Critical Study of- Twentieth-Century Negro American Authors (1968), Margolies; Dynamite Voices: Black Poets of the 196O's, vol. I (1971), Lee; Blues People (1963), Black Music (1967), Home: Social Essays (1966), and Raise Race Rays Raze (1971), Baraka; and Give Birth to Brightness (1972), Williams. A number of Black critics, artists, and activists heatedly de- nounce whites who research or criticize Black literature, saying that only those who have lived the Black Experience can write about it. Another group holds that whites can report on Black writing if they are sincere and sympathetic. The Black Arts Movement , as the contemporary period is sometimes called, took place in the shadows of what many Black social critics have "second Reconstruction." termed ••Athe Hence, much of the writing is a revolt against political hypocrisy and so~ial alienation. In the angriest poetry, authors shower,.. disdain and obscenities on the "system" and whites in general. Refusing "integration" even if offered, younger poets deridef American values and attitudes. "Unlike the Harlem group ," Hayden noted, "they rejected entry into the mainstream of American literature as a desirable goal." Of course, more than a few of the older poets were writing in the/ixties and are writing today. Many of them, however, were sometimes laid aside by young readers who were unable to separate "poetry" from the fiery declamations of Carmichael, Brown and innumerable local spokesmen and versifiers. Often the poets exchanged superficial indictments, indulged in name-calling and, as groups or individuals, began rating each other on their "levels of Blackness" even though no criteria existed then and none exists today for .I lf{)O �such judging . . Nuch of the dispute centered around the question o f wh o II starte d" the Black Arts or New Black Poetry movements . While it is true that there ~ -leading ligp.ts of the new movements, it is misleading and false to .say that -one geographical region of the country or one group of persons is solely. responsible for either the main (or major) writing output or for kicking off. any tradition of Blacks writing about themselves. Such a stand would dismiss the fro-American musical past, on the one hand, and distort the historical development of the creative wri t ·ing and thought on the other. Anyway, the - question of who started what is not that significant. During the sixties and intv the seventies, literally hundreds of Black poets started writing and publishing--in tabloids, magazines, broadsides, anthologies and individual collections . were the new publications: of Black Poetry . regions. Also showcasing the new poetry Umbra, Black Dialogue, ~ d The Journal Significant clu~ters of poets developed in geographical And the atmosphere was enhanced by a number of African thinkers, artists, poets and novelists who arrived ~/\America to teach, lecture, perform and travel. The importance of this interaction among Blacks from various parts of the globe cannot be overemphasized. Black writers and students now read African, West Indian and Afro-Latin writers. �Hughes acquainted American audiences with African literature in his anthologies: An African Treasury: Essays, Stories, Poems by Black Africans (1960) and Poems from Black Africa (1963). Whispers from a Continent: In 1969, Trinidadian Hilfred Cartey edited The Literature of Contemporary Black Africa. Marie Collins compiled Black Poets in French (1972) and Keor l petse Kgositsile edited The Word Ls Here (1973). Other scholars and writers also wrote critical studies or edited anthologies of African and Caribbean literature. Black writing received a significant boost when in 1971 Senghor and Afro-Cuban poet Nichol' s Guill~n were nominated for the Nobel Prize for literature--thus fulfilling James Weldon Johnson ' s 1922 prophecy that the first Black writer to achieve substantial international fame would not come from America. Heightening the feeling of the period was Charles Gordone ' s winning of the Pulitzer Prize for drama (No Place to Be Somebody, 1970). -wn Black writers now publishing or living in the U. S. are Nigerian novelist-poet Achebe, exiled South African poet Kgositsile, Nigerian poet-playwright Wale Soyinka, Ghanaian poet Kwesi Brew , South African critic Ezekiel 11phahlele, Nigerian poet-playwright Ifeanyi Menkiti, Martinj~Y? poet-playwright clsaire and Guianese poet-scholar Damas. The writers fraternize, ex- Hphahlele, for example, has written critical (i1UJ4"' drJ.y11 studies of Black American writing (Voices in the Whirlwind, 1972) while~ change ideas and compare styles. Brooks has praised African writing (Introduction, Kgositsile ' s ~1y Name is Afrika, 1971). South African poet, Hazisi Kunene, wrote the Introduction ko~, Awoonef"(~ ~ Me"'•"Y> h~s ,vl,Li.JJ.ed-rtf,.te l,oo~s it11kt c,.s. for Cesaire ' s Return to Hy Native Land _(1969 t r a n s l a t i o ~ _... e;4..,.,, Poet ? Csever:~ ~re-American expatriate artists and writers returned to America during the current period for either temporary or permanent residency . d/TfAdded to ll 1h~ . activities and ~ changes ~ he establishment of �Black publishing houses (Broadside Press, Third World Press, The Third Press, ______ ..... etc.) and hundreds of .-w. news organs and literary journals. Ii" ...... have also been published. A number of important anthologies Some of the more notable ones include Beyond The Blues, Pool, 1962; Sixes and Sevens, Breman, 1962; American Negro Poetry, Bontemps, 1963; Soon One Morning: New Writing by American Negroes, 1940 - 1962, Hill, 1963; New Negro Poets, Hughes, 1964; Kaleidoscope, Hayden, 1967; Black Voices, Abrahams, 1968; Black Fire, Jones and Neal, 1968; The New Black Poetry, a.bAvL Major, 1969; Soulscript, Jordan, 1970; 3000 Years of Black Poetry, .a...~and Lomax, 1970; New Black Voices, Abrahams, 1972; The Black Poets, Randall, 1971; Black Spirits, King , 1972; and The Poetry of Black America, Adoff, 1973. In addition to these and other nationally distributed anthologies, many collections of Black Literature were compiled and published in various regions • �tkom 1111111-.-=zll8Sl=m:t:::::mc::a::::m::i::ticl;:m:!!:1mm::ila;c:::iillia::~:;;=i]i~~;;:=a-==-=mmsm:c:t:a ~M~ 111 ~--olll_!I P!llple!El!!!! o!!l:: (d~e!Jii r z::t: t\f\:t:ldl:cy~oc,:c:cftas~ : r;:..n ril:Ja!dn,::Cel!l~tlL c::;tm n "=et: cl~t crti · h·e· t-fl h1 P · · · Lucille Clifton (Good Times, News About the Earth.;:: ,.... Pinkie Gordon Lane (Wind Thoughts), :Nii :::1 Harper (Dear John, Dear ~C~o.:!:l~t_Er~aEn:5=ei_,__2:!lI2;i~s~t~o_Ery__y2i~s~Y~o~u~r~O~wn~EH~e~a~r:.Et:_Eb~e:f!a~t~1•_.. .._ ) , ,11■•••e Cuney (Puzzles) , Troupe (Embryo) , Sterling Plump (Half Black Half Blacker) , Jayne Cortez (Pisstained Stairs and the Monkey Man ' s Wares, Festivals and Funerals ~. Dumas , Rivers/ Nikki Giovanni (Black Judgement, Black Feeling, Black Thought , Re: Creation) , Reed ( atechism of 4. neoamerican hoodoo church t1µ--. ) , David Henderson (De Mayor of Harlem ) , Arthur Pfister (Bullets, Beer Cans & Things), Baraka (Black Magi1~ .a ), John Ec~ s (Home is Where the Soul Is) , - - Bontemps (Personals) , Hayden(Selected Poems , Words in the �Mourning Time ), Lee (Think Black, Black Pridr" 0 ), ~onia Sanchez (~II~o~m~e~c~o~m~i~n~gi• • • •? , Randall (Cities Burning and !ore to Remember), Crouch (Ain ' t No Ambulances for No Ni and the Las" ; Vhs Toni ht), Hughes (The Panther Norimarr, jok:f nC~OR!tiru 1l~A«l m } , Atkins (Heretofore) ~ May Miller (Into the Clearing~ Austin Black (The Tornado in My Houth), Tolson (Harlem Gallery), Young.) James A. Emanuel (Panther Man), Vesey (Ivory Tusks) , Mari Evans (I Am A Black Woman) , Julia Field ~ Stephany (Hoving Deep), Etheridge Knight (Poems from Prison), Gwendolyn Brooks (In the Hecca, Riot, Family Picturei a ), Roy Hill (49 Poems, etc.), Ray Durem (Take ~o Pt~ePDff~) . Far from being exhaustive, this list is merely p4rlad~ representative of the!\.great poeti Many of the po~ts a lso writ • ehildr~n, S'··stories (Evans, Jordan,Clifton) 4twl o.n a L O Cl-'- a.nn*,u7.iCTNHlpe.,a-u.}°"'d •t....,t """'~ """'',t•s ..i•• fiction( Heed, Youn~) A. ' cri ti e irm1(Neal) . l lte list grows and changes con,.-, stantly, especially in view of the (Oft unfolding of surprises . Suffice it to say that the contemporary mood of Black poetry is multi-leveled and complex . There are generalities; one is that most of the poets unreservedly saturate their work with obvious Black references and cultural motifs . There is also an anti-intellectual flavor as many poets turn their backs on academic or Western forms. 1s. rtvett This t-':: el- ,' a general disregard for the esoteric, clo ie,vre literary and sometimes •••Aallusions white poetry. employed in much -rn . :rs Lo.,.'',. There are exceptions, of course-- notably i nAs pecial ~symbo lism I of Musli,11 poets (Marvin X, Askia Toure, Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, and others). These exceptions can also be seen in works of poets who explore African Ancestor Cults, Voodoo, mysticism and African languages C,eed, K. Curtis Lyle, ilE Tour~, Kaufman).ac:za otho~So. Dumas, Norman Jordan, Sun Ra, Generally, though, Black poets are �framing t:iilll:l:lll!l!l~ allusions, images and symbols in the more concrete cultural motifs, as indicated in a line from li!Zi l+ Redmond's "Tune for a Teenage Neice": "spiced as pot-liquor . " :.m:. _TH_E_•\/..:...:0::.J.ic=E=S~O-"-n,..,__T__II_E_ _T_OT_E_M_S!J--rA. 'Soon, One Morning~ Threshhold of the New Black Poetry My Blackness is the beauty of this land. ---- Lance Jeffers Wright called ,._ Blacks "America's metaphor" and Lance Jeffers -tl,e1tttU referred to~ 'the beauty of this land." -thQ. .-.i S oth • ••••m•••~ stances were taken well in advance ofl\'Black Pride" poetry of the sixties and seventies. Margaret Walker ' s discussion of her playmates in the Alabama "dust" (1937) is not self-deprecating; and Gwendolyn Brooks' f portrait~fatin Legs Smith (1945) is far from being unhappy. These are only four randomly selected poetic affidavits of Blacks viewing themselves "po sitively" before the advent of the New Black Poetry. We could, of course, bring up hundreds of examples from Hughes. the poetry of Phyllis Wheatley through But the point, already made, is simply that one is seriously remiss in looking at recent Black poetry without considering its history. The poets who wrote and published between 1945 and 1965, for example, did not work in sealed chambers of tunneled vision . S<.~ .F Each group, each cluster of concern, evolved from~ vhat had been written or said before. Some of these poets were heavily influenced by white writers , teachers, and critics. However, the best of them applied their knowledge and tools to the service of the Black literary tradition. Others ~ere under the direct tutelage of Slacks (Paul -.tl•ts "'~u,., Vesey studied with .-rl\ Johnson, Ro,....,. Joyce Yeldell with Hayden) and became part /\ �of a continuing line of Black.C::-•=P• thought and writing (Vesey in turn taught Arthur Pfister). Whatever their make-up, or their mission, the poets as a group show great facility with language, depth of insight and passionate concernf for their collective and individual hurts l as Blacks and as humans. ~t,,p...VftfteJ°' The works of thes ~ poets, and that of their older pen-fellows, can be found in several anthologies: Poetry of the Negro (1949, 1970); the bilingual Ik zag hoe Zwart Ik Was (I Saw How Black I Was, 1958); Beyond the Blues (1962); American Negro Poetry (1963); Burning Spear (1963); Sixes and Sevens (1963); Negro Verse (1964); New Negro Poets: USA (1964, 1966); Poets of Today (1964); the bilingual Ik Ben De Nieuwe Neger (I Am the New Negro, 1965); and Kaleidoscope (1967). Bontemps and Hughes edited Poetry of the Negro in 1949/ jhe first major collection since Cullen ' s Caroling Dusk . ft was revised by Bontemps in 1970 after Hughes' • death. Interestingly, some of the 1949 entries \.,dude are deleted while the table of contents has been doctored to ..._,..,,new entries .o,..c-lt-o I 'l\p 1l I Randall, Evans and I Bontemps, a Renaissance also edited American 1'o Dureml\,coincide with their age-line. poet who did not publish a volume until 1963 (Personals), Negro Poetry, a task which gave him the opportunity to pick the best from the past as well as the present .I V!y«Mcl-1:hf - .i e..w Mow .....,~ ~ 'ttn,.... -- Ito.de ~ was Q.t, d Swere published in Holland and England and edited by Rosey Pool, with the assistance of Paul Bremen. ~iftre.oF Dr. Pool (1905-1973), a~ Iolland llf , came across Cullen when she was preparing a paper on American poetry in 1925. covery led to a life~long interest in Black culture and poetry. This disDuring 1959/60 she toured the United States on a Fulbright travel grant, spending several months visiting and lecturing at 27 Black colleges and universities. work in Black poetry has drawn mixed reactions from cautious Black writers and critics. But her importance in helping to bring attention to Black poets, �despite cries of "exploitation," is undeniable. Even more controversial is Bremen, who appears to fancy himself as an English Jean-Paul Sar*; he originated the Heritage Series--"devoted entirely to the works of Afro-American authors"--with Hayden's A Ballad of Remembrance in 1963. Since that time Bremen, who edited Sixes and Sevens and You Better Believe It: Black Verse in English-(1973), has released more than 20 volumes of Afro-American poetry . Randall's Broadside Press servQ es as the American distributor of the slim books which have included the aesthetical and historical range of Black poetry: Horne (Haverstraw, 1963) ·, Bontemps, Rivers (The Still Voice of Harlem, 1968; The Wright Poems, 1972), - - Evans (Where is all the Music?, 1968 but withdrawn "at the author's request"), Atkins (Heretofore, 1968), Lloyd Addison (The Aura & the Umbra, 1970), Audre Larde (Cables to Rage, 1970), Randall, (Love You, 1970), Ir; 1 Reed, whom Bremen calls "the best Black poet writing today" (Catechism of d neoamerican hoodoo church, 1970), James W. Thompson (First Fire: Poems 1957-1960, 1970), Dodson, Harold Carrington (Drive Suite, 1972), Clarence Major (Private Line, 1971), the "first non-American contributor" Mukhtarr lustapha (Thorns and Thistles, 1971), Durem (Take No Prisoners, 1971), and Hayden (The Night-Blooming Cereus, 1972). Bremen notes that both Mari Evans and Raymond Patterson ordered their books withdrawn because they "were suspicious of the contract terms." In addition to such "suspicion," felt also by other Black poets, there is great resentment of Bremen's fast-draw critical evaluations of the poetry--which bro<>.der to"1ter--rts are often caustic, ridiculous~ narrow, and reflect a lack of & 13 3 1 : of Black poetry. poets. He calls Durem, for example, one of the first "Black" His statement about Reed, coming as it did in 1970, di es violence to both the author and the critical atmosphere in which Black poets grapple everyday. He says Dumas was born in the "incredibly named town" of Sweet �Nevertheless (alas!), one wonders where these Black poets .., published if such 11 dis.e ases" as Bremen did not exist. • Negro Verse, edited by Anselm Hollo, has no introduction or forward, but does include a dozen blues and Gospel song-poems. New Negro Poets was )n7hetitLe T'/H>G~' edited by Hughes with a Forward by Gwendoly,. Use of the word "new" A.exemplifies Gwend{llyn the kind of spirit that was in ascension at the time. ~Brooks ~._sea.r-d- is also her usual/\,definitive self: At the present time, poets who happen also to be Negroes are twQce-tried. They have to write poetry, and they have to remember that they are Negroes. Often they wish that they could solve the Negro question once and for all, and go on from such success to the composition of textured sonnets or biant villanelles about the transcience of a raindrop, or the gold-stuff of the sun. They are likely to find signi- ficances in those subjects not instantly obvious to their fairer fellows. The raindrop may seem to them to represent racial tears--and those might seem, indeed, other than transient. The golden sun might remind them ti they are burning. There is an attitude in this statement that the Gwendolyn Brooks of 1968 will reject: "poets i(ho happen also to be Negroes." But she reflects Cullen in the "dark tower" and his ruminating on the "curious thing" of the Black poet. She also presages the twistings and turnings in Jayne Cortez' f "Festivals & Funerals." ~ , in introducing the "New Negro Poets," she informs the reader that "here are some of the prevailing stars of an early tomorrow." Walter Lowenfels '#f decision to include "20 Negroes" in Poets of Today was spurred in part by his recognition (along with Shapiro) that "most general �anthologies of American poetry exclude Negroes." An authority on Whitman, Lowenfels shared an award with E.E. Cummings in the thirties, and has helped a number of Black poets make it into print: Dumas, Troupe, Patterson, Redmond, Carrington, Major, Reed, Harper, Hayden, and many others. Lowenfels' was the first new white-edited anthology to include such a substantial number of Blacks. There were 85 poets in all. One of the most important of these anthologies is Burning Spear which contains the work of the Howard Poets: Walter DeLegall (1936Govan ) , Jeffers c,<f/q , Percy Johnston (1930- LeRoy Stone (1936- ) , Al Fraser , Oswald ), Nathan Richards ) f and Joseph White. Burning Spear, subtitl~ An Anthology of Afro-Saxon Poetry, was an outgrowth of the Dasein Literary e~ o.l,L,'sJie.J Society, located at Howard University, which J("laS1&1!11i11••• Dasein: A uarterl Journal of the Arts in 1961••--~ as publisher while DeLegall was editor. Johnston, its founder, served Their connection with the older group of poets and scholars is evident in the advisory board A. Brown, Arthur P . · Davis, Owen Dodson and Eugene C. Holmes. fait : Sterling Fraser, Govan, w e.r-e.. Jeffers, Stone and White ?<' A..contributing editors. Poets in the inaugural issue of Dasein, which doubled as a memorial to Richard Wright, were Delores Kendrick, Clyde R. Taylor, Jeffers, William Jackson, Vernon A. Butler, Robert Slaughter, Laura A. Watkins, Govan, Fraser, Delores F. Henry, R. Orlando Jackson, DeLegall, Johnston and Stone. There is no single unifying thread running through either Dasein or Burning Spear but Black influences and subjects are clearly imbe d. Burning Spear, for example, is published by Jupiter Hammon Press, another connection-in name--to the tradition of Black poetry. In a back-cover note, the eight contributors are called "a new breed of young poets who are to American poetry what Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis i �are to American jazz." After this important analogy, the statement continues: These eight Afro-Saxon poets are not members of a literary movement in the traditional sense of the word, because they do not have in common any monist view about creativity or aesthetics. Collectively, however, they are indifferent to most critics and reviewers--since criticism in America is controlled and written in the main by Euro-Americans. ii H U Poems by DeLegall, Jeffers, Johnston and Stone also appear in Beyond the Blues "1nd.. and in numerous "little" magazines. MA..all of the poets participated in reading-lecture programs leading up to the wider interests in poetry in the later sixties and seventies . DeLegall (Philadelphia) 1 a mathematician and electronic data processing specialist, published in many anthologies and quarterlies, and Ted~ read his poetry and lectured at various eastern and · southern colleges. Fraser (Charleston) is a political scientist with a specialization in African Affairs . Along with DeLegall, Stone, Govan, Johnston and Richards, he has been recorded reading his poetry at the Library of Congress. Fraser cultivated a coffee-shop audience for his readings and appeared before college groups . He is a philosopher-mathematician. One of the older members of the group , Jeffers (San Francisco) is credited with having " influence" on the Howard Poets. He has taught English and writing at half a dozen American colleges and universities. His first volume of W,o. poetry was My Blackness is the Beauty of This Land (1970) and ~second, When I ,\N"t,O Know the Power of My Black Hand, Broadside Press . b~u9lti ~out in 1975 . Both are published by Jeffers has also written novels, short stories and criticism. �Johnston (New York) currently teaches at a college in New Jersey and with ---. Stone "co-authored the revolutionary verse pamphlet Continental Streamlets. Also a playwright, Johnston published a pamphlet of his poetry, Concerto for Girl and Convertible in 1960 and was considered the leader of the Howard Poets. 1 White is a native Philadelphian whose work appeared in Liberator, Poets of Today, and other places. He is a technician for FAA and has written short stories as well as successful prose-poems. As a group, the Howard Poets represent one of the toughest intellectual strains in contemporary Black poetry. Maybe the fact of their having such diverse interests, backgrounds, and training aided in their vitality, virtuosity and power. To be sure, these are "conscious" poets; but--avoiding slogans and sentimental hero-worship--they present precise analyses and interpretations of their world. Most of them grew up in the Be Bop era and so their subjects quite naturally include Miles Davis, Lester Young, Charles "Yardbird" Parker, Clifford Brown, Sonny Rollins, Thelonious Monk, and other makers and contributors to that period. struggle :a .- ,4 ,.c.or-.ce'f\ ¢ P.o" merge$ with ~ . a.n Aawareness uttft/ivil ;ights and of the "bomb," middle class pretensions, history, mythology, religion, and the various trends in poetry: Beat poetry, jazz Black modernity, and folk lyrics.tlneLegall celebrates the Black presence ("Hy Brownskin Business") and satirizes a pretentious Howard coed ("Requiem for A Howard Lady") who is "cultured" and performs every social amenity perfectly. She wears "High-heeled tennis shoes'; but he hopes, near the poem's end, that the president of The Universal Institute of Eugenics will send a New species of female who will be robed in clothes of "sincerity" and who can be called "A Woman." II �In "Ps alm for Sonny Rollins " he announcef that he is Absorbed into the womb of the s ound . I am in the sound The sound is in me. I am the sound. Rollins, the Harlem pied piper, will lead his listeners to "truth," "Zen," ~ · · fu ~ r~~ "Poetry," and "God . " "f'f'After "The Blast" (nuclear bombingJ/\there will be ... no I, no world, no you. /J.nd /('ovan also writes convincinely as in "The Lynching": He was soaked in oil and the match thrown. He screamed, he cried, he moaned, he crackled in his fiery inhuman dance . Govan's interests span the turbulence in "Hungary , " space exploration ("The Angry Skies Are Calling"), and "Prayer" wherein he asks "Christ" for a new dawn's light! Jeffers is a living example of the -....a helpless p l ight of many a Black writer. 11 i}m e,-,'ic«n Although he had been writing for several decades, his work was whit~~listed by anthologists and his poetry did not appear in book form until the seventies . "My Blackness is the Beauty of this Land" stands as a rebuff to those who say " Illack" poetry wasf'invented" ~ecentlyJ Jeffers' s poem, written in the fifties , is a t once defiantJ -1 proua Jruv-bvleni' My blackness is the beauty of this land, my blackness, tender and strong, wounded and wise, The narrator, after the fashion of Hargarct Walker, chronicles the hurts, the happinesses, and the hungers of Blacks . These he stands against his �"whiteness" and the perversions of larger America. mines the same vein: past. "Black Soul of the Land" rich reliance on the well-deep strength of the Black The "old black man" in Georgia is "leathered, lean, and strong." And these are secrets that "crackers could not kill": a secret spine unbent within a spine, a secret source of steel, a secret sturdy rugged love, a secret crouching hate, a secret knife within his hand, a secret bullet in his eye. The poet asks the old man to pass on his source of strength so that he, and his fellows, will be able to "turn black" the soul of the nation and America shall cease to be its name. Jeffers gathers up a fury of love, anguish and commitment in other poems: . "Her Black and African Face I Love," "The Man with A Furnace in His Hand," "Negro Freedom Rider," "Her Dark Body I Cluster,"" Black Han in A New Day," and "Prophecy." Johnston echoes Jeffers, though in a different voice· and style, in many of his poems. prit1A.~v' But Johnston's~conefern is with Black music and musicians. "To Paul Robeson, Opus No. 3" celebrates the multi-faceted talents of the man whose song "stood Brooklyn on its feet." magnificent tribute to the President of jazz: tinues to "ignite the heart." "In Memoriam: Prez" is a Lester Young whose music con- In "Fitchett's Basement Blues, Opus B" Johnston wonders why everytime I want Coltrane or Sonny all I get is Brubeck, ... �"Dewey Square," with its "Beat" repertoire and interests in contemporary everyman, is a poetic summary of the collective history of Johnston's generation. Words for "unkinking hair,11 recollections of radio shows, reminders of Relief and WPA, and Duke Ellington, all leave Johnston with the knowledge that nothing Has changed but my postal zone. In other pieces he surveys the current and past Black musical scene: "'Round 'Bout Midnight, Opus 17," "Variation on a Theme by Johnston," and "To Bobby Timmons." c//. "Black is My Reward" Richards says, noting that Sorrow came, and I left the world ••• Anf experimentalist, his "Do Not Forget to Remember" includes a " prelude" and an "interlude." Like the other poets, he writes primarily in free verse Consiin+lv (almost no rhyme) and in the foregoing poem he~epeats "A petal falls ." The Howard Poets all touch grief and anguish, as does Richards in "God Bless This Child and Other -Children ••• Requiem." ~ resembl~i.ce Atkins. e-R,P:a:t:j 2111,n·~ In syntax and vocabulary, it the beats and ~ Kaufman and Lll~tt41.y m&~l9:::::iiillll.,_ Words and phrases like "matronymic diva," "sepiacenic martyr," "albumenic hawk," "womb-prize," and "black aegis" convey the mystical and eerie sense implied~ · the repetition of "sleep" and the innovative typography of the poem Leroy lso experimental and original is ~Stone. Miles Davis' I "Flamenco Sketches" is separated into five parts: cannons, enart and bill. His study of ouvert, selim, New York is "red in weeping" and Chicago is "Black- draped" as Miles utters in "mutes." The music captures the Dissonant nostalgia of one kiss of a Spanish lady as it weaves in and oU:t of transcontinental experiences and locations~ Davis' ti use and 'knowledge of ·world music is revered. Finally, \ �, the music is asked to Comment on a cloud of oriental ninths comment! In "Notes from the Cubicle of A disgruntled Jazzman" Stone becomes a verbal maestro ripping in "changes," rattling up "thirteenths," storming the "minor mode," and whipping up "passing tones"--all "with impunity." ~Epk.vfuite' s "Black is A Soul" repeats "<lown" as the -e_ersona drops into "depths," "the abyss," and the "infinite" vfuere black-eyed peas & greens are stored ..•• This poignant revelation is mad.e in the end: I raise my down bent kinky head to charlie {----& I'm black. & shout I'm black I'm from Look ~ack. f!:'" We think immediately of titles like Think Black (Lee) and "Say It Loud-I'm Black and I'm Proud" (James Brown) even though this poem preceded them by several years--to say nothing of Joseph Cotter, Jr. 's "Is it Because I'm Black." But White can also do light and touching things as in "Picnic" and "Day is Done" which places "music in the air" as he prepares for bed and his "woman" sets her hair. His ironic, satirical "Inquisitive" displays the range of these poets. The narrator wknders where "Gods" and "buddhas" hide if the earth and sky are both visible to man. �(cMllf Little critical attention has been given the,Howard~~ or any of the other poets •.,.rfitU well-Known wr-:i\nQ ft c upp4iaa · ag vn~~m'rlltt._ including •t.,.as well as Anderson (1938- perrod during this ...~ . names: Cuestas (1944- Joyce Yeldell (1944Hernton (1932- ), Peter T. Rogers, John Sherman Scott, Carmell ), Vesey, Sarah Wright (1929- ), Robert Earl Fitzgerald (1935- Zack Gilbert (1925Latimer (1927- ), ), James Emanuel (1921- Herbert Clark Johnson (1911- ), Nanlf James P . Vaughn (1929- Ishmael Reed (1938(1942- ), Yvonne Gregory ), Roscoe Lee Browne ), Oliver Pitcher (1923- ) , ·) , David Henderson ), Thurmond Spyder, A.B . Spellman (1935- Mance Williams, Tom Dent, LeRoi Jones (1934- , ), Bette Darcie ), Mary Carter Smith (1924- ) , Adam David Hiller (1922- ), Don Johnson (1942- ) , ), Catherine Carter ), Robert J. Abrams (1924- ), William Browne (1930- ) Alba (1915-1968), Frank London Brown (1927-1962), Isabella Maria Brown (1917), Ernest J. Wilson, Jr. (1920- , ) , Rivers, McM . Wright, ), Roy Hill, Sam Cornish (1938- ), Frank Yerby (1916- ) ), Hoyt ), Ossie Davis (1922- ), Oliver La Crone (1915- Pauli Murray (1910- , ), Calvin ), Sarah Webster Fabio (1928- ), Carl Gardener (1931- ) ), Gloria C. Oden, Mose ), Alfred Duckett (1918- Lerone Dennett, Jr. (1928- (1930- ) , Katherine ), Gordon Heath, Horne, Ted ), Lula Lowe Weeden (1918- Carl Holman (1919- (1917- , ), Naomi Madgett, James C. Morris, O'Higgins, Patterson, Simmons, James W. Thompson (1935- (1919- ) ) , Margaret Danner, Gloria Davis, - - - Dur em, Mari James Randall (1938- Fuller (1927- ), Julian Bond (1940- ), Leslie M. Collins (1914- Evans, Micki Grant, Julia Fields (1938Joans (1928- Johnson Ackerson, Charles ), Eugene Redmond (1937- John Henrik Clarke (1915- But they are legion, ), Vivian Ayers, Helen ) , �Ed Robe~~on1 Morgan Brooks, Solomon Edwards (1932Polite (1932- ) ,/\Yilma Howard, George Love, Allen Ho.--t Leroi ), Lloyd Addison (1931- B',bb~ },~Durwood Collins (1937- ), Bobb Hamilton, ~fay Hiller, Stanley Morris, Jr. (1944 dn ~~lo~1es K11is non-exhaustive list was often intermingled with early poets (as far back as Phyllis Wheatley~ _ . older ones (Johnson, :McKay, Dunbar)./ I and spiced with a good offering of post-Renaissance poets (Walker, Brooks, Tolson, Hayden). Names like Fuller, Bennett, Jr., Holman, Yerby, Davis, and Clarke, fall in the category of "occnsional" poets--most of whom undertook full-time duties as novelists, editors, lawyers or teachers. Other important movements paralle l to this phase were the emergence of literary magazines (Free Lance, Phylon 4 ~ ) , especially on Black college campuses; Black newspapers' renewed interest in verse; ~l:,s met\ of poets-in residences at southern Black colleges; the flowering of regional "movements" or writing collectives--such as those in New York's Greenwich Village (Y ry,en, (casper Leroy Jordan, Atkins), Howard's Dasein Group, the Detroit poets, and Georgia Douglas f Johnson's home-based workshops • - • • • • in Hashington, D.C. all of these developments occurred e~cL11s.1~q4' c._. .t Not among Black poets, however,At:1-iere also were racially mixed writing communes and editorial staffs. Julia Fields, for example, was in residence at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference in England and studied for a while in Scotland. Redmond, who won writing awards and published in little magazines between 1960 and 1965, worked with the staffs of the Three Penny Broadside (Southern Illinois University) and Free Lance (Washington University). Other poets and their outlets were Dumas (Trace, Anthologist), Patterson, Jones (Floating Bear,Yungen), Gloria C. Oden (Urbanite, The Poetry Digest, The Half Moon), Rivers (Kenyon Review, Antioch Review, 1 Development of f~4ffiening audience was a centr 1 a../m in most of these activities . For example, on June 16, 1957, young poets Calvin Hernton d .Raymond Patterson read together at I c.(3'8 �Ohio Poetry Review), Spellman (Kulchur, Metronome, Umbra), Hance Williams (Blue and Gold), and Audre Lorde (Venture). Margaret Danner published a As ta.,-lt AS series of poems in Poetry magazine •~1952 and in 1956 became an assistant editor . Of these parallel movements and developments, one other deserved special notice . Though not on par with. the Howard Poets, the Umbra Workshop parti- cipants aided in the production and distribution of Black poetry in the early sixties. Centered in New York 's Greenwich Village, the Umbra poets were founded by Tom Dent (New Orleans), Calvin Hernton (Chattanooga) and David Henderson (New York). The workshop , which also involved artists and fiction writers, published the first issue of its Umbra quarterly in 1963. Other issues came out in 1964, 1967-68 (an anthology), 1970-71 (tabloid anthology) and 1974-75 (I..a..t.in ful.ul issue). who now d \..,ec1s the Dent first served as editor and Henderson, publication from Berkeley, took over in 196 7. attracted to the Umbra workshop were Others Reed, Rolland Snellings (now Askia Tour~), Nonnan Pritchard, singer Len Chandler, dancer Asaman Byron, the Patterson brothers (Charles and William), painters Gerald Jackson and Joe Overstreet, Lennox Raphael, Dumas, James Thompson, Julian Bond, Sun-Ra, Durem, Steve Cannon, and Joe Johnson. damaged by two events. The promise of the Umbra group was One was a failure to print an interview (conducted by Raphael and others) with Ralph Ellison. The second, resulting in a serious -tt11l" split among members, was a controversial anti-Kennedy poem~by Durem. President Kennedy had just been assassinated when the Durem piece was approved by the editors. taste. Hernton, Dent and Henderson decided rt ~was in bad Others, according to Henderson, wanted the poem printed and subsequently "kidnapped Pritchard, who was treasurer, 'threatening him with bodily harm t" 316 ~ast 6th Street in New York Gi·ty. A f avroi·t ~ vuew York gathering place for readings was the Market Place Gallery{2305 ~eventh Avenue) where Roscoe Lee Browne was featured in the late fifties . In July and ~~ Augus~ ~f 1960 a numb~r ,o.t:_ Black poets --r-ea..dJ '":' there: Lloyd son, 0 ert J . Abrams , ~5q>wne, Phil Petrie, Allen Polite, Sarah 9 �The incident is viewed as one of the near-fatal blows to the Umbra group. Later Snellings, the Pattersons, and others went Uptown to work with Jones ' I newly formed Black Arts Repertory and School. The work of Umbra contributors range from the occasional and humorous - Durem . Bond to the serious Poems by Durem, Henderson, Hernton , Dent • and Thompson , also appearf in the early anthologies along with work of other " Village" poets such as G. C. Oden, Spellman, Jones (Newark), and Joans (Cairo, Illinois). later anthologies: Some are also represented in two Black Fire (1968) and The Poetry of Black America (1973). Though racial consciousness is not blatantly evident in these poets , the protest is there, especially the works by Durem, Henderson, and Hernton. . ..j1.e. Umbra made clear its twofold aim 1.n • ~1.naugura 1 issue: Umbra exists to provide a vehicle for those outspoken and youthful writers who present aspects of social and racial reality which may be called ' uncommercial ' but cannot with any honesty be considered non- essential to a whole and healthy society .. • We will not print trash, no matter how relevantly it deals with race , social issues, or anything else . ~ent views "Love" as a " blue tom" lurking " icily" in the darkness. Henderson sees a "Downtown-Boy Uptown" and asks : Am I in the wrong slum? His " Sketches of Harlem" include the " GREAT WHITE WAY" and a small Black boy confusing the moon and the sun . 14, was born in Seattle . Durem, who ran away from home at age While still in his mid-teens he joined the Navy and became a member of the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. Hughes tried to find a publisher for his works as early as 1954 . himself Durem said: "When I was ten years old I used my fists. Of When I was . Wright, Hi l t on Hosannah, M.D., and Brown e (reading the works of Hernton). Others associated wi th the project Clark and Langston Hughes. 1../ O 4 inc l uded John Henrik �thirty-five, I used the pen. I hope to live to use the machine gun •.•• The white North-American has been drunk for four hundred years." His work does not have the finish of a Hayden or Brooks, but he provides an exciting shot in the arm for this period of Black poetry (though Bremen's tit/~/ "first black poet/ is unwarranted). Take No Prisoners (1971) contains many of Durem's memorable poems and a "Posthumous freface," ~ signed in 1962 although he died in 1963. "White People iot Trouble, Too" surveys the plight of whites following the Depression, recession and war, and notes that such an intrusion in the affairs of whites does not equal slavery. After all, life (or history) calls for One tooth for one tooth. Most of Durem's poems are short, satirical, ironical and musical as in "Broadminded": Some of my best friends are white boys. When I meet 'em I treat 'em just the same as if they was people. He writes of Black history, slavery, social inequities, prison life, and "pale ~~t poets" to whom he confesses his~s not "sufficiently obscure" to meet white critical standards. Strangely, Take No Prisoners does not include "Award"-- "A Gold Watch to the FBI Man (who has followed me 11) for 25 years~-which traces the agent's surveillance of the narrator through the "blind alleys" of Mexico, the high Sierras, the Philharmonic, L.A., Hississippi, and other places of violence and mayhem. But it is not all over, the agent is told, for in the end I may be following you! �The work of Village poets was highlighted by the versatile and prolific Le ~oi ~.g. Jones (] liter Imamu Amiri Baraka) , Spellman, and Ted Joans. Before his new " "Black" stance of the mid and late sixties, Jones published in little avant garde magazines (editing several himself) and was identified as the most talen t ed Black among the Beats. His two volumes , Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note (1961) and The Dead Lecturer (1964), show him as a hip, arrogant, musically-involved cat with a tough intelligence . as he noted, were Lorca, His influences at the time, Williams , Pound • and Charles Olson. ~ w~ He illl1'_an adventurer in style with an elliptical and sometimes sacril~gious posture. poets: Such an aesthetical philosophy was shared by the Black Mountain George Oppen , Robert Greely, Robert Duncan, Denise Levertov , Paul Blackburn, Edward Dorn, Gi~ berg, Corso , Gary Snyder and Hichael McClure. A music critic for such magazines as Downbeat, Jazz and Metronome, with an 1 intense interest in Black music, Jones nurtured a careful ~ar his verse. fensible. 11 in Hence, the belief that Jones "suddenly became Black" is indeIn "Lines to Garcia Lorca"--the great Spanish poet--he uses a section of a "Negro Spiritual" as an inscription. The poem is typical of Jones ' s ability to merge numerous ideas, symbols and images in one poem . Lorca ' s death is lamented as Jones uses excerpts from the Catholic mass, reflects on his childhood, explores mythology, gathers bits of poetic confetti from nature and hears Lorca " laughing, laughing"--maybe mocking his killers-Like a Spanish guitar . In "Epistrophe" he finds peering out the window "such a static reference." So he wishes "some weird looking animal" wo~ come by. In the title poem from his first volume--Preface--he adjusts to the way "ground opens up" �and takes him in whenever he goes out to "walk the dog." Life is as monotonous as the "static reference" of window watching: Nobody sings anymore. another Village poet closely identified with the Beats, published Beat, and o1'he"' voLl)me~ All of Ted Joans (1961), and The Hipsters (19611 -- His most widely known poem from this period is "The .38" with its debts to Hughes (whom he acknowledged), Whitman and the Deats. Beginning every line with the phrase "I hear," Joans narrates the murder of an unfaithful wife and lover by her husband: I hear it coming faster than sound the .38 I hear it coming closer to my sweaty forehead the .38 I hear its weird whistle the .38 I hear it give off a steamlike noise when it cuts through my sweat the .38 I hear it singe my skin as it enters my head the .38 I hear death saying, Hello, I'm here! As a group, Joans, Jones and Spellman can be carefully compared to the Howard Poets. They are in the same age range and their themes and interests are di b~t1 similar. T(Spellman, like Jones} studied at Howard Univer,tity and hasl(.cm,tr . - n disc jockey ~FM radio stations. w tl. His book reviewsft{rticles on j a z z ~ have appeared in Kulchur, The Republic and The Nation. volume of poems, The Beautiful Days, was published. In 1964 his first He has also published a book-length study of Black music (Four Lives in the Bdop Business, 1966). S4t$ In "Zapata & the Landlord" the "thief," the speake~, is running in "circles." The poem is a humorous treatment of revolutionary struggle in a Latin American country. In "What is It" Spellman applies a similar technique. This time a cat "hides in your face," in the corners of the mouth and in "that strange canyon" behind the eyes. "A Theft of Wishes" is experimental in its use �of jagged lines and shifts between the tangible and surreal worlds. In the end we are told that home is where we make our noise. Another poet who joins this "irref{nt" generation is the Beat innovator - Kaufman of the San Francisco nay area. sides from Ferlinghetti's City Lights Books: His first works came out as broad"The abominist Manifesto," "Second April" and "Does the Secret Hind Whisper." Kaufman's poetry, con- veying protest through understatement and irony, is marked by unusual and surreal images. His books are Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness (1965) and · Golden Sardine (1967). Solitudes was published in French, "immediately" achieving "a notoriety rare among books of poetry by foreign poets." Sardine). (jacket, Leading French magazines reviewed the book, publishers noted, adding that "Today in France Kaufman is considered among the greatest Negro-American poets alive in spite of his continuing exclusion from American anthologies, both hip & academic." Kaufman's themes are racial memory ("African Dream"), jazz ("Walking Parker Home," "West Coast Sounds--1956."), other poets and writers ("Hart ••. Crane," "Ginsberg," "Camus: I want to Know"), incarceration (a series of 34 in Jail Poem§), history, mythology and religion. In "The Eyes too" he says My eyes too have souls that rage .••• A "Cincophrenicpoet" meets with "all five" of himself where a vote is taken to "expel" the "weakest" one who resents it and soars over all limits to cross, spiral, and whirl. Somewhat typical of Kaufman ' s elliptical constructions and wacky imagery is "lf eavy Water Blues": �The radio is teaching my goldfish Jujitsu I am in love with a skindiver who sleeps underwater, My neighbors are drunken linguists, & I speak butterfly, Consolidated Edison is threatening to cut off my brain, The postman keeps putting sex in my mailbox, I put my eyes on a diet, my tears are gaining too much weight. In this form and style, Kaufman is not only related to the Beats but to Jones, Joans, Spellman, Atkins, and the~£ ted young Los Angeles poet K. Curtis Lyle. Among the older poets who did not come into prominence until the 1960s were Vesey (Columbus, Ohio), Holman (Minter City, Mississippi), 1-lcM . Wright (Princeton, New Jersey), O'Higgins (Chicago), Duckett (Brooklyn), Atkins ~ (Cleveland), Emanuel (Nebraska) A Randall (Washington, D.C.). These poets, and others of their generation, are not similar enough to be labeled a "school" or "movement" but they came of age during the integration push when words Like "identity" and "humanity" engendered more philosophical discussion than they do today. These are the men who went to World War II, opposed lynching 0)14 attended northern white graduate schools. Most were occasional poets pursuing academic or professional careers.iesey as a poet and professional, bridges"'"\n~ middle passage between Africaf and ~fro-America. At Fisk University he studied creative writing under James Weldon Johnson, then went on to law school at Harvard. While studying at the sirbonne in Paris some of his poems were published, through the intercession of Richard Wright, in the French magazine Presence Africaine. I Vesey has helped greatly in the interpretation and �w d.1ssem1nat1on . . . d e. o f Negritu Paul Vesey (birth name Samuel Allen) is the name under which he published his bilingual volume of poems: Zahne (Ivory Tusks, 1956, Germany). Elfenbein Vesey works with skill and precision. he "The Staircase" is a poem on which, ~ I \ says, "I would rest my case, I think, and that of the Negro in this land ~ ~(Blues)* _1he poem studies the Black predicament through the plight of a man for whom the "stairs mount to his eternity." Perhaps, like Sisyphus, the stair is purposefully "unending" since the rotten floor, the "dripping faucet" and the "cracked ceiling" also remain. The man is joined by a "twin" who later goes "exalted to his worms." Vesey also writes an elegy for Dylan Thomas ("Dylan, Who is Dead"), a praise-po€ftt for - - ~ baseball legend Satchel Paige ("American Gothic"), and a powerful <T'A Moment, Pleo. set!) piece~interweaving two different ideas and themes: ge.ri~L. c.1re,,urr1s1irice.s theJ\m= 1•t and J h;t of man; the other As,'l._l'ewin4 *'•.4 called "nigger" by two adol~ent girls. tribute to Louis Armstrong. one viewing the universe spec-iPk the!feality of being Black and "To Satch" is reminiscent of Tolson's Speaking in the poem, Satchel Paige says one morning he is going to grab a "handfulla stars," throw three strikes to burn down the "heavens," And look over at God and say W'l M·~ ~ How about that! , . . Holman s work is among the few entries for poetry in Soon, One Horning. But he is also '('~rE_e.~~r anthologies. He has led an active life as a jivil fights fighter (Information Officer of the United States Commission on Civil Rights) editor (Atlanta Inquirer), writer• and teacher. at Chicago University he won several awards for writing~ While a student Holman, whose poetic subjects range from complex psychic meditations to racial pride, is very good indeed but much overlooked. The leisure class finds clocks "intrude too �early" in "And on This Shore." The general indifference is also captured: Across the cups we yawn at private murders. w-~,c~ "Picnic: The Liberated" examines the shifting uncertainities withf\leisured southerners must live. The tension of everyday southern life lie underneath the merriment of the picnic grounds where men rotate the liquor in "dixie cups" and "absently" discuss "civil rights, money and goods." Yet as the I<.. "country dark" comes in and they return to spri~ered yards and "mortgaged houses" they do not know they are Privileged prisoners in a haunted land. Yet this same poet can hear "Three Brm•m Girls Singing" through the "ribs of an ugly school building." h~ ~ Celebrating the Black musical past, Holman /\them Fuse on pure sound in a shaft of April light: ..• ~t'OC.e. Mcl1. Wright, now a Federal District Judge in New York, was a Lincoln University poet and)with Hughes and Cune~editecl Lincoln University Poets (1954). He served overseas in World War II, later receiving law training at Fordham. While he was in the Army in Wales, he published a volume of his poetry_, From the Shaken To1-1er (1944). "The African Affair" finds Md!. Wright on a safari to find out what "Black is." He discovers it in "prisons," in the "devils dance," where "deserts burn," the Niddle Passage, and areas ~ whM•t :bi?ll[i' "conscience cannot go." His search carries him deep into Africa where "traders shaped my father's pain." In "Four Odd Bodkins for :My Analyst" one finds that "outraged flesh of secret guilt" has come from the pressures of "circumstance" and "need." . Finally, "When You have gone from ooms" there are "never bloor.1ing petals" and "never burning suns." .-u talled ~, 81111i,.,\,u Bvatcraps oa11& 0 'Higgins~ a membe-r of the "tribe of wandering poets." �After studying with C\ 7i ~ Brown at Howard, O' Higgins won Lucy Moten and He later served in World War II, Julius Rosenwald Fellowships in writing. after which he co-authored, with Hayden, The Lion and The Archer (1948). O' Higgins ' s style is less formal than either Holman's or McM. Wright's. He is closer to Vesey, especially in poems like "Young Poet" and "Two Lean Cats" in which the rain fell like "ragged jets" and made a "grave along" the street. The lean cats, running in "checkered terror" into a poolroom, find that a "purple billiard ball" makes the color scheme explode. The much anthologized "VaticideN("For Mohandas Ghandhi") sees Gandhi "murdered upright in the day" and left with his flesh "opened and displayed." likening Gandhi's death to ~ But, Christ's, the narrator says such a person who created the "act of love" knows the guilty carry his "death to their rooms." Gandhi's "marvelous wounds" contain the sun and the seas.1/nifferent, yet similar, these poets sought through their individual voices to deal with man's current and past hurts. Atkins, for example, saw the "swollen deep" rise higher as he "went walking" in section two of "Fantasie." A "restless experimentalist with a very high regard for craftmanship," Atkins was a founder of Free Lance. (1950) which Rivers called the "oldest black-bossed magazine around." Between 1947 and 1962, Atkins's poetry appeared in numerous journals and other outlets. A few are View, Beloit Poetry Journal, Minnesota Quarterly, Naked Ear, Galley Sail Review. His volumes of poetry are Phenomena (1961), Psychovisual Perspective for Musical Composition (1958), Two by Atkins (The Abortionist and The Corpse: Objects (1963), and Heretofore (1968). as complex as the poetry itself. Two Poetic Dramas set to Music, 1963), Atkins' I aesthetical ideas are often An early training in music and literature, he said in Sixes and Sevens, that he was trying for "egocentrical phenomenalism: an objective construct of properties to substantiate effect as object." He /I' �searches after the "designed imagination." In "Night and a Distant Church" he moves "Forward abrupt" then "up" through a series of intermingling "mmm" ~ and "ells" with words like "wind" and "rain ." There is more than --;. hint of Tolson ' s ability to meander among Graeco-Romanf and Afro-American traditions in Atkins '~ poetry. But he is unique. "At War" informs the reader that beyond the "turning sea's far foam" the "ephemera" of a "moment's dawn" sudden ' d its appear .•.. Later, in the same poem, after allusions to Hemf ngway, the silence splits: \.:., Listen a moment--!Sh! Listen--! inl that hurry~as of a shore of fugitives. Once Atkins ' s technique is understood, however , his poetry can be enjoyed for its witty, wacky, off-beat, philosophical musings. In " Irritable Song" he inverts, reverses and convolutes regular syntax: Or say upon return Coronary farewell Leaves me lie . Dare, sir? Ugh! Be nay ' d Tomorrow, tomorrow in today? Atkins writes of the fine arts, John Brown ' s raid on Harper ' s Ferry, Black ahd heroes ("Christophe"), the "Trainyard at Night1 '/\. the Cleveland lakefront • -~ At another end of the stylistic and thematic pole is Randall, a librarian by training and trade who , as we shall see in our discussion of poets of the late sixties, figures prominently in the development of an audience for the �New Black Poetry. Randall also served in World War II and writes poems about the war, love, violence, art and the Black presence. His well known "Booker T. and W.E . B. ," digesting the Washini1>uBois controversy, was seen by DuBois and this pleased Randall. The poem first appeared in Midwest Journal, 1952. Randall has also written about and translated Russian poetry . With Nargaret Danner he co-authored Poem Counterpoem (1966) and his Cities Burning appeared in 1968 . More to Remember (1971) pulls together Randall's poems from "four decades . " His work has been published in Umbra, Beloit Poetry Journal, and other places. He initiated the Broadside Series (posters) in 1965 with his own "Ballad of Birmingham." The series grew quickly, laying the foun- dation for his Broadside Press, the most significant Black press in America. Randall's work of this period has the stamp of formality. He writes in ballads and free verse forms but he has a tightness that will be relaxed in the late sixties. • • • • • • • • "Legacy " chronicles the hurt, physical and mental, of a land "Lit by a bloody moon." But the one who is . "moulded from this clay" vows that My tears redeem my tears. "Perspectives " recasts the time-irrnnemorial theme of ~we ~- • only pass this w~ There is no need to complain about discomfort, the poem says, because even the mountains--in their hugr:')eness--are dissolved "away" by the seas. Randall ' s Pacific Epitaphs are recollections of the war. are epigrammatic and haiku-like. The short pieces Here is a poignant one ("Iwo Jima"): Like oil of Texas My blood gushed here. Prominent in a group of Detroit poets (Margaret Danner, Oliver La Grone, Naomi Long Madgett, James Thompson and others), Randall often enmeshes himself �in a sense of personal injury over his people's history. This tendency, and a debt to the Black poetic tradition (especially Sterling Brown), can be seen in "The Southern Road" where the "black river" serves as a "boundary to hell." The country is "haughty as a star" And I set forth upon the southern road. The variety of styles and themes found in these poets is found also in younger poets of their generation: Patterson, Addison, Browne, Redmond, Jay Wright, Anderson, Hernton• and Polite come readily to mind. poets, Patterson is particularly interesting. Of these His "Black all Day" yielded from its second line the title for I Saw How Black I Was. /J-Lso Q._ po.11e..s.on Lincoln University poet,A.,_won an award for his poetry while still an undergraduate. A native New Yorker, he studied political science and English, and has worked as a counselor for delinquent boys and an English/nstructor. Patterson said in Sixes and Sevens that his first poem· was written during World War II as the "out-growth of a Cain-and-Abel conflict without the dire consequences." "Three Views of Dawn" includes the "silken shawl of night," the disappearance of "corner specters" and the "splitting" of "stillness." The musical "Tla Tla" presents free verse spiced with alliterative language ~ of landscape, season and nature. 31!!37J~ "Alone," the protagonist "keeps poems warm" as he watches over the sleeping lovers as well as the "numb " who wake and weep. Patterson did not publish a book until 1969; and its title, 26 Ways of Looking at A Black Man, shows the influence of .Lnagists and modernists (see Stevens ' s 13 Ways of Looking at A Black Bird). It also reveals much about the Black poet's ability to forge and merge his academic training 5/ �with his own indigenismt- The speaker in "Black all Day" is "looked" into "rage and shame" by a white passerby; but he vows that "tomorrow" I ' ll do as much for him. Patterson constructs a solid poetic foundation, "stone on stone," as he paints precise portraits of " the brave who do not break" when provoked ("You Are the Brave"), or the "lost, the "tireless and raging souJ._:.' ("Envoi") . In the work of Patterson, and the younger group of the period, one finds anger or protest, though the general tendenc1 is toward experimental verse which pinpoints the surest and richest human feelings. jects more often than not reflect this fact. Phyllis Wheatley As Black poets, their subihey dt noi' sl'llln But/\variety. · hitd/\6et11 the most well known female poet until the mid ~1'~iJ•Ellli?lillt••t•l• century when Frances Harper took up the banner of fame though not of skill. • Ulil" A leier new mood was ~evidenced in the work of I Angelina Grimke, Georgia Douglas, Johnson (the most famous poet after Frances Harper), Gwendolyn Bennett, AnuiSpencer, Alice{Neiso?t:?un~, Helene Johnson (a young spark in the Renaissance), Margaret Walker~ and Gwendolyn Brooks. I'\, Ll >I ~nrf'1c A Between the forties and sixties, the n~er of publishing women poets increase\ 't(ottry · (men ) ; and since in America has remained under t h e tvpew.is,or,f SW t>.,.o wh ites women in general have not had the range of opportunities open to men, certainly the Black woman went the worse way of that flesh ! t.S poets of the period,lstill 1:owsma:itte-impressive: But the list of Black women Gloria C. Oden (Yonkers, New York), Nanina Alba (Montgomery), Margaret Danner (Pryorsburg, Kentucky), Mari Evans (Toledo), Julia Fields (Uniontown, Alabama), Vivian Ayers �(Chester, South Carolina), Audre Lorde (New York), Naomi Long Madgett (Norfolk), Pauli Murray (Baltimore), Sarah Wright (Witipquin, Maryland), Nay Miller (Washington, D.C.), and Yvonne Gregory (Nashville), among the dozens of occasional and regional names.<fl..n 1952--two years after Gwendolyn Br(loks won the Pulitzer Prize--G.C. Oden, who uses her initials "as a way of being anonymous," received a John Hay Whitney Opportunity Fellowship for The Naked Frame: A Love Poem and Sonnets. She has worked as a senior editor of a major publishing house and currently teaches English in Baltimore. In the fifties, she joined the Village poets in New York where she read her poetry in coffee shops, reviewed books and worked on a novel. Her poetry has also appeared in The Saturday Review and The Poetry Digest. Noting that she appeals "primarily to the intellect," Hayden (Kaleidoscope) compared her to Cullen, adding that she "is concerned with poetry as an art expressing what is meaningful to everyone, not just a vehicle for protest and special pleading." Although G.C. Oden uses a variety of forms, her poems are usually . .-, i :i'i::!:, tart. crisp an d ~RtQx2cctua1:cy "The Carousel" in an empty park rides me round and round, 0 5eV'Ve$ and the dark drops for her as she i'il!!!l~~her surroundings with explicit word-choices: "sight focusses shadow." In "Review from Staten Island" an item in the view is "spewed up from water . 11 Later we are told that "One gets used to dying living" and "even the rose disposes of summer." We hear the dislocated woman in " ... As when emotion too far exceeds its cause" (phrase from Elizebeth Bishop). Retreating from heartbreak, she admits that she too knew "love's celestial venturingt.": I, too, once truste<l air that plunged me down. Yes, I! I �Nanina Alba is similarly terse and poignant. The Parchments (1963) and The Parchments II were published before her death in 1968. English, fsic She taught and French in public schools and was for a long time a member of the English Department at Tuskegee Institute. use of Greek /ythology to draw a subtle " unwise" actions. c&e,l , analogy "Be Daedalus" makes between Blacl<S and Icarus, _ Death comes as a "tax" for "parching" the sun: Suns can be brutal things. "For Malcolm X" recalls "History ' s stoning." -n-•e;h l Margaret Danner is lflA•illlllai- sensitive. Born in Detroit, she has spent the greater part of her life in Chicago where she was one time editor of Poetry. Her poems in that publication in 1952 prompted the John Hay Whitney Fellowships Committee to offer her a trip to Africa. And in 1962 the literary group with which she identified in Detroit was the subject of a special issue of the Bulletin of Negro History . She has published four volumes: Impressions of African Art Forms in Poetry (1962), To Flower (1962), Poem Counterpoem (with Dudley Randall, 1966) and Iron Lace (1968). A former poet-in-residence at Wayne State University, she founded Boone House, a lively center for the arts in Detroit, and a similar cultural program in Chicago: Nologonya ' s. She employs African tenninology and theme; but she can also write delightfully in other veins as in "The Elevator Man Adheres to Form." wings" the elevator reminds her of "Rococo art. " The " tan man who Struck by his elegance--and +iit. rod " Godspeedings"--the ~~anders why so intelligent and artful a "tan" man has to run elevators. It is a meticulous poem, subtlety exposing the lie that education qualifies you. She finally wishes the elevator man ' s services cou Jd be employed toward lifting them above their crippling storm. �Far From Africa: Four Poems is a sheet of sights, sounds and suggestions carrying the reader across "moulting days" in "their twilight,,'' ("Garnishing the Aviary"), "lines" of "classic tutu ,.'' ("Dance of the Abakweta"), "eyes lowered" from "despair," ("The Visit of the Professor of Aesthetics") and a bed of green moss, sparkling as a beetle, Mari Evans is another kind of transitionalist--shifting from /ivil Jights poetry of the early phase to, finally, a more obvious "Black" stance of the later period. ''he has worked as a civil service and instructor of writing. employe~;4v show hostess and producer, Sometimes referred to as a spiritual, if not technical, heir to Gwendolyn Ilrooks, Mari Evans employs irony, suspension, and rich folk idioms in a free verse style. / \ death ' and funeral, wonders if '' "The Rebel," pondering Cv f'-IOSt;\'y /se. ~e__..,,.s .aa kO-'l. Olollrl 11 Gtt!iositr- want to know whether she has really died or just wants to cause "Trouble.;;:" There is humor and satire in "When in Rome" as the poet interlaces (in the manner of Vesey's "A Homent, Please") two different conversations. Black maid,"M affie dear," is allowed to eat "whatever" she likes~ The Alternating ~r'OM the maid ' s silent resp.onses with the recitation of a menu 9Athe middle class environment ("Rome"), the poem incidentally records the traditional soul food items which the maid craves. "The Emancipation of George-Hector" ("the colored turtle") shows a growing impatience with one-step-at-a-time social change policy. The turtle used to stay in his "shell" but now he peeks out, extends his arms and legs, and talks. and sentimental. But this same poet can wax philosophical "If there be Sorrow" it should be for the things not yet dreamed, realized or done. Add to these the withholding of love, love �"restrained." In "Shrine to what should Be" an audience is asked to "sing" songs to "nobility," and "Rightousness." The children should bring "Trust," the women "Dreams," the old men "constancy." Ironically the audience is told to ignore tears that fall like a "crescendo," and constantly as "a soft black rain." Her tribute to Gospel singers is telling in " ••• And the Old Women Gathered." One cannot (despite "Rome") escape one's self, the poet says, as she notices that the "fierce" and"not melodic" music lingered on even as "we ran. " 4 . p·ie ld s, f.,t.ru ll 1 yJISeA-~c.J.tin · . di e d at Knox Co 11 ege --. J u1 ia IHI L I f/1 spirit• , stu (Tennessee) ,in England and Scotland, and has taught • high school and college. Her work appeared in Umbra, Massachusetts Review and other journals. Along with Margaret Walker, Tom Dent, Alice Walker, Pinkie Gordon Lane-. and Spellma/ she is among the few good Black poets who now voluntarily live in the South. Her first book, Poems, was brought out by Poets Press in 1968, the same year she received a National Council on the Arts grant. She is substantially represented in R. Baird Shuman's Nine Black Poets (1968) and her East of Moonlight was published in 1973. She also writes short stories and plays. Iler main poetic subjects are racism, death, love, violence and history. "The Generations" come and go and in between there are "The wars." And in between them are the seasons, flowers, "lavender skies," dawns, "Sombre seas," and the "embryonic calm." ,, "AArdvark" has achieved "fame" since "Malcolm died and the poet muses: Looks like Malcolm helped Bring attention to a lot of things We never thought about before. She again salutes this martyr in "For Malcolm X" whose "eyes were mirrors of our agony." In "No Time for Poetry" the reader is advised that midnight is ( �th notA_time to beseech one's muse: too much "calm." the "spirit'' is "too lagging" and there is But the morning is ideal since it carries "vibrations of laughter" and has no "orange-white mists." "broken-hinged doo 11 1 ,oA.a As a "woman," listening,)near the man talk of war ("I Heard A Young Man Saying"), the narrator "somehow planned on living." And the "bright glare of the neon world" sends " gas-word s bursting free" in "Madness One Monday Evening." i,h Pauli Murray and Sarah Wright are sometimes poets who also write,\other 4en..--'.s. ~••~, Pauli Murray pursued training for law while she won academic awards and fellowships for her writing. A 9'1vil lights pioneer, she published one 0.. volume of verse (Dark Test~nent, 1969) and a family history (Proud Shoes, 1956). In "Without Name," she is revealed as a formal but excellent craftsman. are no names for true feeling : There let the "flesh sing anthems to its arrival." Sarah Wright, Lnown as a novelist (This Child's Gonna Live), co-authored Give About Black writers she said( ii,. 1961) Me A childJin 1955) with Lucy Smith. "My motto is tell it like it damn sure is." "black outlines in living flesh." and traffic lights. In "Window Pictures" she sees · -the · l · b etween d rivers . "Urgency" viewsAre 1 at1ons11p "God" is "thanked" that the car stops so the passenger can "glory" a while in the "time-bitten punctuationJ"?f the "pause. 11 Vivian Ayers, the daughter of a blacksmith, attended Barber-Scotia College (Concord) and Bennett College (Greensboro) where her major interests were drama, music and dance. She published a volume of poems (Spice of Dawns) and an allegorical d.rama of freedom and the space age (Hawk), performed at the University of Houston's Educational Television Station. lives in Houston where she edits a quarterly journal, Adept. Currently, she "Instantaneous" features a man being "stunned" by the bolt of "cross-firing energies" and grabbed up jn a blaze resonant as a million hallelujas-- ••• 7 �A:Q. man inhabits another man who, dying, gasps faintly: "My god--this is God .. . " j \n m.oo~ m.;u.,zo.!aJ differentl\is Naomi Long Madgett, who moved to Detroit from Virginia in 1946 to teach at a high school. from Wayne State University. She holds a Master ' s degree Associated with the Detroit group of poets, she has published four volumes: Songs to a Phantom Nightingale (1941), One in the Many (1956), Star by Star (1965, 1970), and Pink Ladies in the Afternoon (1972 ) . Currently she teaches English at Eastern Michigan University and runs the newly established Lotus Press. projects was Deep Rivers: A Portfolio: One of its first 20 Contemporary Illack American Poets (1974), which includes a teachers ' guide prepared by the poet . Editors for Deep Rivers include Leonard P . Andrews, Eunice L. Howard, and Gladys M. Rogers . The 20 poster poets are Paulette Childress White, Jill Witherspoon, William Shelley, G. C. Oden, Naomi Madgett, Patterson, La Grone, Pamela Cobb, Pinkie Gordon Lane, Etheridge Knight, Randall, Hayden, Thompson, Margaret Walker, June Jordan, Gerald W. Barrax, Audre Larde, Redmond, Harper and Kaufman . 1• Naomi Hadgett ' s " Simple" ("For Langston Hughe jf is realistically humorous . Simple sits in a bar, wanting to talk to someone, when he is approached by a hand-out seeker who needs to change his clothes Birt wJthi11g, "but my lan ' lady ' bolted the door. " AJoyce)r{vill tap "impatiently" and leave the bar and Simple wondering what "he wanted to say ." In "Mortality" we learn that of "all the deaths " this one is the " surest. " Some deaths are merely "peace" but vultures "recognize" the "single mortal thing" that r:-'I holds on to life and they wait hung,arily for the time ~ When hope starts staggering. Han must come to grips with the things of this world, we are told in ,I • �"The Reckoning": And why and how and what, and sometimes even if. Poems from Trinity: women and humans. A Dream Sequence convey uncertainties and fears of One character has been besk/i)ged by "dream and dream again" ("4") and a naked day "corrodes the silver dream" but the music will not -----,,. "cease to shiver_,'' ("18"). "After" is a lamentation for "mortals" without "wings" to fly away from the "purple sadness" of night. And "Poor Renaldo" is "dead and gone wherever people go" when they "never loved a song." even "hell" must have "music of a sort." But "";) Finally sculpted, like the others, i_.., the poem turns to more sorrow near the end. Renaldo, though dead, is "still unresting." e~~lv q~e~i Audre Lorde'sAwork reflects/lt'kill and control. In the early sixties she wrote: I am a Negro wmaan and a poet--all three things stand outside my realm of choice. My eyes have a part in my seeing, my breath in by breathing, all that I am in who I am. love are of my people. All who I was not born on a farm or in a forest, but in the centre of the largest city in the world-a member of the human race hemmed in by stone, away from earth and sunlight. But what is in my blood and skin of richness, comes the roundabout journey from Africa through sun islands to a stony coast, and these are the gifts thr_ough which I sing, through which I see. This is the knowledge of the sun, and of how to love even where there is no sunlight. This is the knowledge and the richness I shall give my children proudly, as a strength against the less obvious forms of narrovmess and night. (Letter o.c<.o,npo.nyltlj poems S11b~:1tedib ~i'(es ond reveru} �thus gives a balanced account of heQelf as• woman, Black and poet. dimen~i ns And all these~lmtllilll she handles quite well in her poetry,-~ She has published three volumes: The First Cities (1968), Cables. to Rage (1970) and From a Land where other People Live (1973), which was nominated for a National Book Award. In her early poetry she reflects on "Oaxaca" (in Mexico) where the "land moves slowly" under the "carving drag of wood." The drudging field work goes on while the hills are "brewing thunder" and one can observe All a man's strength in his sons' young arms .••. "To a Girl who knew what side Her Bread was Buttered on" describes the girl as a "catch of bright thunder" apparently guarded by (and guardian of) bones. Ordered to leave the bones, she watches as they rise like "an ocean of straw" and trample~ti , hei,, over-see~ Iii 11 1 J U:8 @I!!!!' "into the earth." "forth in the moonpit of a virgin." S:11ftor ~ "comes like a thin bird"-- The "N.9mph" is brought In "How can I Love You" the 1n Te4Jo~ ike the u] J af -later to become "great ash." ! ;w! S"C.ot-n!4 1 magnificent Phoenix bit J <Ms No wonder, the speaker confirms, that your sun went down. The light that makes us fertile shall make us sane. And we hear that the "year has fallen" in "Father, the Year •.. " Audre Lorde's work cuts sharp paths of 4ti, !gliL ad light across the n.ea1t!hi:tg ignorance whk.~ C.onf'u$~oti dfltls i5Troe and prli iiY"R around her • 1 ~'And Fall shall sit in Judgment" "-examines love, ot concluding that "in all seasons" it is false, but the same. A much-neglected poet is May Miller, of Washington, D.C., whom Gwendolyn Brooks acknowledged as "excellent and long-celebrated" (Introduction, �The Poetry at BJack Aroeti~~). Her work can be found in three volumes: Into the Clearing (1959), Poems (1962), and she is one of three poets represented in Lyrics of Three Women (1964). Currently a member of the Commission on the Arts of the District of Columbia, she has been a teacher, lecturer, dramatist and has published her poetry in a number of magazines: Common Ground, The Antioch Review, The Crisis, Phylon• and The Nation. "Calvary Way" shows a Christian influence with a twist of irony and gore·. Mary is asked how she felt, "womb-heavy with Christ Child," as she tasted the "dust" of an "uncertain journey." finally asks Mary: Recalling the crucifixion, the poem "Were you afraid?" The "roaches are winning" in "The last Warehouse" where humans seek to "abnegate survival laws" and kill roaches until they are "sa turated with their decrease." The characters in "The wrong side of Morning" were shaken from a "nightmare of wings" and a.ssembl.es "mushrooms of huge death" as the poet powerfully m!f:!!,=:t-limages and layered meanings. "Procession" employs the dramatic technique (made famous by Brown and others) of interlacing the formal English of the poem with italicized Black expletives and refrains such as "Ring, hammer, ring!" It is the procession of Christ but the reader easily understands, noting the Black idioms, that it slavery and racism. if~OBlack procession through the labyrint+ of '-" There is a series of juxtaposed contradictions like "Time is today, yesterday, and time to come," "moving and motionless," and "infinite takes familiar form," :re?: while "we seek conviction." Christian mythology pervades Hay Hiller's work (though she Black-bases it). In "Tally" the subjects "lay there drained of time" and empty like the "bulge of hour glass" while "Lucifer streaked to reality." �The deaths of Dumas and Rivers left voids and created still more anxieties, coming as they did (1968) in the midst of racial turbulence. However, by the mid-sixties both poets had written a great deal of poetry and a great deal about themselves . Rivers died an unnecessary death in what has been called an "impulsive" act. white policeman in a New York subway. other . Dumas was shot to death by a wi't\nn Both deaths occu:{ed/\months of each Rivers was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and attended public schools in Pennsylvania, Georgia and Ohio . His college days were spent at Wilberforce University, Chicago State Teachers College and Indiana University. In high school (1951) he won the Savannah State poetry prize. Rivers was greatly influenced by Hughes, Wright and his uncle Ray 1'1civer. His five books, two of them published posthumously, are: Perchance to Dream, Othello (1959), These Black Bodies and This Sunburnt Face (1962), Dusk at Selma (1965) , The Still Voice of Harlem (1968) -. and The Wright Poems (1972, with an Introduction by friend-novelist Ronald Fair). Ohio Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, and Antioch Review were only a few magazines in which his work appeared. Responding to a request (1962) to comment on himself as Black man and poet, Rivers said, among other things: I write about the Negro because I am a Negro, and I am not at peace with myself or the world. I cannot divorce my thoughts from the absolute injustice of hate. I cannot reckon with my color. I am obsessed by the ludicrous and psychological behavior of hated men. And I shall continue to write about race--in spite of many warnings-- �until I discover myself, my future, my real race. I do not wish to capitalize on race, nor do I wish to begin a Crimean War: I am only interested in recording the truth squeezed from my observations and experiences. I am tired of being misrepresented. Adding to the statement, Rivers said "beauty and joy, which was in the world before and has been buried so long, has got to come back." ~\"O 11~J, But Rivers saw little "beauty and joy" •'l_his own mind' s eye. His poetic landscape is often bleak and filled with deep psychic yearnings and wanderings through the ambivalences of Black-white relations. is also torment and brooding. There In this , _ he bears some kinship to Dumas. For both delve deeply into psychology, bu't are at the same time accessible. Rivers spent much time researching his past and reading from the great volumes of world literature. During the mid-sixties in Chicago he parti- cipated in discussion groups--involving Fair, David Llorens and Gerald McWorter--out which --irir grew the now well-known Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC'l: 1 1 Arts programs ~of t h t poems. · · g. o.. :Sg ID~prominent veh ' ~ Po.-. · a;,.u,..,, Black Rivers talks about his own death in several "Postscript" is a poem which "should not have been published." The narrator says he was "living and dying and dreaming" all at the same time in Harlem. And, toying with his own fate i ~ k e of Wright's "sudden death," he recalls the elder writer's "prophecy"~ that he too "soon would be dead." The theme of death--often moral, spiritual or physical as in Hayden-- can be found in pieces like "The Death of a Negro Poet," "Prelude for Dixie," "Four Sheets to the Wind," "Three Sons," "Asylum," and all of The Wright Poems. �d1 es. s In "Watts, " he JliAllll•!t!es generations of fear, horror, history and anguis~ ~,1f-t epigrammatic · · ~__ f ury- ~ · 1 y apparent ease: a d eceptive Must I shoot the white man dead to free the nigger in his head? a.. iii n: 9dil,1y.4weak assessment of Rivers '• poetry, Haki Madhubuti (Lee) said this poem " asks a revolutionary question" (Dynamite Voices , Vol. I). Such a " question," ,~one, wh\C.h of course, tfontinuaily turns or revolves . Dut, 41tl.e.""'.•'Athe w~th lllli-•.... deep semantics aside, the comment is blind to Rivers ' ea.vs d v,a..Lt' L fears and sores/ \ • • • • • by America ' SA._nightmare. t?gt' answers ~ Sl4.p,s1tc.~ verbal · · -tt.~1 ne't1htw- • d He knew .-A5 impl €•b'\m:je would make these hurts disappear . A~ , such criticism violates the poem , robbing the poet of his many-layered concerns and analytical powers . River~ is not all somber ancl bleak, however; in " The Still Voice of Harlem" he announces: I am the hope and tomorrow of your unborn . Even amidst the contradictions and uncertainties of racial/political ping-pong (" In Defense of Black Poets ")! A black poet must remember the horrors . Especially since Some black kid is bound to read you . ~a- . The "Note on Black Women" asksf',t:hey teach the poet "honor, " " humor ," and "how to die, " presumab l y t he reborning death . sheet . The Wright Poems is an elegaic " To Richard Wright " exclaims/ alnost with defeat, that �To be born unnoticed is to be born black, and left out of the grand adventure . Wright" ~ refers to the novelist as young Jesus of the black noun and verb . Other poems find the poet wandering or searching through the " spirits" or "bones" of Wright. In "A Mourning Letter from Paris " Rivers recalls knowing and feeling ~eve~o..L o(.h,~ gl-'>eu,c,c.utL,u~eu~l;,1.., rot191 s 0.~t rr-•M~4 t ~"t'k, s•pTe1tt b•"'J''"!i JSSCI~ f: (lloct&YI • "Harlem ' s hone ed voice . " _ Off.ffsimilar in feeling and the;-~ ~t,i,.!a lmost never in voice and £:. form, is the work of,.,pumas wh~"Negritude ranges across time and space . " H,,.,., forn .&iilliim11M12er-.1111a,._~ . "OvrntU in Sweet Home, Arkansas, ~moved to New York when he was 10 years ~ old and completed public schools in that city . He attended City College of New York and Rutgers between stints in the Air Force and other activities. Active on the little magazine circuit, he won a number of awards and helped establish several publications. At the time of his death, he was teaching at Southern Illinois University's Experiment in Higher Education in East St. Louis . In 19 70, SIU Press published two posthumously collected volumes: Poetry for My People and ' Ar k of Bon' and Other Stories, edited ~ -,,o,.ts h,tcn~ f'ltf. Chatfield and Redmond. Hale • ,-e-,..• t't-1,r,., Random House re- issuedA_t' ry Play Ebony Play Ivory &, fl Redmond.@@ gsi• o5 . Though there have • J .w.Wi . ~iiilililiiiiWN-~•---•••••liiiil~~ been no full-length critical studies of Dumas ' ' poetry, Jay Wright and Baraka assessed him in the SIU eif''YI the new K4 . U>· C,ot\(lf'fl\S e.. and Wright ' s Introduction is retained in ltc.h1t t,'- s . Wn.ght, himself a major poet of the era, ,.imz=..i."the .--. linguistic ~lm!IN& and ~ musical range of Dumas: None of this is perverse, intellectual play . of Dumas ' sense of history. It is indicative In "Emoyeni, Place of the Winds," ) �he writes "I see with my skin and hear with my tongue." ••• The line, I suggest, asserts some elementary truth about Dumas ' , and not alone Dumas ' , poetic techniques. is grounded in that line. This book ..• What Dumas means i~ that there are racial and social determinants of perception, ideas that he was just beginning to develop. The mind articulates what the senses have selected from the field, and this articulation is, in part, determined by what the perceiver has learned to select and articulate .• , ,11 ii C t £3 U L 1 lg L &lib 2§ Uii&L if&tp@hS i PJ&L &lid 5 IS In '{I] hear with my tongue," Dumas asserts that the language you speak is a way of defining yourself within a group. The language of the Black community, as with that of any group, takes its form, its imagery, its vocabulary, because Black people want them that way. Language can protect, exclude, express value, as well as assert identity. is why Dumas' language is the way it is. That In the rhythm of it, is the act, the unique manner of perception of a Black ~ man. rrWriting with the removed passion of the friend that he was, Wright makes vital statements not only about Dumas but about the whole area of Black creativity, perception and stance in the world. Indeed Dumas jutted all these antennae r from his poetry which he wrote to maintain "ou~ precious tradition." Lin- guistically, Dumas' f base is formal English, a blend of Black African languages, Arabic, and Gullah from the islands off the Carolinas and Georgia. His cosmos �is shaped by the rich textures of Black religious and spiritual life, expecially old time church services and Voodoo. Wright notes: and gospel music, particularly, were his life breath. "The blues Only Langston Hughes knew more, ~ rat least as much, about gospel and gospel singers •... Music seemed to Dumas to be able to carry the burden of direct participation in the act of living, as no poem, that was not musically structured, could .... " "Dumas was searching for an analagous structure for poetry." As a poet, Dumas combines the past, present and future, often inseparably, as in "Play Ebony Play Ivory": for the songless, the dead who rot the earth all these dead whose sour muted tongues speak broken chords, all these aging people poiijon the heart of earth. Curses and curdles, mysticism, blessings and warnings abound ~· ~ °f?,'+ 1e ft) / : Vodu green clinching his waist, obi purple ringing his neck, Shango, God of the spirits, whispering in his ear, thunderlight stabbing the island of blood rising from his skull . . Later, in this same poem ~ come, must come: ' the word takes precedent over all; what must �No power can stay the mojo when the obi is purple and the vodu is green and Shango is whispering, Bathe me in blood. I am not clean. ,~ Je,m,td His intercontinental, intergalaxia! soa~ ewrls,~any and all devices at his command. ~ explores the dense rhythms (" of percer,tion") as in "Ngoma" where he compares the belly of a pregnant woman to the drum head . h.,J /:::d. 11d The~ •1ts r listens to the baby ' s heart; the drummer listens to the voices of the ancestors: aiwa aiwa it is the chest-sound same that booms my chest aiwa aiwa a strong sound running like feet of gazelle ~ em~ aiwa aiwa ---, merges goat skin The ~ rescendo, with its bu~lt- in ,n c..fAn and woman ' s belly in the • JI ory q 1 £!'¥\roar: the goat-skin sings the boom-sound louder louder sings the goat-skin louder the goat-skin sings the boom-sound louder sings the goat-skin louder louder louder boom the goat-skin b.,om-sound louder louder louder The rich, experimental language, couched in several " traditions, " is seen �everywhere in this major voice (" from JackhglJlilley") : The jackjack backing back ancl stacking stone city-stone into cracked hydraulic echoes of dust ?1 ( " Root Song" ): Once when I was tree flesh came and worshipped at my roots . fr ("A Song of Flesh") love) _,,. maddened IL,' When I awoke) I took the sleeping mountains of your breasts tenderly tenderly between my quivering lips and I guillotined the stallions, drowned the eagles, and drove the tiger fish back into the sea of your heart . There are also "many" poets in Dumas . NNll--•i~e:1-A combination of Dunba r, Hughe s J . Walker, coupled with the best of the riming poets of the sixties) - produces -,i..,'s . . - sanguine and humorous Black truth ("I Laugh Talk Joke" ): i laugh talk joke smoke dope skip rope, may take a coke jump up and down, walk around drink mash and talk trash beat a blind hoy over the head with a brick knock a no-legged man to his bended knees �cause I ' m a movinl fool never been to school god raised me and the devil praised me catch a preacher in a boat and slit his throat pass a church , I might pray but don ' t fuck with me cause I don ' t play There are epic poems like " [osaic Harlem" and " Genesis on an Endless Mosaic," a blues series , experiments in African forms (using spontaneity and ritual), and mystical/exploratory poems like Thoughts/Images , Ke£ , Ikefs and Saba. Gnc) r,wi i'4l 1i/ fO'""P1/ ~bvt'') -th rt i.vh;c~ b In one " Saba" Dumas uses bizarre imagery/\ to render ~ ~hard to describe: sx waterings streams striking aorta vibraphones sx veinings myriads of flag,ella flucksing rite Dumas possessed a boundless love for the acoustical leap and the dramatic " implosion" (as he put it) of ideas in poetry . haye on Black poetry remains to be seen . What influence his ideas will 2111'/i It would have been ,;J1,lll![il•~ interesting if his work , much of it written in the early and mid-sixties , had been �available in collected form when the first <:KC-V C,.rec:J Poetryl\rue bd,R8 f,H.i3t1 t . r, The Amer ican temperament (disfavor i ng Black writers t elling their truths) kept Dumas and Rive r s running . Dumas sought his peace in the deep well of his own folk culture and in occasional excursions into mysticism, Afric ~ ancl Voodoo. Rivers buried himself in the "identity" issues and brooded over his plight as a brilliant Black in a country where the two adjectives together are neither believable or legitimate. both left~ fegacies .fo~ o-.c.c,, ..."t Gftd fo..t.-reAL"•·n1 -&£t.., AUessw,e,a,r of bu.nu' potJli.y o.9'Cl a.,";.,~,....d' sec CjyJc"Tlylo..1 •tfffN.y bu...as:Le~ao, o~A. len,~ $1R9eto-"(ij,gllAM-~ B. ' Griefs of Joy~ The Poetry of Wings & The Black Arts Hovement No 1 Sept. \9'15'). nothing remains the same . And my spirit reaches out to you my love without apologies without embarrassment with only the thought that this is right for us that moving towards you is like touching leaves in autumn our minds and spirits interlocked like death . ---- Pinkie Gordon Lane, "griefs of joy" One major difference between the cultural/political upsurges of the twenties and the sixties/seventies was location: the Renaissance was centered literarily , if not always geographically, in Harlem; but its �recent successors can be found in every North American community with a substantial Black population. Another difference was in degree of artistic-political consciousness. To be sure, the cultural and political arms of the Renaissance were, on occasion, interlocked. But such marriages never reached the current state of 11 wholeness" and "continuit~ In the early days of this period there were (are) "stars" of the New Black Poetry; but the glitter often attended activities "outside" of the poetry. Or, put differently, the stars sometimes put "outside" topical stimuli "inside" what is no longer defensible as-"poetry.tt This often meant that the star poets had no connection whatever with a Black literary or folk poetry tradition as such. In- stead theirs was a utradition" of immediacy, political urgency, and newspaper headlines, combined with high-school type punch-lining. This is not to say good "poetry (of whatever definition) was (is) not being written or that charlatans were always on the"take." There is much evidence to support the belief that dozens of these soothsayers were sincere and honest--and had chosen what appeared to be the 11 simplest 11 and "fastest" vehicle for expressing thoughts about '1Revolution~ and "Black Togetherness" or raising the "Collective C0 nsciousness." Such a situation was not helped by the learned poet-activists who sometimes advised young writers to give up "Western" influences and a "white" language. These advisors usually stopped short of suggesting ways in which young poets and writers might assimilate another language into their works. Yet this need to identify and institute an alternative language is a pressing one. In the meantime, impressive contributions toward such a realization have been made by such beacons as James W~ldon Johnson, Melvin Tolson, Margaret Walker, Henry Dumas, Ishmael Reed, Jayne Cortez and others. However, the insincere versifiers usually _fell by tilie wayside in a short time, paving the way, like the Phoenix bird, for still more soap box mounters. At the same time, a number of poets--whose wits and crafts were ~7~ �not about them in the early phase--took to the woodshed to become much better handlers of the word. a "panorama of violence." All this occurred, Larry Neal notes, against Indeed by the late sixties Black communities all over America had been turned uJVide of the Black Revolution. own by police and spokesmen/supporters 12 Young shock troopers like Carmichael,N3rown, Charles Koen, Ron Karenga, Huey Newton, and Eldridge Cleaver had already forced the "old time" Black leadership to take a seat. Now, with father having destroyed son (Williams, Baldwin), the poets were free to declaim, proclaim and exhort. o.entrA-i the~oetic tradition-- This trend a l o n e ~ shoe~ since it created a flood of polemicists and pamphle teers who could/would ,'n not discuss poetry inNiistorical contexts. It caused further shock by labeling itself "Black" and renegotiating its own "roots." (the word "Black" :r has appeared throughout the history of Black poetry, but before the sixties it was not used as a categorical f\*...e.nceto poetry written by Afro-Americans.) Hence much of the New Black Poetry has been viewed as non-poetry or anti-poetry (in a traditional literary context) because among other things, it J,,e:, · not depend primarily on subtlety and recondite references. to be ,Pi1.~c,LAr f.eo..lVt' o f' seen what impact this · Black poetry will have on the literacy trends in Afro-America. Jackson (Black Poetry in America), for example, begins his own discussion of the ew Black Poetry by building a convincing -ft.e. h'2w analogy between the rise in Black literacy and the popularity of~poetry. ,,, Henderson (Understanding the New Black Poetry) assures his readers that Black readers or listeners clearly "understand" what their poets are saying and are participating more and more as judges o f ~ aesthetical qualities in the poetry and the poets' deliveries. II But while this chapter will conclude with a few broad critical observations, the immediate aim is to �continue the sketch of the poetry ' s development, interpolating from time to time pertinent critical and illuminating data. There are dozens of ways to approach the New Black Poetry. One could, for example, examine its theme, structure and saturation (Henderson), or its several types (Carolyn Rodgers, see bibliography). Starting with important names is another way; the Black Aesthetic (Gayle, Fuller) approach is another way. Then there is the magic of Black poetry (Baral4 , Tour~, '1 Neal, Dumas). Jlusic is also a favorite OtfP fJJ Harper, Jayne Cortez). One could go on and on: ( 811 J4 Crouc h , Re6:IJ ucasce but the poetry has been written and one place to start is with its emergence. New York certainly played a key role in the new movement; but it did not, we said earlier, play the key or only role. Areas of the East (Phila~., "l"l"t delphia, Boston Baltimore, Washington, D.C.) enhanced_the boo~ . Midwest centers were Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit, East St. Louis-St. Louis J and Kansas City, to name some. Related events also took place in the South where there was another "rising" in Atlanta, Nashville, Jackson, Baton Rouge, Tuskegee, Houston,- and Toogaloo. The West added richly from Los Angeles, San Francisco Bay area, Sacramento • and Seattle. i'ht. b evelopments related to poetry mc.h,4'e ~numerous Black Arts activities (connected to cultural or nationalist programs) located at settlement houses, community centers, museums, centers for the dissemination of ideologies, anti-poverty SvRfo .."t".c.a.,.,,,i,Jo..lSo l'n ff.re f:o.,. W\ot~ projects, and educational institutions. l:iifljl · plethora of tabToi~ck-oriented, journals, flyers, posters, books, pamphlets t and records . .._ ~ f great importance were the new Black bookstores, African curio shops, walls of "respect" (Cleveland, Akron, Chicago, St . Louis, New York, Newarl-J ~ , art exhibits, weekly festivals and jubilees, writers ' conferences, writing workshops, the flood • \ �of liberation flags (black-green-red), Black-oriented -,Y talk and variety or-CvL-tii1'6...l S'y~b ol...1 >P«c.i' t.. c.,.i,iy ~ shows, and other physical/\ · , Ji handshakes_!',.-eir----.._i....~==t"'.African clothes, hairdos and jewelry new consciousness. New York was an important show-place for the It had the residue of the post-Renaissance years (the iomburg Library and Micheaux 's Bookstore) in Harlem as well as numerous 'RLo..d<- surroundin~ltommunities. New organizations · ,he such as ta- Barbara Ann Teer ' s National Black Theater, ~New Lafayette Theater, VD..'1"\C,VS hew and a.-llllarlem fultural ~roje~1I_ flowered in the amazed light of older institutions like Freedomways magazine (Clarke and «a•aea:t Kaiser) which has published many of the new poets: Tour~ ~ (Snellings~ Madhubuti (Lee), Henderson, Clarence Reed, Welton Smith, LlGyd T. Delaney, W.D. Wright, Joanne Gonzales, Mari Evans and others. Freedomways also offers lively reviews and commentaries on poetry, literature and the Black Arts scene. From the variegated atmosphere of New York gushed forth a tide of 1n olnero.v>eos hwi'nei 1-lenderson, Larry Neal Black poets, some ••!l!la,.rt!ade their mark earli"erf.; (1937- ), Reed, Patterson, Sun-Ra, Sonia Sanchez (1935(1936- June Jordan (1936- ), S.E. Anderson (1943- ), Hernton, Quintin Hill (1950- Baraka, Audre Larde, John Major (1948- ' ), Albert Haynes A, (FLurence Ar,~ 1 (tQ</7-) > ),~ Howard Jones ( 941) , N.H. Pritchard (1939- J~mes AY'Un5(on!o nes(iq.1'1Lennox Raphael (1940- ) ?, ) '/\John A. \Jilliams, Lebert Bethune (1937- ), ) , 1,/,t, ), Lethonia Gee, Bobb Hamilton, Q.R. Hand, </usef Inan, Ray Johnson, Odaro (Barbara Sho.rion Bovr>l<e Jones, 1946), Clarence Reed, usef Rahmanl(Ronal<l Stone)/ Barbara Simmons, Lefty Sims, Welton Smith (1940Clarence Major (1936(1939- ), Spellman, Edward Sprij (1934), Gi-OS'fCl'lo~dCfho-""> \)ouqh»-Y LOVl~ (I q4 ~- ) ), A.L orenzo Thomas (1944),/.f-ichard Thomas ~"u ), Jay Wright (1935- ), Ted Wilson, Lloyd Addison (1931- Q'Ut-) Kattie M. Curob~ James Arlington Jones (19361933- '' O?t1-5- ) ), ), Jayne Cortez (via Watts, °" ), Ema nuel, Calvin Forbe~, Alexis Deve~ux (1950- ), Nikki Giovanni L<>~~ �(via Fisk, 1943- ), Tom Weatherly (1942- Djangatolum (Lloyd M. Corbin) Q. 9Lf9- ), ~~e ), Ron Welburn (1944Jackson (1946- ) ' ), Joe Johnson (1940), Julius Lester (1939), Elouise Lofti•n (1950), Judy Gy /tl1n k(l'11'\J (iq44- ') Simmons/( Felipe Luciano (1947), L.V. Mack ) , At.::harles Lynch (1943(194 7- ) , Rhonda Mills, .@!!Ill K.W. Prestwidge. (tf.fto- } od i 81t0<f'to11 , Larry Thompson (1950- ), The New York Black Arts scene (poetry specifically) was all-a-whir with the excitement of publishing and reading poetry aloud at the infinite number of gatherings. older, often revived1 ones. his death in 1967. Joining these younger writers were Hughes oversaw much of the proceedings until And there were old, as well as new, outlets for the poetry which was being read at the Apollo, Carnegie Hall, New Lafayette Theater, Slugs East, Lt'be~iv f-4,,v.se ~~rd! H@rie 1?8'1!'k, and in countless community centers and churches. Most of these poets were not native New Yorkers; and a great number even were not psnpolii ailsiy there during the height of the Black Arts Movement-but often in outlying areas like Bridgeport, (Youth Bridge) Yale, Fredonia, Brockport, Rutgers, Brooklyn, Boston (Elma Lewis ' s Center for Afro-American At11 t$Lc,.c,K. Ac.o.demy ot At-T.u.nd LettT.-..s Cultur ~~ and Bedford Stuyvesant. But, while they had separate Black Arts programs, most looked to the movement in New York. Workshop there were: Douglass Creative Arts In addition to the Umbra Harlem Writers Guild (Clarke, Killens), Frederick Center♦ Poetry Workshop, the Afro-Hispanic Workshop, ~ Workshop for Young Writers, the Columbia Writing program (Killens) A. Black Arts Repertory and Theatre/School (Baraka, Snellings). Glv~, l..o..'1Le to #ie p.-ets. Among the new journals/\ fw e Umbra (1963), Soulbook (1964), Black Dialogue (1965), Journal of Black Poetry (1966) (ironically, the last three were begun on the west coast), Pride, Black Theatre (1969), Cricket (1969), Black Creation (1969), AfroAmerican: �A Third World Literary Journal (1973, Syracuse), BOP (Blacks on Paper, Brown University, 19'(/4), Continuities: Words from the Communities of Pan-Africa, City College New York, 1974), Impressions (1974), Cosmic Colors, c, bslc:hg.n dr - /\ (Fredonia, 1975) . T(During a speech at Howard University's First National Conference of Afro-American Writers (November, 1974), Tour~, recounting the tumultuous years and developments, said those responsible for the "Black arts and aesthetic movement" were "activists as well as artists." It seemed \..e. Ro, :!ones so, for this particular pattern was most obvious as Jia uah../\ returned to Newark 1ff (renaming it "New Ark") and changed his name l imamu Amiri Baraka, reflecting cin h 1n.-i 1 i.11 the great influence of the Nation of IslaTI}l\and fl\J Q~l\'t!c~es in African Fovndaftlit {jL,.d,. Ah-U eep11►forf1t,ea(;e ctn:I sdtoo'lculture. Having 1-• '/\'to re-educate the nearly half a million Harlem Negroes to find a new pride in the color," he (;(JeAT:G_~o establish Spirit House --- ~ ~e~.,tl'\Sf11~,:Co?t~ (Newark), and such s+w,il i 11 t 1\as Spirit House Players and Hovers, the African Free School (with its Kawaida doctrine), Jihad Publications, Committee for a Unified Newark, and to help launch several national Black political con. vent ions. He was a f oun cl er (1970) o f t h e;:,/\..~t~~,t..y ( tlif I ilrgr stri"f e-ri"dd en Congress of African Peoples. During the 1967 riots (insurrections) in Newark, Baraka was arrested with several companions and charged with possession of two handguns and ammunition. Between his arrest and the trial "Black P~ple!" was published BA"' .seems ti> "°'"e b"e11 UJY1vlc7etJ 11n1he.JJ;enjhilll!_,. ., PoeM s,~e Th «--""'.,,. t,t~ . t"° ch-th Cov i.Trt1ctm in Evergreen Review.A The poem openly encouraged looting, theft, murder of whites, and general insurrection: "Hhat about that bad short you saw last week"; "You know how to get it, you can get it, no money down, no money never"; "he owes you anything you want, even his life"; "Up against the wall motherfucker this is a stick up!"; together and kill him .my man": "Smash the window at night"; "Let's get �... let ' s get together the fruit of the sun, let ' s make a world we want black children to grow and learn in do not let your children when they grow look in your face and curse you by 1r pitying your tarnish ways. ~u ~v It was the kind ofAiii,,lip and tfage that ch_aracterized Baraka' s (a11dA other Black poets ' ) ~e,..se.. I\_••• ~ '\so.: ~\<:.6... wo.s ~ti"' aq..wTed bv1" ,. .,,._ between 1965Al969. ~wrim~ t hia pedeN Mlrntta: •~ a number of /\t a..ted _developments occurred. Impressed by the Mt3a.i~ "of Ron Karenga wk om he rne:t <t(hile teaching l • ?Pg at San Francisco State College in 1967), returnetl to Newark and organized the Black Community Development and Defense Organization (BCD). His efforts eventually aided in the election of a Black mayor .Kenneth Gibson deve.Lo pmem ts . These ti.a· u~s A..w ere having great impact on regional and national Black political/poetry scenes . Baraka ' s picture•paire~~ (with bandages from the 1967 scuffle with Newark police) began appearing on \sCl: t walls of cultural centers, dormitories and homes . ~'(/any observers were somewhat wary of Barakq , having seen him go through the "changes " from Beat poet w::•i~L•l...,.....,,_l~i~t~-.~·5.,..3._, to Harlem and Black Arts, into Newark antl political work , ( f or great insight into all this, see Theodore Hudson ' s From LeRoi Jones to Amiri naraka, 1973 J ♦ Yet Baraka ' s influences were felt in most centers of the New Black Poetry--and even in places where his poetry had not actually been !ead; or, if read, not fully understood and digested . It was not unusual to hear a Black youth quote a few lines from a poster-poem or from a live reading, but who, when questioned about Bara·a ' s works, did not know the name of a single one . After The Dead Lecturer, Baraka (also playwright) published Black rlagic: �Poetry ,1961-1967 (1969), In Our Terribleness ( 1970), Spirit, Reach (1972), j as well as numerous essays and stories. With Neal he co-edited Black Fire (1968) which, along with Major ' s The New Black Poetry (1969) show-cased the new poetry') . In the Forward to Black Fire, Baraka called Black artists "the founding Fathers and . . 1others, of our nation. We rise, as we rise (agin) . By the power of our beliefs, by the purity and sJ:;rength of our actions." Usi'n.3 his ~~nie, htw C}V" 4 m rYHU\ 0,.'00 4>'11"l r~, he.. v l•e,v..,e.cl 1N po.en O.V\6 W-;.iil,~s: o.s:. _; . holy man . The black artist. The man you seek. maker of peace. you seek. speaker . The lover. Look in . The The climber the striver. We are they whom The waior. Find yr self . The Find the being, the The voice, the back dust hover in your soft eyeclosings. Is you. or minus, you vehicle! selves. The black man. Is the creator . Is nothing . We are presenting. Plus Your various We are presenting , from God, a tone, your own . Go on. Now . He thus set• the "tone" for poets/philosophers , reiterating at the same time w~sberna _-r:; ·much of what --••.i.•<1exclaimed in other writings ac~0~5 the Y\<Mt-O O • Neal , a perceptive critic and balanced theoretician, d!IIIIIP published two volumes: Black Boogaloo: Notes on Black Liberation (1969 , Journal of Black Poetry Press , Forward by Jones) and Hoodoo Hollerin ' BeBop Ghosts (1975) . 1 His Afterword to Black Fire is tantamount to Hughes ' famous ~declaration ~f the twenties. Presenting "artistic and political work" =A~~~ be "called a radical perspectiv~ • Black Fire should be read "as if it were a critical re-examination of Western political, social and artistic values. " and exhorting other writer s, Neal continued: We have been, for the most part, talking about contemporary Challenging �realities. We have not been talking about a return to some glorious African past. total past. But we recognize the past--the Many of us refuse to accept a truncated Negro history which cuts us off completely from our African ""' ancest ♦ ry. To do so is to accept the very racist assumptions which we abhor. Rather, we want to comprehend history totally, and understand the manifold ways in which contemporary problems are affected by it. Speaking against the hindsight of psychology and turbulence , Neal added: There is a tension within Black America. its roots in the general history of race . And it has The manner in which we see this history determines how we act. should we see this history? it? How What should we feel about This is important to know, because the sense of how that history should be felt is what either unites or separates us . Finally, he sums up what can be called the credo or modus operandi of the New Black Poetry and the Black Arts Movement: The artist and the political a~tivist are one. both shapers of the future reality. They are Both understand and manipulate the collective myths of the race . warriors, priests, lovers and destroyers . Both are For the first violence will be internal--the destruction of a weak spiritual self for a more perfect self . be a necessary violence . But it will It is the only thing that will destroy the double-consciousness--the tension that is in the souls of black folk . �It was the kinq of challenge that sent many a newly Blackened poet or activist into the long night of the soul to purge himself of real or imagined enemies of his people. Poetically speaking, however, it was Baraka's "Black Art" that set much of the pace, form and violent tone in the New Black Poetry~ Poems are bullshit unless they are teeth or trees or lemons piled on a step. Or black ladies dying of men leaving nickel hearts beating them down. Fuck poems and they are useful, wd they shoot come at you, love what you are, breathe like wrestlers, or shudder strangely after pissing. We want live words of the hip world live flesh & coursing blood. Hearts Brains Souls splintering fire. We want poems like fists beating niggers out of Jocks or dagger poems in the slimy bellies of owner-jews. Black poems to smear on gir<llemamma mulatto bitches whose brains are red jelly stuck between 'lizabeth taylor's toes. Whores! Stinking We want "poems that kill." Assassin poems, Poems that shoot guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys 4:SI �and take their weapons leaving them dead with tonges pulled out and sent to Ireland. Knockoff poems for dope selling wops or slick halfwhite politicians Airplane poems)rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr rrrrrrrrrrrrrrr ... tuhtuhtuhtuhtuhtuhtuhtuhtuh ... rrrrrrrrrrrrrrr t ··· Setting fires and death to whities ass . . . . We want a black poem. / And Black World. Let the world be a Black Poem And let All Black People Speak This Poem Silently "Black Art" was often cited as the sanguine embodiment of the Black Aesthetic and a rejection of white culture and life style. Poems, Baraka states, must not only have guts and earthiness (like Blacks)) but they must , also be weapons and shields against racism, police, merchants, hustlers, crooked politicians and status-climbing Black bourgeo~ie. Above all, they should exalt Blackness ("sons," "lovers," "w_arriors," "poets," and "all the loveliness here in this world.") These then are the dominant themes in much of the New Poetry and the philosophies stated (with radical divergencies) from coast to coast. Baraka's purge extends through poems like "Poem for HalfWhite College Students," "The Racist," "Little Brown Jug" ("WE ARE GODS"), "W.W." (attack on wig-wearing women), "CIVIL RIGHTS POEM" ("Roywilkins is an eternal faggot"), "Ka 'Ba," and finally, in "leroy," his last will and testament: �When I die, the consciousness I carry I will to black people . May they pick me apart and take the useful parts, the sweet meat of my feelings . And leave the bitter bullshit rotten white parts alone . But there are also sensitive love poems in the later period, poems caught up in the stressed life of Blackne.ss ("S t erling Street September" ) : "the beautiful black man, and you, girl, child nightlove, ••• : We are strange in a way because we know who we are. Black beings passing through a tortured passage of flesh . In his Forward to Black Boo_saloo, Baraka says of the world : " the soldier 1l, ~/~Je t,) poets will change it. " /.. What Neal ' s volume changed has not yet been ascertained f/h(l"lf, C,o,. ~tJ..fi;Cl WAS p11obo.W.y r,.t(:er-J.1hi but it certainly contains ambitious and successful poetry. His debt to the older generation of poets, artists and thinkers, can be seen in poems like "Queen Hother ' s Sermon, " " The Middle Passage and After, " " Love Song in the Middle Passage," " Garvey ' s Ghost, " "Lady Day," " Harlem Gallery: From the ~ Ins id et,''/.. "Halcolm X--An Autobiography. " Making use of mysticism, chant and musicographic interpolations . Neal (re: Dumas) . is effective--moving,sensing, and feeling: Olorum Olorum Olorum The horror of "The Middle Passage After" is seen in the "Decked, stacked, pillaged" slaves. "Long Song in fiddle Passage" views the Red glow of sea-death mornings. �Other poems ("Song," "Jihad," "Kuntu," "Orishas") reveal Neal's interests in supernaturalism, African philosophy and the allusive, mystical powers inherent in the "word." He seeks poetically to implement the ideas he stated in Black Fire and a special Black issue of lJ.1E. (~ D...r.rn..Review) in summer of 1968. The issue, edited by ;m,B.'s contributing editor Bullins, compiled ideas and plays rooted in what was then called the "new" consciousnes, also featured IAM4. work by Sonia Sanchez and Adam David Hiller. #weal's "The Black Arts Movement" was a blue-print for Black Arts and political change. Echoing statements in Black Fire, he argued against "any concept of the artist that alienates him fron his community," and noted: Black Art is the aesthetic and spiritual sister of the Black Power concept. As such, it envisions an art that speaks directly to the needs and aspirations of Black America. In order to perform this task, the Black Arts Movement proposes a radical reordering of the western cultural aesthetic. It proposes a separate symbolism, mythology, critique, and iconology. The Black Arts and Black Power concept both relate broadly to the AfroAmerican's desire for self-determination and nationhood. Both concepts are nationalistic. One is concerned with the relation between art and politics ; the other with the art of politics. But his idea of a "separate" aesthetic was not embraced by all Black poets, artists, or intellectuals. Neither was there • complete agreement (or understanding) among its own proponents. For example, Spriggs, a versatile �artist an<l thinker, led a boycott of Major ' s The New Black Poetry on the grounds that it was being brought out by a white publisher (International Publishers) . But Spriggs had not objected earlier to use of his work in Black Fire, also published by whites (Morrow). His position statement appeared in The Journal of Black Poetry (Fall, 1968): how in the hell are the black publishers ever going to get off into it if not by the assistance of the writers . how are distributorships ever going to mature with the publishers if the highly marketable works of wm kelly, j . killens, ja wms, 1 neal, e bullins, leroi j, or the like never comes their way? does the concept of black power and black arts extend that far? i say yea, i say yea, yea . Spriggs joined a large n umber of critics and pract ; ners of the Black , \:" u U e,1-" > Le ~ > Arts--Toure, Neal , Crouch , "-1 '3u!lins, ,\Goncal ves--in the controversy over Black writers ' roles and responsibilities . Despite the controversy, however, Major ' s anthology appeared as a kaleidoscopic offering of the New Black Poetry. Major included a perceptive and fitting Introduction: THE . INNER crisis of black reality is often studded in these poems by the swift , vividly crucial facts of social reality; which consists in part, anyway, of all the implications and forces of mass media, the social patterns, the bureaucratic and mechanical mediums of human perceptions, even of the quickly evolving nature of the human psyche in this highly homogenized culture, in all of its electric processes and specialist fragmentation . Black reality, in other words, is like any other reality profoundly effected by technology . The �crisis and drama of the late 1960s overwhelms and threatens every crevice of human life on earth. These poems are born out of this tension. Avt--vt..'i !. In his own poetry, Major"-e.rnsss u:e Vietnam, alienation, impending world destruction, Black history, music, mythology, and personal excursions into dreams. He published The Dictionary of Afro-American Slang (1970), Swallow the Lake (1970), Symptoms and fadness (1971), Private Line (1971), The Cotton Club (1972) and The Syncopated Cakewalk (1974), as well as novels and essays. He has also directed the Harlem Writers Workshop. ledgements to Poetry, Lowenf els , I 1 In the acknow- 1ajor indebts the anthology to many influences: 1 Reed, Raphael, Art Berger, tl: 3t • Smith, ~ Fuller, Nat HenJtoff, 121' 14 Randall, t1P--■lt1-l Atkins, Bremen, ~ Young, and David V Henderson. Major's "Down Wind Against the Highest Peaks" is typical of his style: ~harpf-ana\angledjtwisted language, spacings that replace punctuation, tidbits of world knowledge applied to the racial state~ent (satire or exhortation), and experimental typography. Recalling his "passage" he sees "Tonto Sambo Willie"--noting that even Mexico--"an asskissing nation"--now has the "super-blonde" on its "billboards." In the midst of all these events, the poets vigorously promoted programs which extended their concepts and visions. Spriggs and Ahmed Alhamisi were corresponding editors of the Journal; naraka, l!ajor, Nazzam Al Sudan (now El Huhajir) and Neal became contributing editors. was later joined by Tour~. Editor-at-large Bullins In the seventies Ernie :Mkalimoto was added as a contributing editor with Major's name disappearing. Major, Randall, Neal, Spriggs, Bullins, Baraka~ and Alhamisi have all served as guest special editors. An important influence on (and outlet for) the new poetry, the Journal was �" in many ways born of Soulbook and Dialogue" (Goncalves, now Dingane , Journal editor). The magazine continues to print the newest poetry, zeroing in on other areas like the West Indies (Summer, 1973), printing lively news and announcements, as well as reviews and criticism . Its Spring , 1968, issue, for example , was dedicated to Joseph T . Johnson, Los Angeles poet who had recently been killed. I Abdul Karim edited Black Dialocue with Spriggs, Toure, and Goncalves serving as associate editors. Relocating in New York in the late sixties, Dialosue ' s new editorial board was represented by Spriggs, Nikki Giovanni, Jaci Early, Elaine Jones, S . E . Anderson and James Hinton . Alhamisi and Carolyn Rodgers became Midwest editors; Spellman, Julia Fields and Akinshiju became editors for the South; and Joans and Kgositsile took over as Africa and at-large editors . Soulbook ' s editorial board now includes: Hamilton, Alhamisi , Carol Homes, Baba Lamumba, Zolili, Ngqondi Masimini and Shango Umoja . Among the administrative staff is Donald Stone (Rahman) whose I work appears in Black Fire and all the journals . f Along with Spriggs, Toure, and Larry 1iller (Katibu ) , Rahman aided Baraka at Spirit House . His "Transcendal Blues," full of chant /song a nd line- exper i mentation, fuses the world of Black music (and musicians) with the " strife riddled concrete bottoms of skyscraper seas ." Rahman ' s influences, obvious in his name, are seen in his statement that a " riff " so high and grand "Could be Allah ." Finally winding the poems into a tribut e to the Black woman (" Bitter bit her bitterness humming") , he rejects Christ i ans and whites and warns that ~ My spear s shall rain • ... / (The Islam influence is a l so seen in other poets of the period : Spriggs, I Toure, Baraka, Iman, Neal, Alhamisi, Dumas, Marvin X, Sonia Sanchez, who roevl.-A.-r-, along with Nikki Giovanni emer ged as one of the most1t•' J IT IA. poets of the �era . These women poets and others--Aud r e Larde, J une Jordan , Mae J ackson , Ka tt ie M. Cumbo , Jayne Cortez, Al exis Deveaux, EpSli se Loftin, Odar o (Barbara Jones) II" heLplld 9- -..,,. .::r eatef § a new wave of exc i tement about t he pos s ib il ities and potential s •"J[t;u:I', wome1$oet r y b ,dding t o this h Mlth-y SlOMV\ ii §Aof a c tiv e 6Ji;. int e r e st a r e the new Bl ack :: oug 'a magaz i nes l i ke Encor e w om t.11 poet' The most famous oc•&•ill91!!@~••••tlllii~is Ni kki Giovanni , 3 & a - llfNia wh.u/\s ose-1·11 . · h ts d o no t profound thinker and provocative speak er, '-1 a s an d insig Jl'('tat'\c ■ \t\to h er, l I ti poet r y . Her route to New Yo r k was by way of Tennessee and Fisk Univers i ty where she was a member of Killens ' Write r s Wo r kshop . Fame came i n the late sixties a f t er she penned a series of volatile prose- l i ke statement s wh i ch wer e star tling : and even more so, coming from a woman . In the s i xt i es s he pr ivately published her poetr y and was l a t e r brought ou t by Broads id e Pr ess and larger publ isher s . Her volumes include Black Feeling, Bl a ck Talk, Black Judgement (1970 ) , Re-Creation lj p;::;::;r.(1970), My House (1972) and a book of poems for children, Spin a Soft Black Song (1971). Her anthology of Black women poets, Night Comes Softly , -'lc2 ~~e.4- was ~•± ➔ l in 1970 and she has recorded albums, written an autobi ography , and publ i shed a series of "conversations" with Margaret Walker . ~1Jrnt rous. the new poets, she has been accor ed Aaccolades: Su~t oP Year Award; £ eatur~ " · andMi\<£ D1,u,w Johnny Carso~ in ••s Highly controversial among Mfflll Q ~nc.es L ca :i:Uiss Ebony «. and Essence; appear ..A on the tt mvih. speaker 1~ed p1enTbF Qr\I l~A sought-after '1iilllla f~oWI ho~ 4 •N foman of the nett on the college circuit; ru1udsJ • ·Ahonorary doctorate degree • ~Wilberforce University and labeled the "Princess of Black Poetry" by _,,jf enounced ~ Ida Lewis, Encore editor . as an "individualist" by Madhubuti (Lee) and praised by Margaret 7T°Walker and Addison Gayle , ho.s re.feireJ Nikki Giovanni Aa ai d ~"'~i•W@ij@!~a~S~I...,"""'l""~t-•J•l•;IJlllll•Falei~I- ;th~ la..loel •4f1111±"fl!l!§.iolfllff..,',~zj z a "Revolutionary . " Her singing of "God Bles s America" on # See , as related reading, And!'.ea Benton Rushing ' s " Images of Black Wom~n in Afro - Amer i ean Poetry" (Black World, Sept ember , 1975).• tf</'Z �national television , after receiving the "Woman of the Year Award," prompted Sorn e S &N- tol\~n1.ch~ on-. '1n1'1-e µ,om.Al'\ who1 letters to Black publications questioning her sincerity .,;1uring the sixtie) 41a wrote "Of Liberation": Dykes of the world are united Faggots got their thing together (Everyone is organized) Black people these are facts Where ' s your power •••• Honkies rule the world The most vital commodity infaerica Is Black people Ask any circumcized honkie •.. The final stanza of this '"poem1"warns: Our choice now is war or death Our option is survival Listen to your own Black hearts "Concerning i.ne Responsible Negro ~ith the New Black Poetry. £00 1%uch Power" echoes other themes in The "responsible negros" are "scared" and on the run. She tells them that your tongue must be removed since you have no brain to keep it in check In "Reflections on April 4, 1968," she calls Dr. King's assassination "an act of war." . In "The Great Pax Whi{ e" she paraphrases a section from Genesis in the Bible, noting that the word was "Death"; "death to all niggers . " ve..ti ca..l. Prose, a line of interest jutted through the otherwise pt] · 1A@cr0Lr,~ . Occasionally The pants �~r>' for~ of "Beautiful Black Me1y'~'hugl what i like to hug." There is the characteristic ~ repetition and emotion-freighted language as in.,,._ True Import of the Present Dialogue, Black vs Negro": Nigger Can you kill Can you kill Can a nigger kill Can a nigger kill a hankie Can a nigeer kill the Han •.. Can you stab-a-jew ••• Can you run a protestant down with your ' 68 Eldorado ••• Can you piss on a blond head ...• The poem continues, reciting names of the "enemy" and cataloging crimes and wrong-doings visited on Blacks, finally asking: Learn to kill niggers AJ Learn to be Black men Lff;ruch of what Nikki Giovanni was saying in the sixties moved Black youth--it was not always safe or chic to disagree even if you wanted to--and some of it was admirable. But these things do not make her work defensible as poetry. "Hy Poem" and "Poem for Aretha" are certainly worthy, even noble, subjects ~ 119:1li41 fall leisurely down the page, angling here and there but revealing nothing of the insight into human beings or poetic power that one finds in a poem by 1 \-\er Po-eT...y w~r. t.y ..iasm ().l'\Q im~t ..y4nd he~•1~<1r-ced"-themess-how he~ AS 4 VlC.Ot'>IOCIS ' ievoL,1i'o Helene Johnson, Margaret Walker, Gwendolyn Brooks, or Jayne Cortez. f\ "Nikki-Rosa," M ..,_ C.t. Qtf6 '\ her most often quoted poem from the early period, is l( laiBh I fut · to-th-t \AV f,e l I wall It has a believa ble f1iu .:.n t!tc conversation-like language (characteristic of �h.on£sl1,.y ,{t.s 1a.f her poetry~and ~/\detaill \ . ~ the inner reaches of the collective Black fxperienc/ as she unfolds the story of family fun and misfortune: your biographers never understand your father ' s pain as he sells his stock and another dream goes And though you ' re poor it isn't poverty that concerns you My House is a newer Giovanni . The venom has lessened, though some of the rampage is evident in a poem like "On Seeing Black Journal and Watching Nine Negro Leaders ' Give Aid and Comfort to the Enemy1 to Quote Richard Nixon . dr"!'t - lH'~a;here dl"(echn,iue.. ' llT 1mpt-~.,e.m ls no.,swn~(i . stylf , - - L~ngvo.&e. w n The poems deal with love, the city, childhood (always her rites of woman-passage), Africa and Afro-American culture. Ytf:_r promise and potential can be glimpsed in "Africa I": on the bite of a kola nut i was so high the clouds blanketing africa in the mid morning flight were pushed away in an angry flicker of the sun's tongue ...• rtmihlsr.tti1 o ft'\Anee.S H e.►•.s~ Nikki Giovanni's importanceJ(\ies more in her personal influence (especially her great drama on albums and in public) which has inspired many youns Black women to write about themselves and their world. But some of them, like Mae Jackson who won Black World's Conrad Kent Rivers Award, have yet to show the M4.CCan~ca.,tsort~ I poet with "stuff" of poetry in their writings. 1969 by Black Dialogue Publishers. " You was published in Nikki Giovanni t-.rrote the Introduction and �Mae Jackson, in turn, dedicated the book to her. Poet is full of the "complaints" that quickly became monotonous in the poetry of the sixties. In themes and usages, the poems resemble Uikki Giovanni ' s work. "To a Reactionary," "To the degro Intellectual," and "Note from a Field Nigger," \h the,\confused '>om eii',nQ,S, are familiar • and disturbed annals of the new poetry. Sonia Sanchez, closely identified with the new poetry and the new consciousness, alternates between terse, explicit verse, and the sprawling, prosaic meanderings that often serve; the auditory demands of the new audiences. Formerly married to the poet Etheridge Knight, she has actively worked as Iler books are Homecoming (1969), We a Baddddd a playwright, poet and teacher. People (1970), It ' s a New Day: Poems for Young Brothas and Sistus (1971), Love Poems (1973) and an antholo~y from her young Writers Workshop at the Countee Cullen Library in New York, Three Hundred and Sixty Degrees of Blackness Comini at You (1972) . . "Malcolm" is a lament and a night-filled memory for her: Yet this man this dreamer, thick-lipped with words will never speak again and in each winter when the cold air cracks with frost, I ' ll breathe his breath and mourn my gun-filled nights. Her "for unborn malcolms," however is another approach . Constricting words, structure, and «,t tempting to achieve a Black street speech, she tells Blacks �to "git the word out" to the "man/boy" murderer who is taking a "holiday." Dlacks are "hip to his shit" and when "blk/princes' die again white "faggots" "will die too." Olalll lfn i'q."e An experimentalist, Sonia Sanchez added herl\.v oice to the flood of angry, cynical and derisive language in the new vers ~ ("d~ition for blk/children"): a policeman is a pig in a zoo 4ll with~the other piggy animals. and until he stops killing blk/people cracking open their heads remember. the policeman is a pig . (oink/ oink.) She also joined the poetry of Black love and man-woman unity, seeking through her particular style and voice to heal wounds of doubt, mistrust and loneliness. tll t.t,"-' In "to all sisters" she says "hurt" is not the 11 bag"~-1omen "shd be in." They are advised to love the Black man who makes them "turn in/side out." journey has carried her from the ,. . :._·, ~~ be.a.vlv P,t~'I dttlAm•t'L-s •i c!f the '\ Her revolutionary to the quiet ...... f't_urbulcnce~of _L_o_v_e_P_o_em_s--being, maybe, among the first of the new ...... poets to ful~ fill Randall ' i=, prediction that Black poetry would "move from the �declamatory to the subjective mode." June Jordan published Who Look at 1e (1969), Some Changes (1971), an anthology, Soulscript (1970), and a volume of poetry by students in her Brooklyn creative writing workshop, The Voices of the Children (1970). 'Poem~ !.~ Ex iLe ~ l'etii,.t,~ Her last volume of poetry is w Da ~1974). Concise, analytical, and book-folk based, her poetry is also a free verse style characteristic of "Uncle Bull-boy" relates the death UUl'l(4 of a man whose eyes "were pink with alcohol." Thel\brother (uncle) reminisces, practically all the recent Black ~try. in the manner of Black men, about tneir sharing of street-talk, expensive shoes, and alcohol. And finally: His brother dead from drinking Bullboy drank to clear his thinking saw the roach inside the riddle. Soon the bubbles from his glass were the only bits of charm t which overcame his folded arms. udre Lorde 1 s "Rites of Passa&e" (for MLK Jr) eulogizes Dr. King: Now rock the boat to fare-the-well. and remembers him this way Quick children kiss us we are growing through dream. Huch of Audre Lorde's recent work concerns young people; even the title of her latest book, From a L Where other Peo le Live (1973), carries the awe and dream of the child's world. She writes now about teachers, men-women relations, seasons, dreams, "As I Grow up Again " and "Blad-. Uother Woman" �who thinks of her own mother's strength when "strangers come to compliment" her: I learned from you to deny myself through your denials. Among the younger New York women poets, Judy Simmons, Alexis Deveaux and Elo1ti~Loftin sing out. "' Judith's Blues (Broadside) was published in 1973. The poems submerge themselves in the troubled human psyche ("Schizophreni~ , and explore the "Youth Cult," "Women," and "Daffodils"--although the titles do r!'.ot reveal the poet's pithy searchings. Reflecting Judy Simmons' study of psychology, the poetry yields its meaning as the multiple layers of tensions and insights are uncovered. In "Schizophrenia" the "animal squats" next to the "piano" in a "corner" with an abnormal number of legs, arms, and a mouth that stretches from "forehead to abdomen." But the poet assures herself that if she does not lose control <115 it won't come back ~<--e)( • (U~~~ inside of me tElouise Loftin's poetry (Jumbish, 1972, Emerson IIallJ has youthful, zesty -the eo.se o ~ 6l:the LA11~11At°' imagery, indicative perhaps off,....these new techniciansK: • "Rain Spread" informs that Last night thre~ her legs open to me .••• ~ e, She has the new woman sensibility, a good knowledge off ocial landscape, and the cynicism often found among today ' s young, gifted and Black. caught" displays her hurp.or and wit: if they catch you "gettin �with your pants down (ffing your guard or peeing for free if they catch you doing something crazy with quotes around it and try to make you feel like you been catched you must -be doing some thing ok # Spirits in the Streets (1973) is Alexis Deveaux ' s strange but fascinating prose-poetry account of growing up in Harlem . • A West Indian mother, dispair &~ over a husband ' s misuse of his wife and children, complains: lord why he beat that woman so? and them children god only know what ' s gonna happen to them. eatin poison . jesus have mercy . children. has lye . eat you up inside you can ' t be too careful with you got to watch them every second. The world is so evil honey you know what i mean? merciful jesus shame them with the last word . These examples represent only a fraction of the new poetry being written by younger (and older) New York area poets. - (J_qt/-<f-) ~ Others are Catherine Cuestas, wesJy lsrOLVYl) F~ Phillip Solomon, Gayle Jone~ , Stephen Kwartler, R_anessa Howard, s -~ illt!l.~ ~v!k_~ �~ "'-e. !,om e.. and Glen Thompson, to name ~,-.. mrm:lfal. Poets whoN'57 t] the earlier period also published new items . ahd uu.tr,c.h e d · I in 1 Henderson ' s Felix of the Silent h(s . Forest (1967) was introduced by Jones1',. 'iia mlfmeographed The Poetry of Soul bears no date . he .-iii tnc.,•d 1~ He also publ ished De Hayor of Harlem i n 19 70 , the same year t~~to Berkeley . Essentially a Harlem poet, Henderson sur veys everything from the "Harlem Rebellion, Summer 1964" to "Har lem Anthropo l ogy ." ~ he t r ansit ions and out r eachings of thes e poets a r e a lso evident in a poet like Toure' who in 1968 went to teach Black Stud i es at San Francisco State College . His works are J~(l97 0 , Third Horld Press) and Songhai ! (1972) , I the latter published by Songhai Press and introduced by Killens . _ Toure ' s " Soul-gifts" are amply spiced with philosophy, Black history, Black music, Islamic influences, and "Juju" which says Coltrane ' s horn is "cascading fountains of blood and bones." Songhai ranges from satire. of Diana Ross CM1iq<Al1m.$0F A":" and Dionne \larwick to ,._i-n~incere activists• _!:he magical power of words t, V~f crtb ~ :!' structure N-deal Black society . Tour~ ' s list of influences ( see Forward) explains much about some of the Bla~k poetry emanating from the New York area: foal, Dumas, naraka, Goncalves, Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders , Cecil McBee--all called " Poets of a Nation-in- Formation. " Related developnents of the New York movement can be seen in such projects as the .(;.ThP ttP ' ~ (Sol B~ tle) anthology of the Workshop for Young Writers in Harlem; Uakra , a new Iloston-based journal devoted to the examination " of events, the arts, ideas " ; Betcht Ain ' t (1974), Celes Tisdale ' s anthology of "Poems from Attica " ; a new anthology of young poets, We Be Poetin ' (1974), Tisdale; and Writers Workshop Anthology . No unifying thread runs through the work of New York area poets, except that of a relentless acceptance and pursuit of their Blackness . One notes, however , �that mysticism, examination of the occult, cosmic-musical forms and subjects, than in the poetry of other regions . But these are, of course, generalities which await more hindsight and research before they can be finalized and presented as significant phe- nomena in the larger tapestry of the poetry. Finally, for the New York area, the fire of the oral tradition was ignited by the dramati<:Jincan,ry (<lrumaccompanied) declamations of "the Last Poets" and "the Original Last Poets." Along with Gil Scott-Heron, their impact on the Black masses ~;n.llte. exce,n;a" ,,t 6, l ho.s "triem MIIN~ een Aotviau~ ➔ · ~1 ( Scoff-lltro1tt(wleo he., •~e so,.,eT•I•-~) 1\-ue w. ,..,,, • .,;o'tl '' ht>..I)(! rempol"O.l"f s1i1,1dt:.,. 5cotF,l/e,,.(Jlf (Amb,.,,~s b(c,~tJfoJ1 and n;. • .,,-eontJe,.~«ll~ Ir/~ u~ ~ 8 r ts nd tnsl JI t; 1c/~ of'p,-dfcf-GJttd e • h± dL&l!l@!l!C , IS & 2h!t&dd..ph.1!&2! tJliG &CECirl d During the New York resurgence a number of things were going well for Black Poetry in Pennsylvsnia. ~~ Lincoln '3 .. 011~ 0 Universi t y--which produced Tolsont\ Hughes wl"IJ\¥\l- --delivered another /\di verse of poets during this period: Carl Greene, Mary-Louise llorton, Everett Hoagland, S.E . Anderson, d'lf'},{_nenjamin, Gil Sco{-Heron, Bernadine Tinner, Rita i~1itchead, and others. Hoagland is a Broadside poet (Black Velvet, 1970) and Scott-Heron (Free Will, Pieces of a Han, etc.) is a recording poet-singer. Converging at points like the Muntu Black artist group--founde<l by Neal, C.H. Fuller, theoretician Jimmy Stewart, and arybelle Moore--Philadelphia poets found various (6...,l kinds of assistance. Other Philadelphia poets are~Greene (1945), Lucy ir• Mttt,,-k_~{l..vlotn) Smith from the older school, F.J. Bryan.51\(1943) , ~ larence Maloney (1940- ), �Pat Ford, Joseph Bevans Bush, Janet N. Brooks, 7 A.rd Carol Jenifer/\ Don Miz f ell. l I I (J@(@ Works by some of these youthful poets are in \:,/ Black Poets Write On: An Anthology of Black Philadelphia Poets (1970), published by the Black History 1useum Committee. duction states: Harold Franklin's Intro- "A BLACK POET_!.?.. A KIND OF WAiOR"--thus linking Philadelphia ac.vltvt\ L. t..ehffi""J sentiments to those in New York and Boston. The Black Butterfly, Inc.,kwas one of the several cross-roads for various cultural/political activities in Philadelphia. Its founder was Ualoney (now Chaka Ta) whose Dimensions of ~rnin~s published in 1964 in Paplona, Spain. "Good Friday: celebrates a "sultry brown girl' who "seems a superior animal." "sepia siren" also holds the "semen" of a "vivid passion." poets explore city life, Africa, and exalt Blackness. 2 A .. 1." This Philadelphia There is, too, the rage and vehemence often found in New York and Chicago poetry. pg• "Cool Black Nights" (Traylor) also captures driving street rhythms and f hymes: them hard-loOMl)8 hard-talking hard-loving Cool black dudes and them fine-looking fine-walking fine-talking fine-loving them fine soul sisters .... w~ Pittsburgh there Aborn the short-lived _B_l_a_c_k_L_i_n_e_s_:_A_J_o_u_r_n_a_l_o_f_B_l_a_c_k_ Studies (1970). It published Pittsburgh area poets like Ed Roberson, August I �dbo.t11\e 8,u1itt toa /\swell Wilson, lnnno nr Armstrong and Redmond. as poets from the Midwest like Al Crover The University of Pittsburgh Press opened up to Black poets that same year, publishing l t Coltrane, 1970; Song: • Harper (Dear John, Dear Can I get a Witness, 1973), Roberson (When Thy King is a Boy, 1970), and Gerald Barrax (Another kind of Rain, 1970). Roberson's m-.Kes c,.se o~ -tedou~ue poetry the gamut of : 1c u;,and styles--from neat drama to slanted ~A spacings and slashes. In "mayday" there is an "underside of heaven" and the warning from one misunderstood that he is "armed" to fi,t,'t the final kindling of your dreaming. "Othello Jones Dresses for Dinner" is a satirical look at the "Guess Who's ~oming to Dinner" theme. -: After dating . a white woman, the narrator assures her parents that he is "well mannered." Roberson adds his voice to a growing group of Pittsburg poets which includes Kirk Hall (1944- J,y <l4wf;..t$ beet1 Poetic talent - · · ~ -rath~sootl\ I l in ired"-ss 11ibe ). Washington, D.C. ) where early seve.n1ie.$ Sterling Brown continued to teach into the ~at~ gjyt · u . Howard, by now leading all Black universities in the new consciousness, was the scene of a number of significant disturbances toward "-- f e l')'lA.. ~ new~INiiliNlll!,e ~o;t a ~nudged the school While Howard's poetic history can be traced through the early days of Sterling Brown (and into the Howard Poets), the school has produced a number of younger writers: Clay Goss, Richard Wesley, E. Ethelbert Niller (Andromeda, 1974), and Paula Giddings. 1mo..: '(l. --~=&'11~-'iiiiliie ' - ~5 new was deepened and broadened by the appointments of the Guianese poet Damas and Stephen Henderson (English Chairman at Morehouse) who heads the Institute for the Arts and Humanities. « Howeveriward drama A was~••.:laffl: against a series of developments in the surrounding communities: Federal City College (Scott-Heron), Center for Black Education (Garrett), soc �New Thing in Art and Architecture (Toppper Carew)) G h v H& :Ji,,. The New School of Afro-American Thought (Gaston Neal), Drum & Spear Bookstore ani (and Press) A.. the D.C . Black Repertory (Hooks). In addition to Damas and Henderson, the Institute has added Madhubuti (Lee) , Kil lens, Goss, Brmm, Arthur P . Davis and Ahmos Z.JBolton . the program ' s service to poets has been invaluable. J: ~c.tU Selected for/\",onor~ have been Baraka, Gwendolyn Br~oks, Joans , and Dodson. poets were also featured in t~~Jt~teinnual Already Synposium: A number of Lucille Clifton, Coss, Scott-Heron, Adesanya Alakoye, Hiller• and Mari Evans. I Toure, Johnston and Kgositsile were guests for a program examining the African Cultural Presence in the Americas . Several poets have been invited to read and be recorded for the permanent audio/video library: Jayne Cortez, Crouch, Davis, Sarah Webster Fabio, Harper, Jeffers, Joans, Redmond, Sonia Sanchez, Scott-Heron, Bruce St. John, Margaret Walker, and Jay Wright. In 1968 Gaston Neal said his "philosophy" was "to purge myself of the whiteness within me and link completely with my Black brothers in the struggle to destroy t!1e enemy and rebuild a Black Nation." Ile appeared to be working at that task for a while before the Afro-American school closed. he said the tone of his life resembled a "growled mingled" In "Today" w't1'. the groan of the past .... and he lamented the jungles which had been J/ deflowered by napalm ... • T'&arl Carter, another D.C. poet, appears in Understanding the New Black Poetry. He evokes the spirits of the "Heroes" of Orangeburg, Jac}cson, Memphis, New York, and Nashville, recalling that during a riot in Nashville he was Riding somewhere in my mind with q.dridge Cleaver ... • 50 / \ �"Roots" is an unsuccessful attempt to fuse the drama of colloquial Black language with a formal English narrative about his grandmother.ither poets living or publishing in the D.C. area during the sixties and seventies .,... Aflcl Co..-.-.ie ohd Ro • ~ tfo ir\ ts, were Bernadette Golden (1949) , Ile~len Quigless (1945)" ~ Beatrice Murphy (1908of Black ), who over the years has contributed greatly to the growth poetry;_, JtAJ - , ledited three important anthologies: Ebony Rhythm (1947) anJ Today ' s Negro Voices (1970). Her own volumes of poetry are Love is a Terrible Thing (1945) and, with Nan1 Cry Out ( ~ . Negro Voices (1938), Arnez, The Rocks Her own poetry has moved from a traditional meter to a traditional free verse dealing, in the new phase, with tensions caused by overemphasizi~g "white" and "Black," and war . She is currently director of the Negro Bibliographic and Research Center and serves as managing editor of its publication Bibliographic Survey: The Negro in Print . Poetry by other D. C. area poets can be found in Transition, a journal of Howard ' s Afro-American Studies Department. Hardine and Veronica Lowe . Adjacent to n·.c., Lucille Clifton (19 36- Editors are Hiller, Iris Holiday, Ella tL 1-t"'"es t.o-ci~~t-ecl 8_sl~IL6'11l). in Baltimore) more is addeJ to thf;/f/em . ) , Sar:i Cornish and Yvette Johnson (1943. produced poetry /fh_eJ~l-.,1 ) have vtw'se• ~-•A 1ll.t $rlhdsw,flrtkt bt£+C~~..,•"!ood I\ Times (1969) , Good News • About the Earth (1972) and An Ordinary Woman (19 74) are vo l umes tp£Udaced by Lucille Clifton who also writes ~ children ' s books . She currently teaches a t Coppin State College in Baltimore where she lives with her husband and six children . temperament . to ~ Even her titles suggest something about her spirit and In the swamp of depression and bleakness, it is indeed warming someone proclaim Good News ! which will not " rust or break ." " Eldridge" is compared to a meat "cleaver" And there is humor, irony and truth in �,, "Latelfy": where the "always drunk" delivery man says: L, 'I ' m 25 years old and all the white boys my age are younger than me. 1 But· while some sing good times in the kitchen, there are also other acknowledgements: 11 .falcolm, 11 "Eldridge, " "Bobby Seale," and the student-participantsirt d~1t ~o.1i\ns /\.a t Jackson and Kent States. Good News About the Earth gives a Black or con- ----------- temporary setting to fiblical stories. 1~e 'lft-x WOM(J..r.Ly Most are unique, like I\ Mary": this kiss qs A.soft as cotton over my breasts all shiny bright something is in this night oh Lord have mercy on me i feel a garden in my mouth between my legs i see a tree An Ordinary Woman is consciously woman and the poems, like those in other fu.. volumes, deal with everyday things--"ordinary" things. LvfiLle cL\tron A.has However, become more of the mystic, using surreal and allusory imagery as in "Kali," l~ 11, ere ,:s "The Coming of Kali," "Her Love Poem, " and "Salt." !\ ' Cod's Mood": • t'-h �He is tired of bone, it breaks. Ile is tired of eve's fancy and adam's whining ways. Cornish is a poet, teacher and editor. His books include Angles (196 7), Winters (1968), Your Hand in Hind (1970), Generations (1971) t and People _Be_neath. the Window (n.d.). With W. Lucian, he edited Chicory: Young Voices from the Black Ghetto (1969) which developed into a series still being published by the Enoch Pratt Free Library (Community Action Program). editor of Chicory is Melvin Edward Brown. Current Cornish has much stylistic ammu- nition an<l is a precise navigator of language. He tells" 1IDDLE CLASS GIRLS WITH CRIPPLED FINGERS \AITING FOR ME TO LIGHT THEIR CIGARETTS": your fingers folded in your lap control the serpent in your eyes your face never staring with a smile in your ruffled ~ co1F your eyes populate the brick with restless stares. The influence of Cornish and others can be seen in Exproos Yourself(l973) , an "anthology of student writings" from .l!.dmondson High School and I Speak (1973), poems by students at Coppin State College--"the Coppin poets." 04 �l.onl ~~ t,),C • The~ Baltimore,\poets Cl~N"\ continue the ' ■•,(hi:221. of poetry - •--- that embraces the South where many poets now live: wk-, V l\'t'L "''tt\1Ly ',·vui" Spellman, Jeffers, '";"''' ,·,,;., )A, Pinkie Lane, the BUCARTSOUTH Margaret Walker, Alice Walker (19L14- poets (New Orleans), the Ex-Umbra poets (North Carolina Central University,l, Betty (.Ylorih Ca.roL.ino. ~~re IJNt'J ~tTy) Gates (Niles College, Alabama), Gerald Barrax (1933- a\'\d Powell), Leo -J. Has on (Atlanta) A.. Lorenzo Thomas. given new blood to poetry through The ~, Ladele X (Leslie \"'e~ ib·n-- receive$ and .w••~-.~~-•~•-••••11111111111111111•• contihu4-(. flow of poets and teachers to and from the South. Some well known older names are Johnson (James), Braithwaite, Tolson, Hayden, Jeffers and Vesey. wllohe.vtT...,.•t '" ..cct11'1 vu,., ,;, 1'-e -a111:,1v.-aungcr poets ~ outh are Audre Larde (Toogaloo) _, Redmond (Southern), Wright (Too galoo and Talladega), Spellman ( !orehouse), and Kgositsile (North Carolina A & T). al.So vnde ne. The South_." ! > has,\aiii~- · =tllllllllllll• 1 I 23 &Wei dramatic changes as a result of the Black Consciousness Move- ment. C-. \ ymbols are everywhere: The Free Southern and the Dashiki theaters in New Orleans, SUDAN South /West poetry-music theater group in Houston, the Theater of Afro-Arts in Miami, and Atlanta's Black Image. In Atlant « , Spellman organized the Center for Black Art which publishes Rhythm (1970). Stone became editor, Ebon (Sigemonde Kharlos Wirnberli) poetry editor and Spellman editor of essays and features. The surmner (1971) issue of Rhythm was also a memorial to Donald L. Graham (1944-1971), poet-theoretician who succeeded 'illens. as director of the Writers Workshop at Fisk . had published three books: Graham, who was also a musician, Black Song, Soul lotion., and Soul Notion II. Rhythm said he "was running one of the baddest workshops in the South" and "teaching at the Revolutionary People's college in Nashville." 1t-1~ '"fwe,m· l :tl'\sm-\)te ,f '\\e \\La.(.~ wo. .w, AL.so ,-n A,\Lt.h~ \~ liarearet Walker , a long time teacher at Jackson State College in Mississippi, hosted in 1973 the bi-centennial celebration of the publication �of Phyllis Wheatley ' s Poems. Her own poetry, however, has changed somewhat from the stance she took in For Py People . Yet Prophets for a New Day (1970) and October Journey (1973) are difficult to judge against her other work~ jrie turned to the novel in the fifties and sixties were published in journals between 1930 and 1960 . the / ivil(ights J'ovement _. t I .I 11 t ~ several poems in October Prophets is a chronicle of ace ::nt n 1 D r rm She writes about " Birmingham, " " Street Demonstration, " " Jackson, Mississippi, " bibLi(J(l on Washington, and the ~ Eu--rtE,. e 1'_•,rewllprophets rophets: ' the March " Jeremiah ," " Isaiah ," "Amosc." and " Joel. " h.1 ~ alcolm, Medgar Evers, Andy Goodman, Michael Schwerner~ftai James Chane~ ~ fought " oppression" in Louisiana, Mississippi and Georgia . October is a quieter mood, employing a variet ballad in "Harriet Tubman ." forms including the 1 of verse J" sonnetJ is seen in " For Hary ~1<"-9i:t~e.t-W4Llc:C.,.S T///ltlil\own uni~ue And McLeod Bethune" and " For Paul Lawrence Dunbar ." ,(he earlier poet is suggested in " I want to Hrite": I want to write songs of my people . · un-f,1.197'1 Alice Walk.er, novelist and poet ,~ shar ed the state of ~ississippi ( ::)Uc: · $~l) b ,vith Margaret Walker. Her vo l umes § I t (? are Once (1968 ) and Revolutionary Petunias (1973) the t itle of which, judging from other statements she has made, is prob ~bly also a pun. Her poems ,rldvJe .1tt1.n~fAher averown civil right s a c tivities, general experiences, andK orne satir e . A poem in Once relates the story of the young Black man who wanted to integrate a white beach in Alabama- -in the "nude ." to Petunias: She announces her debts in the dedication George Jackson, " heroes and heroines, and friends of early SNCC, " Bob Moses, and Fannie Lou Hamer . These poems (written in personal tones) deal �with his tor~ - - folk-strength and the stuff the Black South is made of: " romance" that "blossomed" in pews at funerals; women with fists that "battered" doors; " Sunday School, Circa 1950" ; a " backwoods woman" who kills her husband ' s murderer, tlien reminds her executors to water the petunias . And she also writes of a different kind of "Rage" : The silence between your words rams into me like a sword . Yet another Mississipian and poet is Julius Eric Thompson, a history teacher at Toogaloo . Hopes l ied up in Promises was published in 1970 and aims at ::,. lifting the new consciousness above mer e " hopes." Thompson writes about being a Black man in Mississippi, "Delta Children," Martin Luther King "Black Power." There is also a series of poems on Africa. rt!f&,l,i In Louisiana much new poetry has been old poets alike. and iiei1d1n.«t from the pens of young and «,LL Zu-Bolton, now 1'in '!'LC . , ,\edits Hoodoo magazine through Energy Blacksouth Press in DeRidder. He formerly co-edited The Last Cookie based in DeRidder, San Francisco, and Geneva, 1ew York . Hoodoo I, dedica ted to two Black student s killed by po licemen on the campus of Southern University in November of 1972, contained work by Lorenzo Thomas, Hay Miller, Pinkie Lane, Kalamu Ya Sa laam, Jerry Ward, and other southern-based poets. Hoodoo 2 & 3, a double issue published in 1975, contains work of more southern poets: Arthenia Bates d illican, Alice Walker, and Charles Rowell, as well as selections frora the broader world of Black writing. Energy BlackSouth Press will also publish A Niggered Amen, Zu-Bolton's first volume of poerns.1,u_nder the guidance v11we,.si1i/ of t he late English chairman, Melvin A. Butler, Southern1'established the short-lived Black Experience, the first issue of which contained several �poems by Alvin Aubert, a Southern alumnus who now resides in New York and edits Obsidian: Black Literature in Review. Aubert's Against the Blues (1971) surveys blues, love and his Louisiana heritage. Pinkie Lane, new English Department head at Southern, published Wind Thoughts (1972f as well as several Broadsides: Two Poems (1972), Poems to ~Iy Father (1972), and Songs to the Dialysis Machine (1972), all brought out by South and West, Inc., of Arkansas. South and West is also the publisher of the annual Poems by Blacks (1970, 1971, 1972) for which Pinkie Lane has become permanent editor. Butler inaugurated the annual Black Poetry Festival in 1972. In the program of the first festival, he stated: · The Black Poetry Festival provides a rare opportunity to bring together professional and apprentice poets in an effort to define and legitimize all forms of Black poetic talent as a prelude and postlude to defining and legitimizing the reality of Black people. Hopefully, the results of our efforts will be a better understanding and a greater appreciation of the lives, aspirations and achievements of Black people. ,~~ ~ inclvci,hq '1iiilll,.'"l:he festivals "-.ll&l®e.•Jt=a•ll,21!!1'&98 attracted a number of poets I\ H~hubiti, Sonia Sanchez, Randall, Redmond (writer-in-residence, summers 1971-72), Zu-Bolton, Knight, Aubert, Lucille Clifton, Kalamu Salaam, Neal, Audre Lorde. and Irma HcLaurin. proql\4MS The ~~• •~:k , which included student poets and musicians, have inspired a Poetry Writing Workshop under the supervision of Rowell, an English instructor., The first two volumes of Poems by Blacks contain a rich lode of southern poets: Leon E. Wiles (Philander Smith College), Elijah Sabb (Little Rock), Book.er T. Jackson (Little Rock), Eddie Scott (Memphis), Otis Woodard (Memphis), Arthur Pfister (Tuskegee Institute, Beer Cans Bullets Things & Pieces, �L, nd 1-h,rdnd; 1972) '/\Upton Pearson (Jackson, 1ississippi), ~Jacquelyn Bryant (Meridian), Lois be11~l~ t-f-1..t-~tU..(1'o,.Ucv,~ssee)) --t,.t, te. y Miller (Baton Rouge ) , ~ arbara Jean Knight (Memphis ~tnd Katheleeen Reed (Shreveport). Although Pinkie Lane did not edit the first two issues of Poems, she acte<l as advisor and her own work was substantially represented . a gifted• word-manipulator with She is onl ur.unate skill and passion . North of Baton Rouge/ in Jew Orleans, the Free Southern Theater had burned out by the late sixties, but out of its workshops came Nkombo which carries the work of BLKARTSOUTH writers . Tom Dent, one of the founders of 0.0.rr\ FST, and jointly edit the publicat ion. Some BLKARTSOUTH poets are Isaac Black, Dent, Salaam, Renaldo Fernandez, Nayo (Barbara i1alcolm), Raymond Washington and John O'Neal. Again, no single thread ties these poets together--except the "movement" in the South . But their concerns for the movement are often expressed better outside of -.... poetry. • - - - - In 1969 BLKARTSOUTH published individual voluues of poems by Salaam (The Blues Herchant), Fernandez (The Impatient Rebel), :fayo (I 1 ant He a Ho1:1e) ,-. and Washington (Visions From the Ghetto). Afro-American salvation. "Racist Psychotherapy" is Black ' s blue-print for He advises Blacks to spend less time rapping and drinking and more time working for the cause . In "Ray Charles at Mississippi State" Dent says I hear people waiting for the riot to begin in their hearts .... ( Of "The Blues, " Salaam says:, ,,,--,---- .. ~ it . is . not sub mission . . . \ , But bo much of his work is speecht · Salaam has also published Hofu Ni Kwenu: Hy Fear Is For You (1973) which received a mixed review from Rowell in the �4 h.:is September, 1974, issue of Black World . ~1 ~ an editor of the <1 Vcl Lv~ bL.e pvbLt ,41, • New Or leans-based Black Collegian) A Fellow BLKARTSOUTHerner Nayo writes a " Bedtime Story" : an exchange between mother and son about " revolution. " Answering the son ' s question, "when we gonna have the revolution?" , the mother says " soon son ." The other poets castigate whitey and praise Blacks. ironicall y they write very little about southern life . the Congo Square Writing Workshop . But, Dent currently leads There are also writing workshops at Dillard and Xavier Universities . Cu ~I\ tr\ Julia Fields, ~ ~ iving in North Carolina, brought out East of tlf Moonlight in 1973, but one of her most eloquent testimonies is " High on the Hog " which establishes her right to have " caviar" or " Shrimp souffle" over " gut " or " Jowl. " Some menus an<l political stances are over-exoticize<l by revolutionaries , she says, and she has "earned" the right to do what she likes . She has even heard " ·laus Haus " screaming and " Romanticizing pain. " But she has paid her dues, and had enough pressures from both sides of the color line . o..h4 ~~ e p .. .,.. do.► t The subtlc,edoe , but direct powe) of Julia Fields s ugge sts ~ Black poetry.,. }"o.shvilLe ftf:~om. bh ii .ill! t I O A ] i tl\~ecLoof' ; cameAJohn Oliver Killens1 i1¥pa -•Hi t Writers Conferences at Fisk University, the most important one taking place i n j pring of 1967 . Hayden, who had been at Fisk since the forties left in 1968 after a series of brushes wi th proponents of the Black Aesthetic . The 1967 con- ference (probably the straw that broke the camel ' s back for Hayden) is seen by some as a major juncture in the New Black writing . Gwendolyn Brooks taU:.ed about it in her autob •t ography, fargaret Walker discussed it with Nikki Giovanni in their published "conversations, " and Hoyt Fuller wrote glowingly of it in Black World . ivriters atte nding the conference were David Llorens, Fuller, �Ron Iilner, Clarke, Bennett, Margaret Danner, Nikki Giovanni, Randall, Lee, Margaret Walker, Sonia Sanchez, Jones.-. and Margaret Burroughs. Probably held in the South for symbolic reasons, the conference provided the first real national dramatic arena for old and young writers . Gwendolyn Brooks (a "Negro" then, she has said) recalls being "coldly respected" after just having flm-m to Nashville from "white white South Dakota." However, she was among the first (with Randall and Fuller) to take up the banner of the Black Aesthetic and the causes of the young writers. Such action, of course, was displeasing to a number of white and Black poets, not the least among them Hayden who refuse, to acknowledge the existence of a "separate" aesthetic for Blacks (Kaleidoscope ~ f ;anu:ry, 19681 Black World pol ) . Althougb the Fisk -el- 9alil f has been followed by dozens of Black colleges all over the South, Midwest and East, there is still no monolithic stand on "directions" but some writers keep trying to give then anyway. R,p1e indication of the healthy diversity araong Black writers. :is the journal Roots, published at Texas Southern University. Lditors are To!!lr.ly Guy, Jeffree James, Lo-l't.t\JO 'fh omo.~ ls tlL,d A ss.ot:JoTetl t,., il1-\ thE pucUe4.rton , Turner· 1lhorton, and Hance Williams. I\.Volume I, number I contains essays, art and the works of several poets, most of them southerners. The f poetry, devoid of monotonous theme or style, represents a broad range of interests in linguistics, subjects and forms. gazed forever backwards." m'lo/ in "a love supreme" says "all my eyes ~ In 'she' 11 never know 11 Mickey Leland writes of various aspects of the social and physical landscape, including the "Kinky haired boys" who build "arsenals of straw. 11 Clarence Hard notes in. "Hanging On" that the rent has gone up, eviction is immt•nent, there is no food for the baby, and Hanging on aint easy .... I �j . .ahmad j. ' s title "ilar<l Head Hakes a Soft Ass" implies the poem ' s statement. And fantasy eternalizes, "like a good high," for Tommy Guy in "Brother." - 'the themes of unity, self-esteem, the African "motherland," and anger remain in the new poetry as the Midwest and West contribute immensely to ~ 'rs rilliance and the controversey. Ohio, for example, rcpre- sented a unique gathering of diverse views on the new consc1ousness, attracting a number of poets to aid the work of Norman Jordan (1938Kilgore ,._ (all f ~ Cleveland) an<l Hernton. Now at Oberlin, Hernton succeeded ~-.,.,,, ~ Redmond K~ Jn Ii ,ro B writer-in-residence there began a residency at Ohio University. during Hernton ' s leave-of-absence . ) , Atkins, James ~ the same yea rJ'fr oupe ~bfu " Sarah Webster t(1as also taught at Oberlin However, Cleveland activity was spurred by a long tradition of Black writers including Hughes, Chesnutt (one of the founders of Karamu House) and Atkins. host of youn3er poets: This continuu1'1 produced Jordan and a Anthony Fudge, Larry Howard, Larry Wade, Art' Nixon, Clint Nelson, Robert Fleming (Ku Uais magazine), Alan Bell , Roland Forte, Ted Hayes, E. Buford and Bill Russell of the Muntu Poets . Other participating writei artists were Clyde Shy, Ameer Rashid and Anetta Jefferson . for poets and their activities came from various places: Support the Cleveland Call and Post, Afro-Set Black Arts project , United Black Artists, Free Lance and Karamu House where Jordan ' s plays were produced. Kilgore writes out of a strong tradition of Black humanism nurtured in religious homes . His volumes are I,lJ.e Big Buf,falo and OS}lEp; ,fQSi:W~ (1969), Midnight Blast (1970) and A Time of Black Devotion (1971). The poens expose the contradictions in American Democracy and survey the "Iligh Rise Dreams " of est I 3 fl& Blacks caught in the urban renewal scrabble . Devo tion, dedi- cated to Coretta Scott King, vibrates with concerns for Black students, Third �World survival, and a fascination with Fra:/i,. Fanon~ different kind of poet, Jordan is sometimes angry, cynical and violent; other times prophetic and mystical. He has published three volumes: Destination: Ashes (1967, 1971), Above Haya (1971) , and / with Harc)' a Gage, Two Bo&ks (1974). Dedicated to the "Community," Destination contains Jordan's best and most memorable poems. In Cleveland he emerged as a major force in the new Black poetry, uniting the older tradition, symbolized by Free Lance, and the Huntu Poets. Destination, first published privately by Jordan, was later brought out by Third World Press (Chicago) with an Introduction by Lee, who said he "learned" that Hughes had no need to "re-write and revise." (!) Anyway, Destination chronicles Jordan's own development from the period of civil rights through Black Power. His poetry is all free verse, usually simplistic narrative making ample use of dramatis persona from every walk of Black life. There is alcoholism, violence, pover~y, loneliness and exaltation of Blackness. "I Have Seen Them" describes those on relief, hungry and cold} praying for "miracles." Nellie Reed used to be a t irl-about-town, "Laughing and dancing," but now at 26 she is dead and her ghost "trembles" in an alley wine bottle "needing a fix." Jordan also spoofs "High Art and All that Jazz": Fuck you and your damn verbs let me tell it like it is and "Feeding the Lions" (1966) is his most anthologized poem. The "army" of brief-case-carrying social workers invades Black neighborhoods each morning, pas8l out checks, mov~quickly from one door to another, and, after filling �\4.s ~ quota} leavet 'before <lark." There are also poems about mysticism, religion, mythology, and karma, including drawings of eyes, triangles and circles--all reflecting the many influences on Jordan's work and the approaching new mood (Above Maya). But Destination, with its short, expigrammatic verses and parables, sees through allusory, romantic "unity" near the end and mounts an attack on revolutionary charlatans, back-sliders of the movement and those who view violence as the only solution to racism. Yet "Cosmic Witchdoctors" reaffirms his faith in Black writers working far into a "liquid night'J they provide the foundation for tomorrow's liberation. Jordan's belief in the mystical, magical powers of the word can be seen in the name Vibration, a Cleveland magazine with which he was closely associated. It is "Dedicated to the Resurrection of the Mentally and Spiritually Dead." a. Ohio journals: poets found outlets for their work in Vibration and other Black Ascensions (Cuyahoga Community College), Proud Black Images (Ohio State University) and Lifeline: When America Sings She Croaks (Oberlin). Oberlin students also produced a special Black issue of the college ' s Activist magazine; it contained poems by both students and well known poets. a staff member of Black Ascensions, published Migration in 1972. Cleveland poet, B. Felton (1934- Fudge, Another ), brought out Conclusions with an I1tro- duction by Atkins who praised the young poet for not consciously engaging in the "disfigurement of perceptions" to polemicize a "constricted kind of 'relevance.'" In "An Elegy to Eternity," Felton, a vibrant poet, says: Tear-ducts swell, bursting in a delight of flood and fury. Garfield Jackson, a young prize-winning poet, is one of the editors of �Proud Black Images. pages: Many young and older Ohio poets are included among its Forrest Gay, Dianne Gou:J_d, Jackie Toone, Ebrahim Aljahizz, Mohssen Aslam (Chris Jenkins), Battuta Lukamba Barca, Linda Callender, Beverly Cheeks, Antar Sudan Mberi, Leatrice Emeruwa, Roslyn Perry Ford, Ray Montgomery, Kilgore, Jordan♦ and others. ()._ Although the journal's title sets -.."conceptual pace and places it in the stream of the new consciousness, there is no unifying theme or idea in the poetry. John Whittaker calls "Singers, Dancers," the "doers of initial deeds" and Implementers of the inevitable Black life. Hernton, who attended Ohio schools, became writer-in-residence at Central State University, in the sixties. He published The Coming of Chronos to the House of Nightsong in 1963 and since then he 1as written many books and articles on America's social/sexual hangups. in the first issue of Confrontation: One of his most powerful poems appeared A Journal of Third World Literature (summer, 197O)/ foun<led and edited by Troupe at Ohio University. "Street Scene" shows Hernton playfully looking at the identity question along with other things. When he meets and speaks to his "dream" on the "street," he receives this answer: "Go to hell, sonofabitch." Confrontation also publishes other Ohio poets; yet, its concerns are broad as seen in the names of contributing editors: Damas, Sergio Mondragon, Fernando Alegria, Neal, Redmond, Tam Fiori, David Henderson, Melvin Edwards and Wilfred Cartey. Ats• ,1&owe.l i~i,"1,in,of.11,c. nlft,,toltlt«I-~ • •Gther Ohio comrnunitiesA.r am1tb ~ l ~ '" " ts 932; 22 r I. CincinaJ ti' s first J.' Black Arts Festival was organized by Nikki Giovanni in 1967 and out of this effort grew The New Theater. Herbert Martin (1933- 5 15 ), New York the Nine �Hillion and Other Poems (1969), made an immeasurably valuable contribution to the understanding of Black poetry when he organized the Paul Laurence Dunbar Centennial in 1972 at the University of Dayton. Indiana heaved forth precious words from Gary, Indianapolis, PurJue, Terre Haute and other areas. Mari Evans organized arts and consciousness programs in Indianapolis and Bloomington. I Am a Black Woman,containing poems written over several years, unfortunately did not find a publisher until 1970. However, the book deservedly received the Black Academy of Arts and Letters Second Annual Poetry Award. She has been closely identified with activities in Chicago where Third World Press publishes her children ' s writings. Her title poem is a spiritual, psychological and historical journey of the Black , woman whose "trigger i re/d fingers" now seek the softness of my warrior's beard ••. • A major poe}• f5R : p t 94 it combines the best of the modernists techniques with a chart-work of music so as to give the impression of someone singing or humming along with the read ~ • j l k, Mari Evans scans other fields of Black life, writing about lonely and dejected women, self-pride, violence, Black unity and Africa. In "Who can be Born Black" she joyously and defiantly asks: Who can be born black and not exult! Also closely associated with the Chicago and Detroit movements is Etijidge Knight (1933- ), who was serving a 20-year term in Indiana State Prison when Poems from Prison (1968) appeared · 1 ■ with a Preface by Gwendolyn �Brooks. She called his poetry Vital. Vital. This poetry is a major announcement ••• And there is blackness, inclusive, possessed and given; freed and terrible and beautiful . Her ovm version of the Black Aesthetic was expressed in the same statement: " Since Etheridge Knight is not your stifled artiste, there is air in these poems." Knight roams the deep crevices of Black spiritual and psychic experiences as he combines the language of the prison sub-culture with the rhythms of Black American street speech. He bounces or drives hard--a poetry of "hard bop " --looking at prison life, love and ancestry. Exceptional pieces are the folksy "Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane," the mystical and mythical " He Sees through Stone, " the genealogical "The Idea of Ancestry," the innovative Haiku sections, and "On Universalism" Bl.cu,k.$ 1 which warns against applying " universal laws" toA"pains" and " chains " in America . His technical abilities are poignantly displayed in haiku " 9": Making jazz swing in Seventeen syllables AIN ' T No square poet ' s job. Knight, who was later released from prison, also edited Black Voices From Prison (1970) and in 19 73 Broadside Press published Belly Song and Other Poems . He loses his reach when he tries to over-intellectualize in his poetry . \~~ct' ~v~p -~ ~d ~y Mi' ii' 3 :ht L 1 1 3 L pea; I p I slips into polemic s. = I t 1 lJ hi And j2£ 1t1.S Belly Song . secorJd The ..._,. book has some fine moments but it sometimes However, Knight is still stretching out as a poet, currently doing research into oral literatu~e with the aid of a Guggenheim grant . 5.t,] �Belly shows him pursuing this tradition in "The Bones of My Father" which smile at the moon in Mississippi from the bottom of the Tallahatchie. Finally, a number of poets from this general region of the Midwest and South are included in a special Black Poetry issue of Negro American Literature Forum (spring, 1972) edited by Redmond. The Forum is published by Indian~ State University School of Education and edited by John Bayliss, an Englishman. It regularly reviews Black literature. Chicago is a Hidwest heart and has a long tradition of Black Arts, going back to, and before, Count Basie's opening at the Sunset Club in 1927. However, some of the more recent forces helping to shape the new poetry movement there -th-e Po.-.mtcl bL.e are: Wor--K~kof artd South Side Community Arts Center, ~ ohnson Publications, Kuumba's,1Root LM4Y4d..e't f341 ..."'" t>~~ Theater (Francis and Val Ward), the DuSable Museum of African American '1listory,\) OBAC, Institute of Positive Education and Third World Press (Nadhubi ti~ Free Black Press, Afro-Arts Theater, Malcolm X ~ g e , Oscar Brown, Jr., Muhammad Speaks, Ellis Bookstores, Chicago Defenderl\ Philip Cohran (Artistic Heritage Ensemble) • -1 J Much of the new poetry scene e}!AC~ , generates from I 5 Fi C J 1 and Gwendolyn Brooks. Fuller, Black World managing editor, is also advisor to OBAC's Writer's Workshop. .().; In" 1969 (fall) issue of Nommo, the workshop's journal, Fuller said: Black is a way of looking at the world. The poets of OBAC, in revealing their vision, celebrate their blackness. In this moment in history, what might under different circum- �stances be simply assumed must necessarily be asserted. And the OBAC poets know--if others do not--that pale men out of the West do not define for mankind the perimeters of art. This they want all black people to know. In the Journal ' s winter issue of the same year, Fuller said OBAC members were "seeking" to be "both simple and profound." They display an " imaginative re- presentation of their e1~periences ," but they also seek " to be revolutionary." In the first quote, Fuller's tone, carrying the battle-baiting phrase , "even if others do not," seemed to have been a signal for , among others , Don L. . ,nisN1. own ,.~on a 11 f rants. to continue ttac~t 0."' Lee (1942- ), cows, as Lee U ~ it, and since "others do not " know what the youthful Chicago There ~ Blacks presumably did know , Lee's assignment was to teach them. no sacred Gwendolyn Brooks concurred with most of this feeling, embracing as it were a "new" Blackness and (unfortunately) self-deprecation: engaging in " It frightens me to realize that, if I had died before the age of fifty, I would have died a ' Negro ' fraction ." Lee/ following the examples of Randall and Baraka, began Third World Press--a valuable vehicle for the new poets--and changed his name in the early seventies to Haki R. Madhubuti . He also estab- lished the Institute for Positive Education which publishes Black Books Bulletin( with himself as edito9. Sterling Plumpp (1940- ,..,., Other poets (A.-e. included in the editorial staf ~ ), Johari Amini (Jewel Latimore) (1935- ), Emanuel, Sarah Webster Fabio, the late~ lorens ( who launched Lee ' s national career in Ebony, Harch 1969) jllt an~ ~ / a 11. 1 OBAC was founded in 1967 and poets of varying temperaments were attracted to it and Gwendolyn Brooks ' workshops: Rodgers (1943- ), Walter Bradford (1937- 5 ), Carl Clark (1932- Carolyn ) ' �Mike Cook (1939- ), James Cunningham (1936- Sam Greenlee , Phillip Royster (1943- Lee, Linyatta (1947(1933- ) , Sharon Scott (1951~ ), Ronda Davis (1940- ), ), Peggy Kenner (1937- ), ) , . . . Sigemonde Wimberli (Ebon) ), and~ontinual stream of newly arriving poets. Other Chicago area poets are Stephany Fuller, Eugene Perkins, Irma McLaurin, Lucille Patterson, Jerrod, Zack Gilbert (1925- ), Alicia Johnson (1944- ) , Ruwa Chiri allll'l- 1 The work of many Chicago area poets can be found in Nommo, Black Expressions, Black World, Black Writers ' News, Huhammad Speaks, and in the anthologies A Broadside Treasury (1971) and Jump Bad: edited by Gwendolyn Brooks. A New Chicago Anthology (1971), both They can also be found in ... numerous other nationally-distributed anthologies and journals. 7 I§ QW . l3lack World, as name and concept, was~ oncession won by Chicago area artists and activists, who protested against the old nam)l'1'egro Digest) in the late sixties. Fuller continues to guide the magazine's new image through the ticklish waters of co~troversy and change. iii _ . Black World's issues, and But many readers have been critical of Some. particularized stands, 11,.l ack of "open" forum on ·rsA tendency 4 Nevu-n.eteu to circumscribe individuals and groups. I\.- the beew. journal has /tt1n indispensable aid to ;.;;- Black poets and writers, printing their work, identifying anthologif"sV noting books published, and serving as /1~~-irlit,lt:. facilitat,or for prizes and • • • • contact. ~j fJv ~o...me.. f /1 ~ ), ~W~(Jer/fit. 1 e c. h~\ltV\&e oPp.,_bdvG1'n9 4 Jo11.,.nt'-L 1°hdt ~\.'\ irtfC«d· 1it new SOJ)ht~lictTion a.~d; Among all new poets, Madhubuti is second only to Nikki Giovanni in the . , com m.,01Ty P~e,es number of accolades and the commercial attention he and his poetry have received. A sampling of critics, poets and scholars who feel he is one of the greatest of the new poets would have to include Stephen Henderson, Fuller, Gwendolyn Brooksylargaret Walker, Paula Giddings, Baraka, Mari Evans, Randall and Gayle. �he. Gwendolyn Brooks has said lf&dt1&ha5,f\ resembles Jesus Christ and her Introduction to Jump Bad hails him as "the most significant, inventive, and influential black poet in the country." P~e. ~qui.sire iJb j l\of reading + 1 Overlooking, for the moment, the " all" the poetry in the "country" before making such PA ... Ad. C,~ICO a stater.1ent, it simpm; is · L in view of the "collective" policy--and 1-0.silto'l..$ the anti-individualist,e11 ii )8a--which allegedly forn the cornerstone of the Chicago poetry scene. Mtihvfov1l ..-..1\h as published five volumes of poetry: Think !Hack! (1967), Black Pride (1968), Don ' t Cry, Scream (1969), We ifalk the Way of the New World (1970), Directionscore: (1973). Selected and New Poems (1971) and The Book of Life His Dynamite Voices, Vol. I (Broadside), published in 1971, is a study of 14 Blac;'- poets of the sixties; but\,!t reveal~ike his other \~ c,1-1•ftic,: a. Sm? njJtcN4 that h~ a hazy thinker, who lacks discretion ancf,ij: irm understanding of the Black poetry tradition. He spends an entire page, for example, illuminating and apparently advocating the use of the word "motherfucker." And any book about the sixties should not cone off the press without exami- ning the poetry of LeRoi Jones/Imamu Baraka. Madhubuti attributes the fathership d-,e~ tto't of the New Black poetry to Baraka, but • ijif!flifilntly ii ;j,111upa:S!k uf~ iscuss :a·• ..., the man ' s poetry . There are other, incredible flaws in the book, for which this young poet ' s ~ mentors must share some blame . As a critic, he did not (could not!) cultivate the "distance" of a Johnson, Brown, Redding, or Henderson, and consequently--already lacking discipline and training--could not really see the poetry. The bookl Is redeeming values, such as they are,' ,-r.s possibly reside in ~incide~tal informat-ion and .,_... bibliography. As a poet, Lee fares better, employing wit, irony, understatement and f1gri••~1, ~5 . (In the rn~N:rt o~ 8l4.c k so.L ""r,·ov-.": 'ttesv1 SAves.-S&H,reen Sio.mps!0_ · ~- · J\.But there are excellent poets in Chicago \M'ho ha.e,e. b,en dw•FU hi, �f'oLr1r r:<l l ~ age i (Plumpp, Cunningham, Rodgers, Gilbert, etc . ) l Ml!P llifr Id i His themes range from what Arthur P . Davis has called "The New Poetry of Black Hate," - through love and Black pride, to the ha ar,a pontificat ions in The Book of Life where he re-ar ranges sayings and parables stated better by Aesop, bush Afr icans , Plato, d1 Baraka♦ and Tolson . Like ikki Giovanni and others , hi s early work re-inforced t he self-love coacept, castigated whitey and encouraged Elacl- unity. Host of his 11e r. we"",e " sunnned up in the titles Think Black! ~!11111!!~ and Black Pride; his devices are everyday conversation ,( often not wellI ...~ ~• • n,t ,t,aa10., 1 wroug 1t but sometimes quite startling nd musical rhythms ("The Hall"). These he adjusts in an often effective typography which moves in parallel . ,n columns vertically or horizontally on the pages. In Introductions to his .,.,'e.sio . books an~•~ riticaJ! 1 articles Ha<lhubuti ••-,i1iAg1.ves "directions" to Black writers--as he does in much of ~.S poetry. · d..#1 "First Impressions Poet's Death," -.,.elegy for Conrad Kent Rivers, t,;~111111=1!!"~ un-talked-about ~~a h A~\'f'OV\'fQl'\ 4 ch.-.ul'lltlU s lcAthe often oP S.o1-ne cJ,e. 1111111111••• caus{iremature Black deaths . ilJll••iM!~Aof "too bv't much" sex and drink, he says1r--, "poets who poet" seldom die from overexposure. But he can unknowingly dabble with the most complex aspects of Black life as in "The Self-Hatred of Don L. Lee" wher:e, after stµdying Black history, he learns to love the "inner" person and hate (with vehemence) my light brm-m outer . �Certainly a profound and tragic dilemma is stated here: since hating one's color will not change it; and since one has to live with it for the rest of one's life. It is a good poem for studying the so-called "solution" that some Black writers claim to have "found" to the identity problem. I . ... WI I .1/one of his most fanous poems is "Don't Cry, Scream." Praised highly by Stephen Henderson, the poem paraphrases the her{ tical rantings of Ron Karenga who A tribute encouraged Illacks to renounce the Blues. 1'-t ( h I e..-.c{fLr ph u ?) to Coltrane, ,\is largely graphicf\:•1itt1 occasional areas of intelligibility. Then ti,/$ so.11en,1 there is ~ self-disgust: n i cried for billy holl iday. v the blues. we ain't blue the blues exhibited illusion., of manhood. t,4ou1c.oulo C.e,L~'1n ~~ve•~vot.ved''withoc.,Ti't'l bL.ue.s 7 Even the German Janheinz Jahn knew better. f\ And certainly, today, Hadhubuti must face the question: it"? if the blues were destructive, then l,ow did he "make Indeed, how did anyone "make it" without the totem of survivalisms necessary to "cross over"? Madhubuti ' s influence on the new poetry has been substantial, however, though in most instances the influence has been in the th e... ''.ttu,J''"~,n /\ . e 1u i 0~ J.t H VJ OLad<.. area of politics rather than poetry. vv ~ 11n ,. v he t\0-i \\el.~e.d tt \)Op1>Lo. Carolyn Rodgers ' volumes are Paper Soul (1968), Songs of a Blackbird r, ,~ f>otrru II (1969), 2 Love Raps (Broadside) (1969), Blues Gittin Up (1972) and How I Got GYII, (1975). Womanly and convincing, she writes of young women, love, revolutionaries and music. In "Phoenix" she recalls traveling "with the wind" and hearing the many voices screaming blooddrops of time. "Jazz" describes "three" at the bar, the clicking of drinking elasses, and the murmur of thick mouths •..• �"Rebolushinary x-mas/eastuh julie 4/etc . etc. etc." is a satire on "militants." And she tells us that bits of me splintered ir():o a mirror in "Look at My Face a Collage ." These ideas and themes, and many others, can also be found in the poetry of Johari Amini, Plumpp and Cunningham . Johari Amini ' s books include Images in Black (1967), A Folk Fable (broadside) (1969), Let ' s Go Somewhere (1970), and A Hip Tale in Death Style (1972) . She relies heavily upon Bl ack colloquialisms, usually achieving success. But she has other ranges as· can be seen in " Brother" whic 1 longs for the " soil" of Black poeple, where they can feel the universe shudder .... wo.. l(ja.-e Plumpp ' s,iPortable Soul (1969 ) , Half Black, Half Blacker (19 70) and Steps to Break the Circle (19 75) . A southernPr with a backr.round in psychology, he has also written a provo c ative study called Black Ritu a l•~ His interests are seen in t it l es like " From Manless Sisters to Big Bad Rappers," "Black Messages" ("believe in us " ), "Living Truth" ("black history ... a banned epic"), and 1'egypt (For Black Notherhood)": an everlasting sunrise awoke ... • One of the most perceptive, skillful and innovative poets, however, is Cunningham. His one volume is The Blue lished widely in periodicals. arratot (1974) and he has been pub- "The City Rises" as a sad stiff wooden place "St. Julien ' s Eve: For Dennis Cross" ji wonderfully mixes the senses; the •• s-tA hbQJ ..,;, narrator is l\the " ear" by Brahms, and then there follows great poetry: the wind-man tearing at the bridge as a man stands wondering �why does the river float up to the sky A Tolsonian thrust, "Rapping Along with Ronda Davis" is a delightful combination of Hoon beams & yams ~nd shows Cunningham 's ability to place disparate orderings in his poetic vise. "A Street in Kaufman-ville: or a note thrown to carolyn from rodgers place" is a study of the "fragments" of Bob Kaufman in whom the poet sees a madness unli1.e my own .... ~riving " From the Narrator 's Trance," a song thumbed-down a cruiser for a ride .... Cunningham also writes of other poets and artists. In conducting his fascinating experiments with the language, he celebrates the wide span of the hybrid Afro-American heritage. And certainly, here is a poet to be closely watched . Gilbert, My Own Among other Chicago poets who published volumes are: Hallelujahs (1971); Chiri, An Acknowledgement to Hy Afro-American Brother (1968); Perkins, TI.lack is Beautiful (1968); Wimberli (Ebon) Ghetto Scenes (1968) and Revolution (1968) ("a new Illack voice to alarm the establishment"-Perkins); Nargaret Burroughs, What Shall I Tell my Children 11.1110 are Black (1968); Greenlee, Blues for an African Princess (1971); Lucille Patterson, Hoon in Black (1974); Stephany, Hoving Deep (1970); Royster, The Black Door (1971); Kgositile , Spirits Unchained (1969) and For Melba (1970); Butler, Black Visions (1968); and Jeif d, To Paint a Black Picture (1969). Yet a newer group, not all Chicagoans, have been published in Third World Press ' New Poets series: Angela Jackson, Voodoo/Love Magic (1974); Damali (Denise Burnett), I Am that We Hay Be (1974); Fred Hord, After Hours (1974) and • �Sandra Royster, Women Talk (1974) . • w 1d.e.. These young poets deal with a ~ ariety of "~~w,\&IC!I\ subjects, though with a n 11 Il variety of forms; mostly, however, they are concerned with revolution, self-pride, heterosexual relations and Black life in urban America. Among the many good things which emerged from Chicago was the "new" Gwendolyn Brooks who, as we saw in Chapter V, has always been solid in her Blackness and won<lerfully magic in her poetry. The Brooks of In the Mecca (1968), Riot (1969), Family Pictures (1970) and Aloneness (1971) is not drastically different from her former self. In Report From Part One (1972), her autobiography, she apparently approved the use of a Madhubuti Preface which tells more about his own reading and writing problems than it does about this great woman ' s poetry . Madhubuti complains about her complex verse; but her poetry has never been " easy" to read (probably never will) and Riot continues that tradition of toughness, a poetry which yields meaning after many readings. She employs mythology, history, sarcasm and dramatic ,, dialogue to reveal white middle class pomposity even in face of a " Riot 11 • 5He. e. fl <JP Svt-vey.s Bing Crosby and Melvin Van Peebles, and MilflllD•Aof love. l'\l ater The " Black philosopher" is the thread that spines the section cal led The Th ird Se rmon on t he Warpland. There are traces of her terse earlier style, particularly her unique word-sound progressions: as her underfed haunches jerk jazz. And a white liberal, observing a riot, asks "But WHY do These People offend themselves?" adding that it is time to "help. 111/E.amily Pictures contains the snapshots of her new young heroes, the people who helped her become "Black." But despite well-meaning salutes to Kgositile, Don, Bradford, and young Africans, there is a monotony of praise. J,, owe~e,,.J Admittedly, l\no one is perfect, and she is apparently • �struggling as hard with commitment as she is with the new poetry . In Spe.etlilto Yhe f "<'&t,e~i - To ;, L,~I" "Speech to the Young , " dedicated to1i,.own children, the sensitive mother-poet gives adviCe that many another young person might cuddle and cherish: Live not for The-End-of-the-Song. Live in the along . C(,HJ"I\Ot'l Such i,.l • • comes at an important juncturewhen the world is moving right along, to use a cliche , and leaving behind those too mired in their own "self-revelations" to look, listen and learn . Yet one crowning salute to this great lady of Black letters was an impressive anthology of poetry and testimonials, To Gwen with Love: A Tribute to Gwendolyn Brooks (1971) , assembled by Madhubuti and others . Chicago poets were only a skip from places like Gary, Indianapolis, ~ allowtcl Detroit, St . Louis, Clevelandi\ Kansas City~ and the closeness ' interchanges on all levels . hi~ Motown ' s poetry output, like that of other communities, was also interwoven with related symbols and expressions of the new consciousness: Hargaret Danner ' s Boone House for the Arts, Rev. Cleage ' s Shrine of the Black 1 !adonna, Motown Records , Broadside Press, Vaughn ' s Bookstore, and area Black studies projects . The poetry hub for the late sixties anJ seventies, of course , is Randall ' s Broadside Press. Randall has changed as a poet and person, he says, in ways that perhaps parallel the changes in Gwendolyn Brooks. A "father" figure among some new Black poets, he publishes dozens of them (over 100· at this writing) , releases new books of his own poetry, serves as distributor of Breman's Heritage Series, and travels widely as a lecturer , teacher, librarian and translator of Russian poetry. A formalist by training and tempera ent, Randall described his new poetic stance in a statement in Hodern and Contemporary Afro-American Poetry �(Bell, 1972): My poetics is to try to write poetry as well as I can. I think I have said elsewhere that the function of the poet is to write poetry . }1y earlier poetry was more formal. Now I am trying to write a looser, more irregular, more colloquial and more idiomatic verse. I abhor logorrhea , and try to make my poems as concentrated as possible. Indeed, Randall has tried to do just that--moving from a traditional to a loose, conversational verse . This he attempts in volumes like Love You (19 70) and After the Killing (1973). When Randall is describing a girl in an African ,·~ village or the "Miracle" of love, he • • • • •Agenuine . . and strong . P!T._ poems like " Green Apples" and "Words Words Words" ~ him "~A• rt But Ma'ttLt his #\ · • rKe..Tc:he.s These and other pieces are merely vertical prose, appearing as 1,.il I uglied letters . Qnd UL But he is primarily a librarian, publisher, and editor whose service to Black poets has been and remains invaluable . This is seen not only in his production of their work, but in the many anthologies which he has edited. With Chicagoan 1argaret Burroughs, he co-edited 1alcolm : Poems on the Life and Death of Malcolm X (196 7), a foresightful and commanding work . his I P § Also to credit are Black Poetry (1969 ) and The Black Poets (1971), the latter i mbalanced and apparently quickly thr own t ogether since it has practically no Introduction and contains no bio-bibliographical material on the poets. In addition to Randall and Margaret Danner, other poet~ in this upper Midwest area are James Randall (1938Thomas (1939- ) , Richard ), William Thigpen (1948-1971), Naomi Hadgett, Hayden, Rocky Taylor (Tejumoll Ologboni) (1945Atlante;) - ), James .Thompson (1936- · (,<141 ) ), Pearl Cleage Loma\ (now living in • Halaika Wangara (1938- Ay..N(<.ko\.6.s (_'£,okc~-P.•1 f'\ot-nin': ~ ) , Ahmed Alhamisi (19L10- ftlft\t4 ~f l!(dl • ~f ), P!!!'y '!f ,Sou l).I �Reginald Wilson (1927- ), Sonebeyatta (1956- Leonead Baily (1906- ), Melba Boyd (1950- Jill Witherspoon (1947(1950- ), Carolyn Thompson (1944), Shirley Woodson (1936- ), ), ), La Donna Tolbert (1956- ), Darnell Hawkins (1946- ), Stella Crews Sor1t 0F'1'he1t" wonks ) and FrencK Hodges (1940)- 4 ~ " can be found in Ten , A Broadside Treasury, The Black Poets, and in the small An 1'rnpor't"~-r v0Lurt1e ~I'\"\ th~ a.reo.. is Fbl!l-ed'it'ar ALh~W\1Si~ .!3,LAc..k. A~: A1111i.,Log_y .eF~'"'eiw'!S(wit#i 'Nr,• individual volumes regularly published by Broadside Press. /\ For further details on Detroit and other Broadside poets see Broadside Authors and Artists (Linead Bailey, 1974). James Randall has published Don ' t Ask Me Who I Am and Cities and Other Disasterg (1973). His poetry is intense, commanding and dramatic. In "Net,mrk News, 11 we are told that For years he ' d watched the growing madness of the State. There is irony and pathos as in "Street Games" where a boy is black as the ancient curse of Africa A different kind of poetry is written by Ologboni uho intermingles drum rhythms, incantatory meditations and sharp establishment-directed barbs in Drum Song (1969), Introduced by Gwendolyn Brooks . The poet is also an artist who tells us in "Untitled" that the night contains indifferent stars •••. Hayden has been teaching at the University of Michigan, his alma mater, since the late sixties when he left Fisk, wndar pre sSJJT 91h Hournir i ime (1970) anticipat "Festivals & Funerals. " His Words in the the theme of Jayne Cortez ' • overpowering He seeks a place where man will no longer be called nigger, gook, ki t e or hunkie, but 11 man. 11 There are frightening poems and terrifying images in Words as Hayden surveys the " Sphinx" ("my joke and me"), " Soledad" .("cradled by drugs, by jazz"), 11 Kodachromes of the Island " W6rlj~I �(" fingerless hands " ) and " El-Hajj Halik El-Shabazz" ( " the waking dream" ). ~e poet~ " Zeus over Redeye" reflects on 1,.• visit to the Redstone Arsenal. It is an intense drama, joining other .great poems as a major statement on our times . ·,rwe.-'tE~ Western man ' s l\mythic totem, his depravity, his quixotic movements at the speed of a blur, the human " loom" of tension--all are staged against the 0 t'the. backdrop ~missile arsenal where death-machines bear the names of ancient Graeco-Roman mythological figures . mythologies " to "come to birth ." Such naming allows * l 1 1 · t " new Among terms associated with Hayden ' s nightmarish world of visible/invisible and anticipated violence are dragon, hydra, basilisk, tulips, corollas, Zeus, Apollo, Nike and Hercules . The missiles tower ( " stasis " ) as a sacred phallic grove ..•. Apparently the guides at the arsenal cannot satisfactorily answer questions about the missiles ' destinies and dangers: Your partial answers reassure me less than they appall . I feel as though invisible fuses were burning all around us burning all around us. Heat-quiverings twitch danger ' s hypersensitive skin . The very · sunlight here seems flammable. And shadows give us no relieving shade. Dismal and final, Hayden ' s poem adds its own particular tone, style and language to the lengthening totem of the New Black Poetry. For, despite his disagreements with the Black Aestheticians, there is no doubt that 3t �"Zeus" reaffirms a belief expressed by younger, sometimes louder, poets: that the Western world is doomed to destruction at its own hands (will " off itself, " a younger poet might say) . •■l•t■ l•jMsllli·-•1•z-.ii1t•z~s"'l!!S~C~EM!L•l•••1. In fact, the theme of an app roachin g end i s quite "American" in poetry, still being preached by white poets and spokesman: from Bob Dylan to Billy Graham. Rich contributions have also been made by poets and artists in southern Illinois and Missouri. East St. Louis and St. Louis, though located in two R''"""' different states and separated by the Nississipp \ , have a mutual history that goes back before the days of the famous Dred Scott Case. These Black communities, alternately warring and loving, worked closely together during the height of the Black Arts Movement . Poets and artists were drawn to or supported by BAG (Black Artist Group), House of Umoja, The Blacksmith Shop of Black Culture, Black Liberator project, the House of Truth, Impact House, the Experiment in Higher Education at SIU, Sophia House, Katherine Dunham's Performing Arts Training Center (EHE-SIU), Black Diver Writers, and the Southend Neighborhood Center. Fw,m 11,i's ~ ( AJute) (/141- ) Some of the poets ,en t,he area f e Bruce Rutli1AJ Rhea Sharl em G_!'rant, Sherman {!4tn. . ) Fowle~ ~,e.(A1't.,(S,.tlh"Z"'o~'t\\o.J Redmon~ ia Conley f\(who later joined OBAC) 51.A.vndw,..R~1n"td~,,(J'1Sl-) 'AArthur Dozier, Bobb ~ui-, BrCWJ1f'~47- Qcf4J- ) E11iot ~, Austin Black (1928) (who went to Los Angeles), Fred Horton, "'I (iq 3f-) Mo.~ .-.c S,mpr.ort{/<if'/-- ) Dwight Jenkins, Rome~g_:=oxx,, nonald Hend~rson, Henry Osborne, Jon lfq4, ~) Wilson, Vincent Clark, Gloria Wafke~ <i"lc,.S'.;.)1 t'en""l Herman Vincent T~rrellj . Reginald Allen Turnage, (1~'11-) O'f50- ) Qqcl(p- J '' (t.q ,a- ")J NtJi. i-o"nso'I Wayne Lofti1't) Derrick Wrigh,1' Gregory Anthon~ Katherine Dunham, and others -1 Writings by these poets are included in Sides of the River: A Mini-Anthology of Black Writinss ( ~ , Betty Lee ' s Q I Proud ·~agazine Ghic~ d ffers prizes)) The Mill Creek Intelligencer, a special issue of Sou ' wester (fall, 1968, selected by Redmond), The Black Liberator, The Creator (1969), Tambourine (1966 , iJhite and Schwartz), Collection (1968), 3,A new St. Louis lriters Workshop, guided by Shirley La Flore , . includes Marci Howell, Candalaria Silva, Patricia Williams, Wal Arnusa, Geraldine Oole and Debra Anderson. SI / �J(olume I of Poems by Blacks (1970). Dumas, who taught for a year at East St. Louis ( ~ 1967-1968), and Redmond co-sponsored writing programs in the Rap-Write Now Workshops and Black River Writers group. Collection was student-produced under Dumas' supervision, with Fowler and Linda Stennis serving as editors. Elliott writes, in "The Dream Time," about the "spirochete womb" of the mother of the universe, the Phoenix, and the death "fashioned at the end" of 500 years. Great Phoenix that she was, the mother of the universe now leaves the dreamer <If_ With only her great murky sexuality •... [[Elliott is a dreamer and Surrealist but Black ushers in a different temperament with his The Tornado in Hy Mouth (1966). He has the irreverence of the Beats, the funkiness and drive of the hard boppers, and the sexuality of one in hot pursuit. "Asexual Flight" says a man ' s last wish is to be banished to the isl~nd of remiss and lo'!se his love. dil,!MmA. Another ..._..A is presented in "Razor Mama Democracy/ the ache in 3-D" where the blue haze hurts and now the hair is turning "into an aching grey." . Black salutes "the gladiator" in "Coeval Drums for Leroi" but in the meantime he covers quite a bit of ground: "the dead arterial insanity"; "futility in jagged crags"; "Kierkegaard/Sartre"; "like dripping brine"; "over the window of my being"; and finally "Her power in howling winds" brings A DRUlfBEAT FOR LEROI. �"Black & Funky" is subtitled "a hypothetical orgasm" and there is in "DAMN YOUR god!" A·~••--- \ c.o~ oc.<..cum His "(a poem for HALCOLM X)" is subtitled "the liberated war-horse." In "Carrying a Stick," Fowler asks: Who cares, that I had yesterday's stale gum for breakfast? "Thinking" allows various imageitreatn and burst fort1} vomiting tidings only the mind can hear. in ,, ~4t iu.c.e/' Student-mother Romenetha Washington write~bout the pressures on today's wht1 Black woman ~watchG• people Scurrying from sun to sun .•• , Also pulled along, she says . I protest but still I run. vsei irony tr'> Loftin, a young poet who writes with economy and simplicity,f\8ummarizmg ~right and Baldwin Q in "Reality": out of the cotton fields and burning suns to overcrowded cities and shades of slums Redmond and Fowler founded Black River Writers publishing company which brought out Sides of t1e River. Currently under the supervision of Catherine Younge, the press has published Redmond's volumes: A Tale of Two Toms (broadside) (1968), A Tale of Time & Toilet Tissue (pamphlet) (1969), Sentry of the Four Golden Pillars (1970), River of Bones and Flesh and Blood (1971), Songs From an Afro/Phone (1972), In A Time of Rain & Desire (1973), 3,3 �and an Lp , Bloodlinks and Sacred Places (1973) . Consider Loneliness as These Things was published in 1973 by Centro Studi E Scambi Internazionali in Italy. Redmond, a native of East St. Louis, strives f l#) Black familyhood (immediate and extended) in his poetry; though he attempts to do this without forced a."c! by allowing the allegiances, without " disfigurement of perceptions, " ~ to ~low deed-shaping words , \ ~ naturally. ] iztniss]lrc His poetry ranges from humorous folk portraits l i1'e "Invasion of the Nose" : His nose was his radar, His eyes icy darts that moved faster than speed-of-sound jets. He could rap like a pneumatic drill Or croon like Smokey Bill when the occasion arose . to considerations of love under strain as in " Inside My Perimeter" : Inside my perimeter Of fears A unit of guerillas Strikes at the barbed-wire Hovels that hoard our love: That incarcerate our needs-An insurgent army Storms the bastille of pride Shells this facade of custom, Knells the collapse Of the straw men· inside us-Accepts the sun , Allows the contorted face of �Stress to smile again-To glow again! Allows Love to Live . Elsewhere in the larger area there were/are other goings-on in poetry: Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas City where Wilbur Rutledge (19lf0- ) and others associated with the Afro-American Cultural Center and the Black Writers Workshop received assistance and exposure. Among these poets are Mary Ruth Spicer, Guiou Taylor, Willesse Hester and Jackie Washington. in Anthology: Some of them are included ~vt{:ec\ge.. Black Writer ' s Horkshop (Kizna, 1970) andJYet!!hing;h@ has pub- lished Joma (1971) ~ Located at the University of Denver for the year 1974-197~where he who'iook. substituted for Hphahlele .i a ■ i.a0Aa leave of absence, Kgosi{ile (1938- ) articles, poems and interviews have been published on an international scale, and he has taught at several American colleges and universities. In addition to books already mentioned, he has published My Name Is Afri kt (1971) and edited The Word is Here: Poetry from Modern Africa (1973) . His own e1e sthetic is stated in his Introduction to the anthology: Poetry, the word at its most ex1ressive, can be a prayer, an appeal, condemnation, encouragement, affirmation--the list of endeavors is endless. And if it is authentic, as anything else expressive of a people ' s spirit, it is always social. This concept he embraces in his own poems, especially in Africa where in the Introduction, Gwendolyn Brooks writes that his Art is life worked with; •• • ' t ern poets, Bruce 4,one of the most inventive and talented of Midwes Rutlin, has not ·published widely.µeA~ his bi gly ori gi n ~l style on LPs: Ofama: Children of the Sun{l971 , with saxophoni s t Ol iver Lake) and sJ.S- �His Afro-American brothers incorporated the Africanisms into their works and, \?Lt<C Kgositsile combines his own indiginisms with a mastered fluency ofl\American L 09 ISh\S :S. ~II s _ He assays the whole of our tumultuous times (in Africa and America), intermingling an acquired Black street language with a demanding and stringent form. One cf the most able craftsmen, he W~ites excellent poems about children, women, violence, music, Malcolm X, Lumumba, Gwendolyn Brooks, African dances, --:-, Billy Hol l iday, or "The Nitty Gritty" in which the once furious songs are now v frozen on battered black lips . • . . (J,T\ G,u,t~"'"'"°'~ 4-r,d Du'Ley ~o.Mt•l<.., , ... _ I ,. • ru t.c.tosili,tt is W.:,llt-5 ~ r:rlY'" ,cwt:6« \ r \ 4 ' p..i..vw..~1iietA k • • Tl1e poets of the East, South, Midwest and near West are a bit more than a hop, skip and jump from California, but many of them were inspired by -r,./ appearances, national magazine coverage, and cross-country tours of the Watts poets. Born, as it were, between the California sun and the rebellion of 1965, the Watts Writers' Workshop was initially under the direction of Budd Schulberg. Later, as older writers left and newer ones came in, the suner- vision of the· workshop was assumec;l by Harry Dolan and Herbert Simmons. f 'I! La1"ed s there~ ur e of culture and influence included the Watts Happening Coffee House, , ,.., ,,-.. the short-lived Shrew magazine, the Watts Repertory Theater, the ~ l qu~ arian Bookstore, the Sons of Watts, the Black Panthers, Karenga's US organization, f,~~-t and Frederick Douglass Writers' House which housed thel\:fatts writers program. Among those associated with this and other writing groups were Hilton HcFarlane, Clyde Mays (1943- ), Troupe (1943- Bowen, Pamela Donegan (1943- ), Stanley Crouch (1945- ), Emmery Evans (1943- Lance Jeffers, Lino, K. C~rtis Lyle (1944- Eric Priestly (1943- ) , ), Simmons (1930- ... Ojenke (Alvin Saxon, 1947- C.K. Moreland, Jimmy Sherman (1944Hayhand, James Thomas Jackson (1927David Reese Moody (1933- ), Fanita (1943- ) , ), Vallejo Ryan Kennedy (1947- ), Leumas Sirrah (1948- Cleveland Sims (1944- ), Robert ), Johnie Scott (1948- ) ' , ), Ernest ) , Fannie Carole Brown (19L12- ), Edna Gipson (1946- ) ) , ), Jayne Cortez (1933- Poem of Gratitide(l972) . Rutlin is_ a St. Louisan. ) ) , ' �Noto. r?.cl.,;JSo"(~ Onf~).; Blossom Po.we (1929- ) , Sonora McKeller (19H- LAt'\c• w:ui ~"'"' s., Birdell Chew (1913- ), K idhiana , and others . ) , ~ arley Mims (1925- ), Their works are in two From the Ashes (1967 , Schulberg) and Watts Poets and Writers anthologies: (1968, Troupe). Other poems are scattered through such periodicals as Los Troupe~ 4n1°h<>lb~y, p1,1bH\ hecl.bytht \it,\tte. of-&spe~1j t1.e~t.eci~ o.. Angeles Magazine , Shrew, Confrontation , and West. A , · -i1I, f:', * 'the owren~ M~Joi,. .5'1•1t&•vp ~rn61\9 WAlts u,.-·, n ..s,11u 11L.7,1t9 in,..,011pe.._,,c1 ~,01eno;\Sb o e"s o.-M•n~ O· ~ Seen as a movement, the Watts group, in quality and quantity, emerge as one of the most powerful on the New Black Poetry scene (roughly resembling the magnificent Howard group) . For although the poetry is not uniformly good or 0..... or excellent, there isAcourage t!liz"'t-=IIW,j@I\V ision , , style• and theme• that one .-ttiE. looks hard to find in N>ther groups. This may be due in part to the migratory patterns of Blacks in the West--most of these poets were not born in Los Angeles--and the racial kaleidoscope of California . Whatever the reasons, there is a prismatic range in the poetry that moves from the earth- woman musicality of Jayne Cortez, across the allusory and often mystical excursions of Lyle, to the signifying blues interludes of Crouch who has also written some daring and seminal criticism in Black World and the Journal of Black Poetry . Ain ' t ~o Ambulances for no Nigguhs Tonight (1972) is the title of both his book and Lp recording which includes " rap" as well as poetry, with liner notes by Lyle . Crouch uses folk forms and them~ intertwined with music and various dramatic techniques . Many of the poems are dedicated to musicians like Parker and Coltrane; others attempt the complicated spontaneity of live jazz solos. The title poem anticipates the day of the final riot when there will not be "no " ambulances for "nigg~hs ". " got on his job" like Nat Turner. e~ ays - and others . ,\ t. o,._hJ N•nyh•--~,•rr.r, his influences are Artaud,'Octavio {DWld..Q!\.w ~ But the poem ' s hero, Monkey Junior, I Paz, Cesar Vallejo, Cesaire, His poetry is grounded in elliptical phrases and obscure information i �which he constricts into frightening, surreal images and states. "Sometimes I Go to Camarillo & Sit in the Lounge" describes how the poet stares into "an awning of spirit," viewing the world as yellow trumpets of starving blues ){et hearing a Vietnamese mother ' s "ultra-high-frequency screams." We are told that "cobalt bullets" smash the heart of the "lone ranger" in "Lacrimas or there is a need to Scream." However, Lyle's most famous poem is "I Can Get it for You iJholesale," a statement on the contemporary political-religiousracial scene One..oP"t/2t f,~QS 1 l",S tJt PD 'o/1 Lyle nA.S .-.e,ur.J ti ~ ~ m J ~ L , I ~ ,£ ~ - : 2 ; • ~~ev-,oh~l:1) "1'h ivl,.f c.lt he b A.t.Co,,.,,_ po.nit,! by-3\,U~S l4e.rt1;#t~U. ~J ~ Ojenke has an unlimited range of intellectual and social concerns as he sculpts his poetry from the diverse ingredients that produced the Afro-American. 2_eflecting his ereat knowledge of Graeco-Roman classics, "Black Power" has the lyre of "IUacl~ Orpheus" pierce the dark solitude of a Iladean world: il\Ul IIe,\wanders into ancient Greece and Nigeria in the same poem. In "Watts" there is a commotion caused by lightning and famine, assassinating tin people and whole grass-blades? Later on Diogenes, Socrates _and the Oracle of Delphi enter the poem. But these characters only come to Watts to find people escaping into a " toxicant" and fleeing from some too-true truth .••• Ojenke also wrote an Introduction to Evans ' book The Love Poet (1971). Evans ' reading ability, Ojenke said: " Emmery is crying slyly into your ear." " Roaches" depicts a -familia~ s ~ to some: two roaches dance across the room to the tune of poverty; •.. About t, �Scott is one of the more well known of the Watts poets . In " The Fish Party ," he says The fish are gathering again tonight, ... And fish- watchers , ignorant of the world ' s problems, get their charges from trying t o guess what the fish will do. During the conversation, Scott talks par~ thetically about war and poverty, but all is exclamatorily interrupted: Hey, look? Just Goldie has ~eaten Jesus up! "Watts, 1966" is a poem millions heard on national theme of Black rage and white indifference . 1V . It has the familiar But Scott closes it on memorable lines : The man named Fear has inherited half an acre, and is angry. Watts poets deal with love, violence, contemplation of freedom and music . left Watts after the late sixties. Troupe went to Ohio University ( to L.;fe.r edit <;_£~f r2ntat~u) and~published Embryo (19 73) , Ash Doors and JuJu Guitars (1975 ) , and co-edited Giant Q to New York. Talk: Third World Yoic@& (1975), a f ter moving I ri 1-"f;I t tor ~evet-ttL Xtt,J,,t 4,-f - ~ Washingt n Lyle , who has not published a volu~, ., University in St. Louis , and recently returned to Los An geles. ,,.,..,"1're,, Jayne Corte~ went to New York where she has liv ed and, wc.s«. since the late sixties. three books are Pi s t a ined Stairs and the Monke and Funerals (1971) and Sca rifications (1973). gelebrations, and ~gl j t)ldg~ (1974). 1't:1 Her Man's Wares (19t>9 ) , Festiva ls She has also recorded an Lp, Her themes a nd sty les a re broad , but mo stly ~embrace music a s aspect and fo rm. Afr ica, a s struggle and s pirit, is a lso a dominant theme in her poetry. Pis~a ined is e spec ially rich in its inter weav i ngs of musi c and strug l e . "The Road" is "where another Hank moans" 0 and is �Stoney Lonesome "Lead" describes the kind of hard life that is "cracklin hot a sunrise." Lead, of course, is Lead Belly whom the "nigguhs " desperately want to hear spit the blues out. t"Mt--e. Thc.U'l Her struggles are .-.A.simple "contrivances" as they chronicle the hardships and good times of Dinah, Bird, Ornette, Coltrane, "Fats" Navarro, Clifford Brown and others--a verifiable poetic tapestry of Black expression in defiance of death, from one who would(f-h,n<J~Y Lo\l 11 ): .•• eat mud to touch the root of you .••. Among other Southern California poets are Robert Bowen (1936Boze (194~- ) , Kinamo Hodari 19~0- ) , Arthur ), Dee Dee McNeil \1943), Arrvl.o. ... Ws:Qs c,ou"-r.,....1 ,.. ""-• LM'f ~.ti -. ...~""-- , ... , .. oFIODl'i,~o"be .., . . . Bil Thompson, and Lance Williams. I\ S•v~ .. a.C. 'PS• rt /:lecTs~f v inTeret't,s Q db ck9t-o,mds Northern California ~ also · · · 4~~ w..·,,-, ..-s of Black poets and writers. Indeed a listing of poets,\_from the general . - . a-, ~•ed a national convention: Goncalves (1937- N~<A kti. S''1~e (!'N-,-.. ),.. ) (now at B~own), /\Co yus (19 42), Angelo Lewis (1950- ) ) , ' ), L.V. Mack (ec.i L Bt--owt"I,, (1940- (1947- ) , ~l .1uhaj ir (1944- , Joyce Carol Thomas (1938- (Marvin X), Leona Welch ricNair • • - • -• David Henderson, Jon Eckels t\'ln e<;."'t Go.t"e George Barlow (1948- ) ), Joseph , Glen Ifyles (1933- o/ ) ' ) , A_Herman Brown • • • • • (Huumba), Pat Parker • - • - - • De Leon Harrison (1941- ), Sarah Webster Fabio (1928- and Maya An~elou (1928- ). ) , William Anderson Bay area activity in the arts has been heightened and enhanceJ by the San Francisco Afro-American Historical and Cultural Society, bookstores such as Mere, Harcus and New Day (Goncalves), activities of Panthers and similar groups, the Rainbow Sign cultural center in Berkeley, �Nairobi College, and numerous other cul t ur al and literary projects . "t1'le.$.e by many"bards are i nclud ed in Hiller 's Dices ... oABl ack Poems Bones (1970), Journal of Black Poetry, Yardbird Reader (a semiannual edited by Reed, Young, Brown ~ and Myles), Umbra Blackworks (Henderson, all i ssues, especially 1970-71) , and othe r nationally distributed anthologies and periodicals .StA ,;.1t0.\'\te. '-nd o~\q',ntLwt-',tet-1 Reed),tia s publi shed three volumes: catechism of d neoamerican hoodoo church (1971), Con·ure: Fou" Selected Poems, 1963-1970 (1972), Chattanooga (1973), otc,,.,., ,,, p.&J;.y Utd,...•..• l•t.fll,e •~ f#""''"""'~.S. and as••ll!lltciLit novels. A His work has drawn a curious mi)tture of adJectives from c r itics: " brilliant, " " cute, " "j umbles and puz zles," "important, " "bad comics" and so on . Indeed Reed wri tes his poet r y into his novels and his novels i nto his po ems . In this service, he employs dialects, Voodoo, t he occult, whims i cality, wit, mys ticism, satire, which he obviously enjoys, all reinforced by assorted library information and street-instincts. He violates time barriers, plac ing an ancient Greek figure in a contemporary poem, or vice v e r sa. His verse form s are experimental, roughly recalling the Beats Bvt O..(.l.oScF ~tao(nA will. ~'10111 hi,Y\ itl tl\eTw,.cf.t1df\ Ot 1>un D0.11\J T"oome~ An TuL$t1t1 • and ot her recent or pas t s t y1istic irreverencies. A.There are no sacred cows f or Reed who sometimes lambasts Black nationalists and white liberals in the same poem. Generally, his techniques work (some are astonishing); but;he often spends t oo much time a t tacking real or created antagonists and having fun at the expens e of readers. His titles alone are enough to keep you slapping your thigh or scratching your head: " Report of the Reed Commission," "I am a cowboy i n the boat of Ra," " There 's a whale in my thigh, " "The feral pioneers," "The Black Cock," " Gr i s Gris, " "And the Devil Sent a Ford Pinto, which She also Routed ." In 1973 Reed became the fi rst Black writer to be nominated for a National Book Award in two catego r ies . 5-IJ:he works of many r.r> ..1'1tftll C<lt~Porn<A wh1ii',..s - cCLn also be found in a special "Arts & Literature" issu~of '.the Black Scholar, June, 197~. 5Lf( �Goncalves (Dingane), an occasional poet, is unique in his intellectualCol'\S"ft."<176,t typographical b.. t t11~o f ideas (see Black Fire), but his service to Black poetry has been more obvious i n his work as founder- ed itor of Journal of Black Poetry . He also served as poetry editor of Black Dialogue. A quiet, but steady, influence on the New Black Poetry, he has written some of the most informed criticism to come out of the period. Currently he runs/operates ew Day Bookstore ,in San Francisco, where The Journal and its press are headquartered. Among poets published by the press are foal and Welton Smith (Penet;rati~.ij,, 1971), a virtuoso poet who was born and raised in San Francisco. "Halcolm" ends discussing the kinds of tracks tears make and telling the reader that in my heart there are many unmarked graves. There are also word-gifts in "the danger zone , " "If I could hold You for Light," "for a sorceress" ("you keep changing me into air") and "Black Mo ther" ("an odd ecstasy moving"); these join blues , excursions through city streets, and thoughts on Africa. <,.~both"i~v~;, oest\leTr,,Uy tAl"lcl S1yt•ITi~4'-'f• Young and Harper both teach writing at Sxanford and Brown,\. Young has published Dancing (1969) and The Song Turning Back into Itself (1971) , as well as novels and articles. His poetry satirizes militants, salutes Lt h4v1~Ttl white and Third World poets, and incorporates legends into a broad"'iase • ....., t· g 1 3 lg . titles of his books. There is a consistency of interest as seen in the In "Erosong" he finds hims elf dancing "naked" though All my shores had been pulled up "Yes, the Secret Mind Whispe_r s," dedicated to Kaufman, calls po etry a "tree" forever at your door ••.. �Young ranges over the whole of the life experience , writing about s quirrels , ~Howe"e"'1 j azz musicians, Spain , Stockholm , night time and sorrow. )lis poetry is Sfy11sfit~l.ly 7 17; diff erent from that of Harper who lef t California in 1970. Harper's volumes are Dear J ohn, Dear Coltrane (197v), History is Your Own Heartbeat (1~71J, Photographs: Negatives: History as App le Tree (1972) , Song : I Want a Witness (1973,, Debridement O. .. 73) J, and Nightmare Begins Responsibility (1974). Praise for his poetry has come from a wide spectrum of eminent critics and poets, primarily academicians, i ncluding Gwendolyn Brooks and Hayden. Critic M.L. Rosenthal recently singled out Harper and Baraka as tau t examples of Black poets contributing to the new American poetry scene \The New York Times Magazine, November 2-;. , 197 -i J. Laurence Lieberman has also praised Harper who received nominations for the National Book Award as well as the Black Academy of Arts and Letters First Annual Poetry Award. has kept a consistency of tone which critics particularly Harper adfft•'N! 1 ;or,e-nd though his poetry sometimes lacks metaphorical tension ~funk? ) to ignite the important statements he makes about Black music , there is a f irm intelligence at work. His themes are illusion, pained creativity, war, racism, jazz , nature, history , death, and the my thological evolution of mankind. Much of his poetry is personal, confessional , and he interweaves a medical vocabulary into some of it. and musicians. He often includes chants , hums, and names of songs Hi s musico-poetic concerns can be seen in these lines f rom "Dear John, Dear Coltrane": Why you so bla ck? cause I am Why you so funky? cause I am �Why you so black? cause I am Why you so sweet? cause I am Why you so black? cause I am a love supreme, a love su')?rem1e: • • • \-\-o-v- f't-~J Reed, -Go.hie~ twid . young ~"'e. tr\c::lvdecl \"' 0 1 ~~1en's .J;'"n,e~v,~ws .. ~ (c. W W' ~ - iJi..,.S b 1 El Muhajir (Marvin X1 is Qn6ihe~~ ind of poet , Islam-influenced and adamantly Black: Fly to AllD,b (1969), Black Man Liste~ (19G9) , ~ - - l::1aLli., ~eQi. F,,tcpfil (19731., Each book salutes Allah and contains some occasionally well-turned poetry intermingled with proverbs, parables and songs. He ·p raises Elij ah Muhammad, Tommy Smith, and announces that "Bigger Thomas Lives!" In "The Origins of Blackne ss " he says Bl ack is not a color. but that All color$ come from Black Myles and Eckels are also at different ends of the poetic spectrum while HcNair is i n t he mi ddle. of his drawings and poems. 1yles published Down & Country in 1974 as a collage He surveys cont emporary life, his upbringing on "Bebop and blues in Phoenix," and his experiences as an artist and art s t udent. Eckels has moved from ~ poetry of _anger and protest tot "poetry written by a human being, for human beings ." His books include Black Dawn, This Time Tomorrow, Black Right On, Home is Where the Soul Is (1969), Our Business ~ in press . the Street~ (1970), and Fire Sign (1973), which gives its name to his - In his early phase Eckels wrote about "Black Is, " "Hell, Mary," �"In Memory of Marcus, " "A Responsible Neegrow Leader," and other poems...,also coining an interesting term: Western Syphilization Fire Sign " f or the free and will be," shows a thematic and cultural breadth / as he writes love poems and salutes freedom in general. McNair, a cosmic poet who bridges African spirituality and his own psychic revelations, has published Earthbook (1972) and Juba Girl (1973). Certainly the world will hear more from this gifted young writer. tht mvLt(.'f;./.enleJ Among northern California women poets,~aya Angelou is primarily a prose and script writer, but has published~i~ok of poems! •, • ~ Just Give He A Cool . , · ~ Oh &lAy at¥ Wt1>9.s Ane 6om?o. €1:f.M§. Welllll Drink of Wate~ ~.' Fore~ ~\~ (1971}Nht~was 1;om~n!1ted for the Pulitzer Prize}/\ He ~ 'PoeThr finl l'< /'I Of'lS ,tr -MOS.fCA.L °""d PoL~l.ow iT,c., \f'I Hvences ... Pat Parkers poetry can be found in an excellent little volume called Child of Hyself (1972) and Dices. J» She uses her ovm woman-feelings to assess Jw current upheaval. p st "Brother" reveals contradictions in the love-but-hurt approach some Black men take towards their women. The "system" she has just been struck with, she says, is called a fist. o~ her Other f\poems deal with humor and tragedy in husband-wife relations. In "A Moment Left behinµ" she asks ( Have you ev~r tried to catch a tear? "From Deep Within" says the way of a woman is turbulent with II).any forces and colors of feelings, but A woman ' s body must be taught to speak-- ••. Pat Parker's work searches behind the cosmetics and the vogue to the trutlfvl ?: ] ] 1 iisturbancek So does the work of Joyce Carol Thomas whose two books, �Bittersweet (1973) and Crystal Breezes (1974), were published by Fire Sign a:.}) BLe~s,h.f.\(itf15)1tvt4~~joe,q,~ PtJM. Presl\ ""Her poem? are about womens ~gds, church, Black music, children-. and love. There is a modern feel and texture in her lines which economize and without displaying abruptness or undecipherable code. Yet her strength is unmistakable as in "I Know a Lady": I know a lady A careful queen She bows to no one Her w'ill is a Fine thread of steel .••. In these poems, and the works of Pat Parker and Leona Welch, one sees a strong health and future in Bay area women poets. Welch's first book, was published in 1971. Black Gibraltar, Leona Here and there, one finds sub- dued rage and impatience before racism and ignorance; but her poetry also exalts the Black woman and speaks in low tones to men. from folk expressions to formal examinations of love. Her language ranges "Status Quo" is the study of a Black with "class" and dignity: Got my white poodle by the leash. Less able than the other women, her poetry salutes a number of heroines including women in her family and Nikki Giovanni) • Finally there is the much-traveled Sarah Fabio, instrumental in Black studies development in northern California, but who now lives in Iowa. published two volumes, A Yirror: She A Soul (1969) and Black Is a Panther Caged (1972), and then without notice, brought out seven volumes (!) all in 1973: Soul Is: Soul Ain't, Boss Soul (aiso the name of her Lp), Black Back: Back Black, Jujus & Jubilees, My Own Thing, Jujus/Alchemy of the Blues, �and ~ogether/to the Tune of Coltrane's Equinox. Her earlier poetry is more formal, reflecting her vast reading-thinking range; but the later work shows that she has joined the new poetry movement completely. Her most memorable poem is "Evil is Ho Black Thing" in which she converts all dark things traditionally associated with evil into ligp.ter colors or she allows them to be revealed in a broader context where they invariably become good. Her recent voluminous efforts deal with experimental blues poems, rap-styles, folk narratives, and attempt to reconstruct Black oral history. These things she does quite well on her albums and in live readings; but much of the work in the new books is excessively conversational loaded with contrived' hipness. Erzulie and Things(l975) is co-authored by poets Ntozake Shange and Thulani Nkabinde. And Ms. Thulani's work also appears in Jambalaya: Four Poets along with the poems of Lorenzo Thomas, Ibn Mukhtarr Mustapha(Sierra Leone) anfyn Zarco. Jambalaya is edited by Steve Cannon with an intro- duction by Cruz. Oruz writes poetry marked by brevity. Snaps{l969) and Mainland(l973) shows him relying on his Puerto Rican heritage, his relationships with other poets(often Black), New York Gity and other urban areas, and Spanish mythology. Now living in the bay area, Cruz often interpolates bi-lingual phrases into his poems. Barlow (Gabriel, 1974) has done impressive and promising work in the area of urban language and · Afro-American history. B. Rap published Revolution Is(l969) and Metamo;t-phosis of Supernigger(l973). Meanwhile, a young inmate at Vacaville Medical Facility, Herman Brown(Muumba) published Some Poems and Things(1971). Young Sacramento poet Clarence McKie Wigfall has sho-wn strengths in The Other Side(1970) and anothe~ Sacramentan, Wes Young brought out Life Today(l970) and Ramblins QL~O and 'l'hilil.gs ( 1972). 'Young Black poets . weref\..published in Gran:y High SchoolL• s Omnibus. Redmond, who has taught at California University, ~acramento, since 1970, conducts writing workshops on campus and community sites like the Oak Several poets are working and studying at Black Arts West in Seattle; and Park School of Afro-American Thought.,/\ poet Primus St . John teaches at u.,,._~~•"1"loi State University. ~ �Terms like "Armageddon," " chariots of fire," "smoking sixties," "get down on whitey" and "warrior priests" are often used by critics attempting to describe and "to be s CJt-6I ~vt ~h define the New Black poets. ■ I I J there wast,.verbal fire and brimstone·,Afew of the poets had time to stay "mounted in a chariot of fire," as Blyden Jackson has said of them. LAYl<l SC.(), pe. Indeed when the ~ i\1s viewed in its wholeness, one noTes C\t<tll that some who mounted "chariots" often were not ooet~ Even the most verbal and popular of the new poets--Nikki Giovanni, Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Madhubuti-denounced poetry as a luxury that could be ill-afforded durinp. a "Revolution," admitting in the meantime, perhaps, -that theirs was a particular brand of oratory not striving for poetry in a traditional sense. At the same time, the Black poetry tradition has these men and women, and others, to thank for snatching it from the brinks of obscurity and giving it a prominence which it had never before enjoyed. This chore alone has earned them an important "place" in the poetic scheme of 1 • • • "tL • l h£ a.~ w- ed ~y i3A,-,CA.~ 1 r Ctn tlun°B--albe1.t a "nlace" yet to be designated. 1n1S pla.c..e m~y <\ So ~ r ef\VVlC.t4'11011 of a ~,cc.w,~11dy f>o.n- A.~--,~1\1~1"' postmn Al'\d his eml,~dn o~ M~,.,~-c~spi'red 'scien1H'i SociaL,.Sj ftl a'.I y <1:'here are myriad problems and conflicts in the writings and lives of fruJ,7 YleuJ thel\?oets. Some, suffering from the "disfigurement of perceptio1'" do not always portray a correct sociological picture of Blacks, let alone a correct poetic one. Anxious to "saturate" themselves in the new Blackness, they disguise their own confusion in half-baked theories about Afro-American life; this results in ~ c:l. 4-h~t ll. ~oetry~ften ~ riddled with confusions, inaccuracies and oversimpli- fications of the Rlack Experience. A further result, and this is ghastly, is that star-makers view ·the poetry through an inverted lens so that a popular "latex brand" receives a final stamp of apnroval while the deeper, searc ing and more profound . poetry (Dumas, Patterson, Cornish, Cortez,, Jordan, Lorde, Rivers) is do,;,111played. - Such an inversion provides Black and white readers wit an extended "disfigurement," �muddying the already doubled vision rather tan clearing it up as Neal had predicted. Adding to this confusion is a cadre of Black critics who parade essentially political, parochial and ideological defenses under the banner of a Black Aesthetic. Both McKav and Rivers said "No white man can write my story," but during the contemporary --4~ neriod, some be-leaguered Black readers and teachers illlf1\asl "Where is the Black rriter who will write it?" 4 Contrary to nopular belief, it takes"'~l~ :rf"""'$ z phenomenon called the Black Experience. ll!tH•· to understand the complex And those few young writers (and spokesmen) who seemed to have mastered aspects of it often • . spen t,re&..tS \n . t ■--- •)..prison IQ (falcolm, Knight, Harold Carrington) which allowed them time ~reflect .._ , _ _...... develop- - . , and experiment Even Gwendolyn Brooks had "time" to work out ticklish questions in the area of art, politics and poetry. female poets, she did not . h er ear 1 y years. d uring Unlike Frances Harper, and other teach or go on a temperance leaeue lecture circuit That s h e cu1 tivate . d an d protecte d h er '1d istance . ,r is . evi. d ent in the super.ior quality of her work which does not shun the salient themes of the New Poetry: Black pride, Africa, Black music, self-love, Black heterosexuality, violence, mistrust of -whites, destruction of the Western world and self-determination . Yet those opposing the Black Aesthetic do not always have a clean slate, since they are often "shored up" by personal experience_s with whites. Among the opponents of the "separate" aesthetic for Blacks, Hayden and Redding are most vocal. However, both have maintained close associations with' academy-trained/oriented white critics and writers. Hayden must ask himself why Black poets should not subscribe to a Black Aesthetic if he subscribes to the aesthetic of the Baha'i Faith--"the only one," he has said, "to· which I willin~ly submit." • g] Black culture QrieTh~ possesses the possibilities and potentialities for a new feligio/A •~ould even ~e replace or modify~hristian•11•••t111•••~ force (mystique) behind Black �,s -t~d strivings and aspirations:Aa prospect which should not be too lightly dismissed. A.Yld ?.S'{C.I, <,LC1Jlllct L do That some new poets .._Awade into the intense intellectualArealm of ~lackness, however, is seen in a poem like Jayne Cortez' "Festiva.lS & Funerals." Musical, I daring, ambivalent, complex and technically dexterous, ~ t:te r I l!lftl summarizes the Like Hayden ' s "Zeus" and Gwendolyn Brooks' "Riot" uncertain world of Blac~ . ':ttif it fluently captures the suspense and hyperactivity of~ onternporary ol"ILJ The polarities--festivals and funerals--are archetypal and mythological since they at unexplored and state what is known. of the 1960s. n: The poem is also an emotional healthy ambivalence, couched in the "invisible" world and "cyclical nightmare" of the Black Experience, becomes allegorical as the poet celebrates heroes, sung and unsung, all of whom are dead in one way or another. They winged his spirit & wounded his ton~ue but deatl-t was slow coming The "slow" death is both the agony and the ecstasv, as it were, nestled somewhere between the dope needle ("rusty rims of a needle") an~"cultural vaginas" that "rushed" through streets urging men to die for shame 'T'he Doet has "lost a ,ood friend" whom she loved; but he has been shipped back '' c.o.D," to l-ter ,~wrth "thorns on his casket-J." ~ collect on death collect on death collect on death Tis "~riend" soon becomes the many dead Black spokesmen whose blood has been "consumed by vultures": Who killed Lumumba �Wha,ikilled 1-falcolm Qbo'fe. The•t\1- ines join other nuances of a frightening refrain which laments the loss of all friends; deat and dope and violence and consumption have devoured them: There are no tears we have no friends ~ is the word we are alone The world of "cadillacs and cocaine" is populated by festivals and funerals, poets that scream "kill run kill," "dashikis in the wind," "the flesh of Patrice" and "the blues. " the church. Blacks know ever~hoverinf death is as close as the juke joint or In the urban maze of mind and olace, the drivinv pace will perform its &&lt'Lb even when dope, false idol~• political oppression O-.nd ( 11 we. a.re a. LcH1 e Black girl, Black boy, aloni'\without friends in a hostile country or ecstatic operation jj ~o.i L1. ~ ,9 livin~ in one owned by foreigners. else L In Africa or America the fates of Blacks are dramatically similar: uJho dlled Lumumba uJh4t killed Malcolm It is a pressure-cooker without a backdoor or valve to let off steam. The rush of the poem's language complements the "rush" of Black life which is necessitated by OJ1 . "u'"M"'O~ onpression but which, in turn, results i l)\eriormously hig1)\~early deaths. 1,J2II per ' rJ; bat ±t d2£Uilfily fake§ ±a a great ekal of t\c BJac\ Bnpuh c: Sf •t itc. ~vS f ~fl.Sfrl)L c ~sq[ as :kagaag@ dlidAh,,Z ¼ iffiakhY tttdtk ..l!t as lam o s nd djiijaificant ?PlOPRs a It ts a 1lasl ,io1H itn ot5lk; tlrcr.tc mz,l: satjSJil hut H , ...l �£'.l nd. cu LTi:iv><l.L • a "" 2 ,• •J 8g,@E ±La.L/XJLSS& g e Or ~n c· S?: 1aaJ01 proportions . ii il~II Uixu . poe t r y s~acc the poet 1s tcthtiid! base :ts a p t1011 ht the stated etinm et2281 1 ipgpjstic OUfJSuE J of t he poem . Bat of all Ehl§ ',!.uprnot ed perf §Stjor " lrne :ua d§ the tlw Thao it enlarges die lcg&Cj e:i BJ blues . erotic lllipfovi sab .on coiii@§ die Ana lit ctt±s s@nse , clrc poet ltas navtgacetl st •n:3 and always dli f tcalt passage of tire r t clt a es t lt@LIE Wiilth trer tzaelitisn produced From among the many good poets of this era will emerge a few great ones, though ~~d such a prospect has been~retarded by the popular renunciation of "art" and "ideas . " L But it cannot be restrained too long because there is both urgency and breadth in much of the new thoueht and poetry . It is paradoxical to send Black students to ~o.1ir.hno~9y Western schools--to be trained on "heavy" philosoph~ •11d-r;;aeiuitew - -and t hen ask them to reduce '" all their knowledgel\to comp laints and focusless ra~tings. Po tr,.S.Black u"'c!4'J thought l('f and · r_ b e ca 11 e d on to f unction · · t1eAtra 1 l'il" d 1t1ona · · 1 capacit · ; 1 iterature ca1ui-ot in ~ ~.■ .-..--to train, develop and stimulate the faculties--then the "battle for the minds • h~~ of Black people" ~ beeh already A._won by the other side. ~ t:. T inally, t,hCt. X. Blacks as a people are pro f oundly tragic, comic or her~c , then their ideas and their poetry $~outd .g,._.,.,..,,aM -- ~--~""·,ro► we C:-.SC,ffllllflll5 have not always roamed Cr.df>tvt-Pt-ru; the "streets and alleys of other men ' s minds 'A and a true and honest Black poetry will ~ 1b not be afraid to be " great" al!MA stand alongside whatever else of greatness there is in this world. � 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_29to31 Title A name given to the resource First typed draft of Drumvoices: The Mission of Afro-American Poetry: A Critical History, Chapter VI. Festivals & Funerals, p. 406-552, typed with handwritten edits Relation A related resource Eugene B. Redmond Digital Collection Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource For digital rights and permissions, see <a href="https://www.siue.edu/lovejoy-library/about/policies.shtml">https://www.siue.edu/lovejoy-library/about/policies.shtml</a> or contact <a href="mailto:library@siue.edu">library@siue.edu</a> for direct inquiries. In copyright. <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/</a> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Redmond, Eugene B.