Working out, listening to Robert Creeley

Thanks to the Poetry App on my android phone, I was able to listen to a few poems today while riding the stationery bike at the gym, especially during the cool down period.

Robert Creeley was one of the poets that I ended up listening to and then re-listening to again. In particular, I was stuck on his poems "The Rain," "For Love," and "The Tunnel."

Jill Scott & Erykah Badu: From Spoken Word to R&B

A recent article on accomplished neo-soul singer Jill Scott noted that she "did poetry readings exclusively until she was discovered by the Roots, who gave her the big break she needed when they performed a song she co-wrote, 'I Got You,' with Erykah Badu in 2000."

That's a useful tidbit when and if we're thinking about the contemporary histories of spoken word poetry as a training ground and launching pad of sorts. I was recently writing about the intellectual histories of spoken word poetry circles and events as spaces for assisting folks in building consciousness. But apparently, as Jill Scott's artistic background suggests, the cultures of spoken word poetry can serve other purposes as well.

Black Women Writers Born between 1928-1939

Black women writers born between 1928 and 1939 have had an extraordinary influence on American and African American literature and artistic culture. Consider, for instance, the following 10 figures:

Maya Angelou 1928
Paule Marshall 1929
Lorraine Hansberry 1930 – 1965
Toni Morrison 1931
Audre Lorde 1934 – 1992
Sonia Sanchez 1934
June Jordan 1936 – 2002
Lucille Clifton 1936 – 1995
Jayne Cortez 1936
Toni Cade Bambara 1939 – 2010

How Black Poets Challenged Literary Conventions

I recently pulled Tony Bolden’s book Afro-Blue: Improvisations in African American Poetry and Culture from my shelf to look over some key passages that caught my attention when I first read it when it was published back in 2004.

Here’s Bolden at one point:

The decision of many blues poets to use voice/instrument techniques constitutes the most radical challenge to the literary conventions in the history of black poetry. However, since critics have been unable to imagine an alternative to a print-centered poetics, they have tended to ignore the artistic possibilities implied therein. Such indifference reflects a class bias that has a distinct history.

Earlier this week, I was blogging about spoken word poetry and then black poets who read vs. black poets who perform. Thus, Bolden’s words about the incorporation of voice/instrument techniques were coming back to mind. But I was referencing relatively recent or modern developments.

It’s possible to go back further, let’s say, to Margaret Walker, Langston Hughes, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and many others. Hughes’s initial appearance in Poetry magazine in the November 1926 issue included "Hard Luck”, “Po' Boy Blues," "Red Roses,""Suicide" -- all blues poems. With the publication of those pieces, Hughes was gaining access to a significant national venue and audience of poetry readers and at the same time, his works were challenging formal literary conventions. His poems were, in effect, presenting readers with the sensibilities of the blues.

Since the 1920s when Hughes’s blues poems first appeared, the presence of vocal and instrumental musical sensibilities in black and American poetry has increased and spread in dramatic ways over the years. Today, we almost take the presence of black musicality in poetry as a given. Yet as Boldon reminded us, the decision to incorporate voice and instrument techniques was “the most radical challenge to literary conventions in the history of black poetry.”

Poets Who Read vs. Poets Who Perform

Have you ever noticed that some poets who know their poems by memory but still tend to read their poems from a book? On the other hand, there are poets who might actually prefer to read their poems from the printed page yet feel inclined, if not pressured in particular contexts such as the spoken word venues, to perform their poems by memory.

What's up with all that?

In many ways, there are some longstanding, though largely under-discussed tensions among black poets and black poets, among those poets who read their poems from the pages of published books and poets who perform their pieces from memory. Sometimes, the tensions are less apparent, especially when poets such as Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Treasure Williams, and Patricia Smith present their works because they have mastered the art of reading & performing. But those and and other exceptional talents stand out because they are, well, exceptional.

Spoken Word Poetry & Black Intellectual Histories

Unlike many of the poets whose 100 or so books are in our collection, spoken word poets are less likely to belong to large academic and formal literary institutions. There are some formal channels for spoken word, but those channels are not generally as well-established as those channels for so-called "professional" or "literary" poetry. There's also no massive award system in spoken word, certainly not to the extent of the ones that include the Pulitzer, the National Book Award, the National Poetry Series, etc.

As a result, spoken word poets have received relatively little institutional and scholarly attention, despite the fact that the art form remains popular among so many diverse audiences.

Of course, mainstream, popular success might be a reason that elite sectors of literary cultures overlook spoken word. If it's too accessible, the thinking often goes, then it's too easy and therefore not literary enough. Whatever.

A Poet, A Rapper, and His Notebooks

A snapshot of pages from one of Dometi Pongo's notebooks in 2007

About 4 years ago when I met Dometi Pongo, one of our long-time contributors, during his first-year as a college student here at SIUE, he shared some of his notebooks with me. We had been discussing writing, poetry, rap, and black consciousness, and he mentioned in passing that he frequently filled his notebooks with new and developing material.

One day, he brought some of the notebooks by and let me flip through the pages. Traditional poems, rap lyrics, and various sketches of thoughts. What impressed me right off was how many apparently fully formed pieces that he had written. This then 18-year-old young man had three or so notebooks that were filled with his writings.

5 Animated poems by African American poets

I was exploring some of the videos on the Poetry Foundation site today and came across 5 animated poems by African American poets.

“The Tropics in New York” by Claude McKay. Poem read by Ziggy Marley

"Nina's Blues" by Cornelius Eady

"Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden. Poem read by Carl Hancock Rux

"Tornado Child" by Kwame Dawes

"mulberry fields" by Lucille Clifton

The Novelist as Sports Writer & Blues Writer: Colson Whitehead

One of my favorite novelists, Colson Whitehead, has, for the moment at least, transformed into a kind of sports writer. He's running a series of writings about his participation in the World Series of Poker over on Bill Simmons's Grantland sports site. Two of Whitehead's pieces, Occasional Dispatches from the Republic of Anhedonia: Part 1 and Occasional Dispatches from the Republic of Anhedonia: Part 2 have already appeared, and a third is on the way.

Grantland, affiliated with ESPN where Simmons became a leading columnist, is a sports site, in a way. But the plan for the site, it seems, is to highlight interests in sports and pop culture.

The site gained quite a bit of attention prior to its launch on June 8 because of its accomplished list of contributors and advisory editors, including, Dave Eggers, Chuck Klosterman, Katie Baker, Molly Lambert, Jay Caspian Kang, and Malcolm Gladwell. Tony Manfred, in an article about Grantland for Business Insider, noted that "Due to the résumés of the people involved and the ESPN marketing machine, the site will be used to define things like 'quality' in sportswriting." I became more intrigued with the site when I noticed Colson Whitehead was mentioned as one of the contributing writers.

Black Poetry published by Norton and Company

We have a disproportionate number of volumes of poetry in our collection published by Norton and Company. (The same can be said of books in our collection published by Graywolf, Knopf, and Third World Press). We hadn't realized it when we started collecting, but it turns out that Norton is well-represented among the books we have.

Our collection has 104 volumes of poetry published between 2000 and 2011, and the following 8 were published by Norton:

• Ai. Dread: Poems. 2003.
• Ai. No Surrender: Poems. 2010.
• Dove, Rita. American Smooth: Poems. 2004.
• Dove, Rita. Sonata Mulattica. 2009.
• Jackson, Major. Hoops: Poems. 2007.
• Jackson, Major. Holding Company. 2010.
• Jordan, A. Van. M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A. 2004.
• Jordan, A. Van. Quantum Lyrics: Poems. 2007.

10 Poems (with Audio) by Black Poets on Poets.Org site

I have mentioned and listed links to some of the audio recordings of poets reading their works on the Poetry Foundation site. I also regularly check out the materials on Poets.org.

•  Gwendolyn Brooks - We Real Cool
•  Gwendolyn Brooks - The Lovers of the Poor
•  Lucille Clifton - homage to my hips
•  Lucille Clifton -  my dream about being white
•  Lucille Clifton - the lost women
• Terrance Hayes - At Pegasus
• Terrance Hayes - What I Am
• Langston Hughes - The Negro Speaks of Rivers
• Audre Lorde - A Song for Many Movements
• Quincy Troupe - The Day Duke Raised: May 24th, 1974

Marking up Robert Hayden's "Frederick Douglass"

 I was recently looking over an old letter from a friend, Jean Hutchinson. She passed away back in December 2008. We used to exchange letters about poetry, and we often marked things up to make points and assist each other in "cracking the codes," as she put it.

Since I was thinking about Jean today, I decided to go through the process of marking up one of my favorite poems and documenting the process in somewhat step-by-step fashion.

Huey Freeman as Black Public Intellectual?

At one point, wasn't Huey Freeman, one of our most well-known or at least widely read black public intellectuals? Sure, he was a cartoon character and the creation of Aaron McGruder. But still, there was something about Huey.

The Boondocks, and now I'm referring to the comic strip, was picked up for national syndication in 2000. Folks, from across the country, were getting exposed to Huey's thoughts on rap, history, movies, black folks, white folks, some of everything...every day.

"You saw what Huey said in the paper today?" someone would ask and then describe some joke from the comic strip.

Writing about Huey Freeman (again)

Finally...I can start writing about Huey Freeman, the leading character from Aaron McGruder's comic strip and animation The Boondocks again. This fall, I'll teach a course about "black nerds" and another course focused on Malcolm X. Huey will be a topic for study and discussion in both classes.

I'll also teach two courses for first-year students at the university. Huey will also show up in those courses. I suspect the students, finding themselves in this new environment, will identify with Huey's alienation as well.

"Black," "African American," and the need for Disaggregation

@hystericalblkns, one of the engaging thinkers I follow on twitter, recently reminded me to consider some of the blurry lines  and differences associated with 'black' and 'African American.'  I had posted a link from the WIA Report, which expresses interest in "traking the progress of women in the academia," showing stats about the "Racial Breakdown of Full-Time Women Faculty in the U.S."

@hystericalblkns retweeted the link, but then also noted that the "figures need disaggregation. Black not necessarily African American, Asian not the same as Asian American."

Good point.

8 Lessons, Insights from the Sonia Sanchez Seminar

Two of our core Black Studies contributors, Cindy Lyles and Danielle Hall, participated in "Continuous Fire: A Seminar on the Poetry of Sonia Sanchez" from June 19 - 25. The seminar was coordinated by Joanne Gabbin's Furious Flower Poetry Center at James Madison University in Virginia.

Cindy and Danielle were enthusiastic about all that they learned and experienced at the seminar. I recently asked them to identify a few key lessons they learned or what they gained through their time at the seminar.

Eugene B. Redmond and the EBR Collection

List with links to blog entries and videos based on Eugene B. Redmond and the EBR Collection.

EBR
• Redmond Reading at Lovejoy Library 
• Eugene B. Redmond's Epic East St. Louis Poem
• Eugene Redmond and the Ghosts of Dunham, Hurston, & Schomburg
• A Poet Laureate (Always) at Work: Eugene B. Redmond

The EBR Collection
• Understanding the EBR Collection

Smartphones and Black Poetry: Some Preliminary Impressions

Poetry app from the Poetry Foundation

I'm really too new to my smartphone (an android) to offer really complex ideas about a wide range of technical possibilities with apps and all. But, there's so little written about these devices and black literature and especially poetry that I figured I should start somewhere.

Yesterday, I noticed a tweet pointing out that the Poetry Foundation had released its app for android devices. (The app for the iPhone had been released a while back). After downloading, I took some time - quite a bit of time actually - to scroll through the many poems now easily available on my device.

Black Studies Contributor Participates in Enriching Summer Program in Texas, New York City

This past June, Kacee Aldridge, a psychology major and core contributor to the Black Studies Program at SIUE, participated in the African American Literatures and Cultures Institute (AALCI) at the University of Texas at San Antonio. The AALCI prepares a select group of rising juniors from different universities across the country, including Cornell, University of California Riverside, Wellesley, and Fisk University, to join the professoriate by providing them with research stipends, rigorous mentoring, and innovative academic training.

The program responds to the pressing need for diversifying all areas of US higher education — from graduate study to academic research through administrative leadership. Institute Fellows study scholarly articles related to African American Studies, and they cover a range of literary works. They also take GRE prep courses and participate in workshops to develop professional and research statements.

Langston Hughes in Poetry magazine

Langston Hughes may have appeared in Poetry magazine more than any other African American poet. His poems appeared in the publication in 1926, 1931, 1940, 1941, 1943, 1947, and 1961. He reviewed James Pipesin's Ziba in the April 1944 issue of the periodical.

Below, I have provided links to his poems in Poetry.

November 1926:
"Hard Luck"

"Po' Boy Blues"

"Red Roses"

"Suicide"

October 1931:
"Lover’s Return"

"Sylvester's Dying Bed"

"Sailor"

"Dying Beast"

"God"

April 1940:
"Out of Work"

"Love Again Blues"

May 1941:
"Black Maria"

"Dust Bowl"

"Southern Mammy Sings"

"Crossing Jordan"

September 1943:
"Folks Who Knock at Madam's Door"

"Crowing Hen Blues"

February 1947:
"Seashore through Dark Glasses"

"Blues on a Box"

"Who but the Lord?"

"Yesterday and Today"

August 1961:
"Blues in Stereo"

Related Content:
Langston Hughes in Poetry
"We Real Cool" & "For My People" First Appeared in Poetry
The Journey of Margaret Walker's "For My People"
20 Poems (with Audio) by Black Poets on the Poetry Foundation Site
Calvin Forbes Shines Some light on Raccoon in Poetry
Pleasant Surprises: Thomas Sayers Ellis, Nikki Giovanni & Poetry
Poetry as Passport: Getting to Other Worlds through Translations

"We Real Cool" & "For My People" First Appeared in Poetry Mag.

I made some cool "discoveries" while looking through back issues of Poetry recently. Early Langston Hughes poems. Sterling Brown. Margaret Walker. Gwendolyn Brooks.

I was fascinated to learn that Walker's "For My People" and Gwendolyn Brooks's "We Real Cool" were first published in the periodical. Apparently, Poetry was an important site of publication for these black poets, at least, at different stages of their careers.

The Journey of Margaret Walker's "For My People"

A brief publishing history of one of the most widely anthologized African American poems.

Margaret Walker's poem "For My People" appeared in Poetry magazine in November 1937. Months later, her poem "The Struggle Staggers Us" appeared in the July 1938 issue of Poetry, and her poem "We Have Been Believers" appeared in the periodical in March 1939.

Walker's "For My People" was later included in Sterling Brown's anthology The Negro Caravan (1941).

Later, after having her poetry manuscript rejected a number of times, Walker won the Yale Series of Younger Poets award, and her poems were published under the title For My People (1942). The volume, which of course included the poem "For My People," received wide praise from reviewers.

Robert Kerlin mentioned and included an excerpt from Walker's poem in a late 1940s edition of his anthology Negro Poets and Their Poems.

In 1954, the Smithsonian released an album Anthology of Negro Poetry that  Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sterling Brown, Countee Cullen, and Margaret Walker reading their poems. Walker provided a reading of "For My People."

4 Langston Hughes poems from 1926 Poetry Magazine

Don Share, senior editor at Poetry magazine, recently tweeted links to poems by Sterling Brown and Melvin Tolson from the 50s and 40s. I started looking through some of the back issues of the magazine and came across, among other pieces, the following 4 poems by Langston Hughes from the November 1926 issue of the publication. 

"Hard Luck"

"Po' Boy Blues"

"Red Roses"

"Suicide"

Eugene B. Redmond's Epic East St. Louis Poem

Redmond reading poem "A Tale of Two Captains & Two Avenues
in the Life of East St. Louis," July 9, 2011

A year or so ago when the organizers of a book that would celebrate the sesquicentennial of East East St. Louis asked Eugene B. Redmond to contribute an essay about an aspect of the city's history, he agreed but with one caveat. Rather than write an essay, he decided to submit a poem about his beloved city.

The result was Redmond's expansive epilogue "A Tale of Two Captains & Two Avenues in the Life of East St. Louis," a more than 350-line poem that charts the city's history, identifying important locales, cultural practices, and dozens of outstanding East St. Louis citizens past and present along the way. The poem appears in The Making of an All-America City: East St. Louis at 150.

Black Poetry at the Strand Bookstore

Poetry section at Strand Bookstore

A couple of weeks ago while in New York City, I visited the Strand Bookstore--one of my favorite places to check out used books. I spent most of my time in the "Poetry Section," trying to see what titles they had by African American poets. It's always cool, too, seeing how black poetry books mix with the general population, so the speak, of volumes of verse.

I would have liked to have seen more titles, but I can't say I was surprised by the numbers and authors that were represented. That's not a knock on the Strand either. Poetry, in general, does not draw a whole lot of interest in the larger scheme of bookstores at least, and so volumes by African Americans tend not to receive much attention. 

Oh well...here are the following books that I saw in the Poetry Section at the Strand Bookstore:

Volumes:
● Gwendolyn Brook's Selected Poems
● Lucille Clifton's Quilting: Poems 1987–1990.
● Rita Dove's Mother Love 
● Rita Dove's Selected Poems
● Rita Dove's Sonata Mulattica 
● Nikky Finney's Head Off & Split 
● Nikki Giovanni's Blues for All Changes 
● Nikki Giovanni's Collected Poetry 1968-1998
● Major Jackson's Holding Company 
● Major Jackson's Hoops 
● Ntozake Shange's nappy edges
● Ntozake Shange's For colored girls who have considered suicide, when the rainbow is enuf: a choreopoem 
● Derek Walcott White Egrets
● Jay Wright's Polynomials and Pollen (2008)
● Kevin Young's Ardency 
● Kevin Young's Dear Darkness
● Kevin Young's jelly roll
● Kevin Young's For the Confederate Dead

Anthologies
● American Negro Poetry edited by Arna Bontemps
● From Totems to Hip-Hop: A Multicultural Anthology of Poetry Across the Americas 1900-2002 edited by Ishmael Reed
● The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry edited by Arnold Rampersad and Hilary Herbold
● The Vintage Book of African American Poetry by Michael S. Harper and Anthony Walton

When Print, Performance & Online Cultures Converge: Amiri Baraka's "Dope"

Over two decades ago when William J. Harris was working with Amiri Baraka to select and organize materials for inclusion in The Amiri Baraka Reader (1991), he was not necessarily that impressed by Baraka's poem "Dope." As the years progressed however, the poem grew on Harris.

Over 10 years ago while serving as one of the co-editors for Call and Response: The Riverside Anthology Of The African American Literary Tradition (1997), Harris had grown far more fond of Baraka's "Dope." He was especially pleased that his co-editors had agreed to include the poem in the anthology along with an audio recording of Baraka reading the poem on the anthology's accompanying CD.

10 Amiri Baraka poems on youtube

I was researching a piece on Baraka's poem "Dope" and needed to note the appearance of that poem on youtube. It reminded me that there are several Baraka poems on youtube. Here's a short list with just 10 of him reading/performing.

"Somebody Blew Up America" - Baraka reads with saxophonist Ron Brown.

"Obama Poem" - Baraka reading with saxophonist Ron Brown.

104 African American Volumes of Poetry by Publisher, 2000-2011

Our program has been collecting volumes of poetry by African Americans published between 2000-2011. We're still building of course, but right now, we have 104 volumes. I decided to organize the books by publisher.

Here's a list by year: 104 Volumes of African American Poetry, 2000-2011 

For our full list--by author last, year, and publisher, view this pdf:
African American Poetry: An Initial Bibliography

Our list, by the way, is hardly comprehensive. Instead, it's just a primer, and the works serve as featured books for our public "browsing sessions," where attendees can look through the volumes.

Keeping Poetry Alive in Mississippi: C. Liegh McInnis

One headline that got my attention over on twitter this morning went as follows: "Is poetry in Jackson, MS dead?" There was a link that leads to an article where a writer laments the loss of open mic venues in Jackson, Mississippi.

I lived in Jackson from 1995 through the summer of 1999, while I was an undergraduate at Tougaloo College. During my time in the state, the poetry scenes -- some related, some not -- had ups and downs, like many of the other groupings of literary artists in placed that I have lived and visited.

One major contributor to the open mics back then was C. Liegh McInnis. He still remains as one of the vital forces in black literary culture in Jackson. One reason that younger or newer artists in Jackson might be unaware of C. Liegh is because he, like many of us, likely became less active in the typical night-time performance circles and concentrated on other venues, including print publications, as we got older. 

But then again, a quick glance through the images on C. Liegh's web site reveals that he as remained quite active in print and performance mediums over the years.

Eugene Redmond and the Ghosts of Dunham, Hurston, & Schomburg

Zora Neale Hurston drumming in Haiti

 I'm not sure if Eugene B. Redmond believes in ghosts. But his incredible approaches to collecting materials related to black people and culture are certainly haunted by the spirits of Arthur (Arturo) Schomburg, Zora Neale Hurston, and Katherine Dunham. Clearly.

Schomburg (1874 – 1938) collected a wide range of books, art, artifacts, and various rare materials related to what we now refer to as black diaspora. His materials form the basis of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture--one of the largest, most renown collections featuring materials related to African American history and culture in the world.

Hurston (1891 - 1960) and Dunham (1909 – 2006) were anthropologists, artists, and simply put, two of the greatest human repositories of black culture to walk the earth. These two women carried more knowledge and rare materials related to black folk culture on the tips of their left-hand pinky fingers than many research libraries have in their entire collections. Ok, ok, I'm exaggerating. But only slightly.

"Last Night" (excerpt from Zone One) by Colson Whitehead

I've been writing a little about the early buzz and lead-up to the publication of Colson Whitehead's newest book Zone One, a zombie apocalypse novel set in New York City, which will be officially published in October.


Advanced Reader Copies have already been released (I'm hoping to get one). And, Publishers Weekly, a leading news source in the publishing industry, has run  a starred review of Whitehead's novel, noting that Zone One "succeeds brilliantly with a fresh take on survival, grief, 9/11, AIDS, global warming, nuclear holocaust, Katrina, Abu Ghraib, Pol Pot's Year Zero, Missouri tornadoes, and the many other disasters both natural and not that keep a stranglehold on our fears and dreams."

The July issue of Harper's Magazine includes "Last Night," a short excerpt from Whitehead's novel. The Publishers Weekly review noted that the events related to the zombie apocalypse are referred to as "Last Night" throughout Whitehead's novel.

Blogging about Black Verse in June 2011

I was teaching classes in June in Texas, so in many ways, my routine of reading, writing, blogging, and tweeting about African American poetry was somewhat altered and slowed at times. Still, looking back, I managed to get some work done that I can look back on and expand on later.

I wanted to do more writing about rap as well, but as you'll notice, I only produced one piece on Jay Electronica. Maybe more in July and August. 

• June 30: Tyehimba Jess & Treasure Williams on Anti-Black Racism as Ugly Envy
• June 30: The Folk Consciousness of Tyehimba Jess & Treasure Williams
• June 28: The Remarkable Ingenuity (and indifference) of Amiri Baraka
• June 26: 5 Reasons Kevin Young's Ardency Matters

How Ishmael Reed Defies A Fixed Place in Literary History

The first edition of The Norton Anthology of African American Literature (1997) presents the “Black Arts Movement” as taking place from 1960 to 1970 followed by the next section, “Literature Since 1970.” Actually, based on artistic output, the most defining and vibrant time period of the black arts era is arguably 1965 – 1976, but those dates do not fit as conveniently within a frame as 1960 – 1970.

That neat, yet flawed packaging (1960 – 1970) of the black arts era in the first edition of The Norton is likely the result of a larger belief and position in African American literary history that alleges that black poetry of the 1960s/70s, especially the verse associated with the Black Arts Movement, declined as readers became more and more interested in novels by black women writers. The suggestion is that the presumed man movement in poetry was surpassed by a woman movement in the production of novels.

The second edition of The Norton (2003) presents “The Black Arts Era” from 1960 – 1975.

Black Twitter and Inequality

Early on while teaching the African American Literatures and Cultures Institute in Texas this past June, the Fellows and I were having discussions about twitter. A few of them kept mentioning "black twitter," a phrase that pushes the idea that African Americans "run" the micro-blogging site, as evidenced by all the distinct black language and apparent over-representation of African Americans.

I spent over a week fumbling around with responses to the idea. My responses were always inadequate.

Enter Columbia University professor Alondra Nelson, who's done work on race and technology.

Evie Shockley's "ode to my blackness"

Statue of John Henry in Virginia

A couple of weeks ago, scholar Erica R. Edwards cited lines from Evie Shockley's poem "ode to my blackness" at the beginning and closing of a review of Kenneth Warren's book What Was African American Literature?. Erica's incorporation of lines from Evie's poem into the review caught my attention for a few reasons.