Black Panther books arrive

A couple of my colleagues and I earned a grant to work with several high school black boys on an arts project, primarily focusing on African American poetry. However, since the project will also highlight imaginative activities, we're also including a comics book: The Black Panther. All of the high school participants are from Illinois, and some are from East St. Louis. Thus, I'm especially pleased to make the guys aware that the writer for The Black Panther is Reginald Hudlin, who's also from Centerville and East St. Louis.

Some of the books we purchased arrived in the mail the other day, and seeing them here together has me even more excited about working with the high school students poetry and comics in the fall.

Related:
• A Notebook on Reginald Hudlin

A Notebook on Reginald Hudlin

2015
• July 31: Black Panther books arrive

2013
• September 9: Django Unchained (the comic book series)
• January 16: From Black Panther to Django Unchained (comic books) 

2012
• August 6: Kyle Baker, Reginald Hudlin, and Rob Guillory 
• July 3: Catching up on Reginald Hudlin's Black Panther

From Baldwin to Morrison & Coates: a brief history of endorsements

In the extensive coverage of Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me, Toni Morrison's blurb for the book and author has drawn considerable attention. Morrison's powerful appraisal of Coates reminded me of that career-defining endorsement she received from a group of black writers during the late 1980s.

James Baldwin's funeral took place on December 8, 1987, at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. After the services, several African American writers and cultural workers gathered together and expressed their discontent that talented black literary artists like Baldwin could produce extraordinary compositions and remain under-acknowledged. Channeling their anger, a group of 48 black poets, novelists, cultural workers, including Maya Angelou, Houston Baker, Amiri Baraka, Jayne Cortez, Angela Davis, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., June Jordan, Eleanor Traylor, Quincy Troupe, Alice Walker, Mary Helen Washington, and Eugene B. Redmond composed and signed a letter, which they submitted to The New York Times.

The letter, which appeared in the January 24, 1988, issue of the Times, bemoaned the fact that the recently departed:

Baldwin never received the honor of these keystones to the canon of American literature: the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize: never. And so we have buried this native son, Jimmy Baldwin, with a grief that goes beyond our sorrow at his death. We also grieve for every black artist who survives him in this freedom land. We grieve because we cannot yet assure that such shame, such national neglect will not occur again, and then again.

 The letter then pivoted to the urgency of supporting another novelist, whom the letter writers felt was being overlooked: 

Despite the international stature of Toni Morrison, she has yet to receive the national recognition that her five major works of fiction entirely deserve: she has yet to receive the keystone honors of the National Book Award or the Pulitzer Prize. We, the undersigned black critics and black writers, here assert ourselves against such oversight and harmful whimsy.

Morrison had lost the National Book Award for Beloved earlier in the year, but, in retrospect, many commentators believe that the letter produced by those 48 writers assisted in influencing the Pulitzer committee to award Morrison for her novel in 1988. She went on to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. Just as important, teachers and scholars apparently took notice of the sentiments expressed in that 1988 letter to the Times by those 48 black writers.

By the early 1990s, the scholarly discourse on Morrison's work had began to dramatically pick up steam. In a relatively small amount of time, Morrison became our most critically acclaimed black writer. The widespread scholarly interest and major award-winning status of her work were routed to that January 1988 letter in the Times.

Fast forward to 2015. 

"I've been wondering who might fill the intellectual void that plagued me after James Baldwin died," writes Morrison for the back-cover book blurb for Between the World and Me. "Clearly it is Ta-Nehisi Coates." By reflecting on the death of Baldwin in her blurb, Morrison had returned to the figure whose passing had previously inspired 48 black writers to endorse and thus greatly advance appraisals of her work.    

Related:
• Toni Morrison
 • Between Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Notes on coverage of Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me
• A Notebook on the work of Ta-Nehisi Coates

A convergence of scholars, artists, and scholar-artists

Kathy Lou Schultz dropping knowledge about the Afro-Modernist Epic

One advantage, among many, with an NEH Institute like Black Poetry After the Black Arts Movement is the convergence of a large group of accomplished presenters (scholars, artists, and scholar-artist). At the institute in Lawrence, Kansas, we hosted Joanne Gabbin, Tyehimba Jess, Stephanie J. Fitzgerald, Megan Kaminski, Brenda Marie Osbey, Lauri Ramey, Kathy Lou Schultz, James Smethurst, Frank X. Walker, Jerry W. Ward, Jr., and Kevin Young. And listen: that was just week 1.

No really. That was just the warm up? That was the warm up.

Smethurst was talking the geographies of African American poetry pre-1960s and onward. Schultz was talking epic poetry from Melvin B. Tolson to Langston Hughes to Amiri Baraka. Just having those two would've been enough. But we had more.

Tyehimba Jess gives a reading during the institute.

We had readings from Kevin Young and Brenda Maria Osbey and from the super sonic poetic possibility known as Tyehimba Jess. We had Ward talking through the poetry of Charlie Braxton, Asili Ya Nadhiri, Bob Kaufman, and others.   

It stands out to me that folks like Schultz, Ward, and Young, to name a few, are very much scholar-artists or artist-scholars. What that means on the ground-level is that they have insider-views on composing literary art and on producing scholarship in the field of African American literary studies. Combine those multiple perspectives with all the other artists and scholars, and we're talking about a remarkable, multi-directional, collective composition. 


Related:
• A Notebook on Black Poetry After the Black Arts Movement

A poetry room of their own

Thanks to the organizational and enterprising efforts of Maryemma Graham, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) agreed to fund Black Poetry after the Black Arts Movement -- an institute that responds to the "resurgence of interest in contemporary poetry, its expanded production and wide circulation." I  participated in the first week of the institute. Among other things, what's really important about the project is the diverse gathering, in a single room, of sharp-minded scholars, artists, and cultural workers devoted to concentrating on the study of African American poetry.

That gathering includes the active thinkers Keisha Watson, Kevin Quashie, and the good sister-scholar Joycelyn Moody raising questions about black poetry in a common space -- a space also populated by black studies director Tara T. Green and current National Council for Black Studies president Georgene Bess Montgomery. 

In that same room, you have poets Laura Smith, Cindy King, and Tara Betts as well as scholars Richard Schur, Deborah Mix, Jené Schoenfeld, "the" P. Gabrielle Foreman, Jim J. Donahue, and the Robert Hayden scholar Derik Smith. Some of the folks -- like Cameron Leader-Picone and Micky New -- are making links to poetry and music, while Dennis López, Claire Schwartz, and Bartholomew Brinkman are making the print culture connections. And if that wasn't enough, we have these wise-beyond-their-years emergent poetry scholars Laura Vrana, J. Peter Moore, and Sequoia Maner alongside artist-scholars Candice Pitts and Tamara Hollins alongside the multi-talented cultural worker, teacher, artist Monifa Love Asante.

Did I mention we've somehow managed to get all these folks to agree to meet in the same room to read and talk about and listen to black poetry over the course of two weeks? Did I mention that gatherings like these happen too infrequently, that they're hard to come by?

But there they were mixing it up, studying poetry, in a room of their own.

Related:
• A Notebook on Black Poetry After the Black Arts Movement

Kent Foreman, Tyehimba Jess, and the histories of spoken poetry

"I am a spoken poet, that is, my poetry was written to be heard as opposed to being read. It is the oldest literary tradition there is."  --Kent Foreman

One of the most important poetry lessons for me at the NEH Black Poetry After the Black Arts Movement Institute did not occur during the day-time sessions. Instead, it was far into the night on Thursday when Tyehimba Jess insisted that I take a look at readings on YouTube by the late Kent Foreman.  

It had been a long day. I was tired. But Jess felt it was important, essential even for me to consider Foreman's work and think through some of the challenges or questions his poetry and style of presentation or performance pose.

Foreman has this conversational or speakerly, for lack of better words, performance style. You can listen to him and know that he's performing a poem, but at the same time, how he's speaking comes off as if he's some cat on the streets kicking knowledge. That effect is heightened by the fact that Foreman reads recites many his works.

Since rhymed words lend themselves to song and remembrance, it's not surprising that we encounter rhymes throughout Foreman's poems. Also, those rhymes correspond to a sense of playfulness -- check out, for instance, his haiku "Epiphany" and "Raison D’Etre" -- and his versions of word play correspond to short poems by Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, and Henry Dumas, as well as Amiri Baraka's low coup.  Foreman delves into folk, persona, and bad man figures in his John Henry poem "Hammer Song" and also in his poem "From Jonathan to David,"  where he takes on the first-person perspective of Jonathan talking to David.

The way Foreman has us listening in on a conversation between these "soul brothers" Jonathan and David reminded me of one of my all-time favorite poems "1912: Blind Lemon Jefferson Explaining to Leadbelly" by Jess. In both poems, Foreman and Jess position us to overhear one brother sharing with another. The transference of the knowledge is plainly spoken and poetic.  

Related:
• A Notebook on Black Poetry After the Black Arts Movement
• Tyehimba Jess

Paratexts and the Race for History Among Contemporary Black Poets

To really get a sense of the distinctive ways that contemporary volumes of poetry by African Americans are intensifying the focus on history, you might check out some of the paratexts associated with the books. Paratexts refer to the surrounding materials beyond the apparent main content of works by writers such as:

Book covers
Table of contents
Book blurbs
Dedications
Indexes
Footnotes
Foreword
Afterword
Works cited
Photographs and illustrations
Timelines and chronologies

Marilyn Nelson's book Carver: a life in poems (2001), which focuses on George Washington Carver, includes historical photographs and even reproductions of 1943 and 1998 stamps featuring the famous scientist.  Those documents accentuate the degrees to which the volume is an official document charting the history of Carver's life. Toward the end of the book (after and beyond the last poem), the "photography credits" page lists sources of the book's images: Tuskegee University Archives, National Park Service, Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site, George Washington Carver National Monument, Iowa State University, National Archives, and the Library of Congress.

The Race for History Among Contemporary Black Poets, Pt. 1

Poet Tyehimba Jess discusses his research activities for an upcoming volume of poetry on July 23, 2015.

African American poets have always been interested in history, but the increased production of book-length volumes on historical figures and events that have been published over the last 15 years or so have really highlighted and perhaps intensified that interest. I was inclined to think a little more about this idea -- the interest in history -- this past week at the NEH-funded Black Poetry after the Black Arts Movement Institute, where poets Tyehimba Jess, and Frank X. Walker all frequently mentioned some version of their devotion to "getting the facts exactly right."

[Related: The Race for History Among Contemporary Black Poets, Pt. 2]

The participating NEH summer scholars valued those engagements with history, but we were also inclined to consider the poets' "near-obsession with facts," as someone put it. There's this long tradition among poets, including Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Margaret Walker, Robert Hayden, Amiri Baraka, and Rita Dove charting history and historical narratives in their poetry. We see continuations and extensions of that attention to history in 21st century works. (See Black Poetry and the History Section: a partial list).

In To Repel Ghosts (2001) a volume about the painter Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kevin Young includes a section at the end of the book with over 100 footnotes, a signal that he had pursued research in the course of producing the poems. Various other poets such as Tyehimba Jess, Marilyn Nelson, and Adrian Matejka indicate their attentiveness to history by including "paratexts" such as chronologies, timelines, footnotes, glossaries, and "works cited" at the end of their books signifying their devotion to "facts."

The Race for History Among Contemporary Black Poets, Pt. 2

Given the longstanding erasure and silencing of black people in historical narratives and accounts, we all understand why so many poets are passionate about pursuing recovery work, giving attention to archives, and getting the story right. There's also the well-worn dictum in black communities to "know your history," which is consequently taken as a mandate for some writers to uncover aspects of the past that have remained largely hidden or under-studied.

[Related The Race for History Among Contemporary Black Poets, Pt.1] 

Nonetheless, it was fascinating to me that at the NEH Black Poetry after the Black Arts Movement Institute some of the formal scholars -- those typically engaged with exhaustive research in archives and official documents -- were questioning what we might call a "race for history" among poets. There are logics, of course, to the prominence and pervasiveness of contemporary volumes of poetry concentrating on history. The many poems and books of poetry that have gained considerable attention for treatments of the past over the last 20 years suggest that it is professionally advantageous for poets to actively and thoroughly engage history. Or to at least give the perception that one is taking history seriously.     

Black Poetry and the History Section: a partial list

Here's a partial list (far from exhaustive) of several volumes published after 2000 concentrating on aspects of history. There was ongoing conversation at the NEH-Institute Black Poetry after the Black Arts Movement about poets focusing on history, and this list sheds a little light on that interest. In fact, these volumes could comfortably fit in the "history sections" at bookstores.

2000: Domestic Work by Natasha Trethewey
2001: Antebellum Dream Book by Elizabeth Alexander
2001: Carver by Marilyn Nelson
2001: To Repel Ghosts: Five Shades in B Minor by Kevin Young 
2002: Bellocq's Ophelia by Natasha Trethewey
2004: M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A by A. Van Jordan
2004: They Shall Run by Quraysh A. Lansana
2004: Lot's Daughters by Opal Moore
2004: Fortune’s Bones: The Manumission Requiem by Marilyn Nelson
2004:  Buffalo Dance by Frank X. Walker
2005: Leadbelly by Tyehimba Jess
2005: A Wreath for Emmett Till by Marilyn Nelson
2006: Blue-Tail Fly by Vievee Francis
2006: Red Summer by Amaud Jamaul Johnson
2006: Slave Moth by Thylias Moss
2007: Miss Crandall's School for Young Ladies & Little Misses of Color by Marilyn Nelson and Elizabeth Alexander
2008: Honoring the Ancestors by James E. Cherry
2008: When Winter Come by Frank X. Walker
2009: Sonata Mulattica by Rita Dove
2009: Cooling Board: A Long Playing Poem by Mitchell L. H. Douglas
2010: Suck on the Marrow by Camille Dungy
2010: Issac Murphy: I Dedicate This Ride Frank X. Walker
2011: Negro League Baseball by Harmony Holiday
2011: Ardency: A Chronicle of the Amistad Rebels by Kevin Young
2012: Coffle by Reginald Flood
2012: me and Nina by Monica Hand
2013: The Big Smoke  by Adrian Matejka
2013: Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers by Frank X. Walker
2013: The Cineaste: Poems by A. Van Jordan  
2014: How I Discovered Poetry by Marilyn Nelson
***********

Again, that list is only partial, and includes books that largely showcase historical accounts. There are several other works that include sections or several poems "about history" such as Rita Dove's American Smooth (2004), Patricia Smith's Blood Dazzler (2008), Evie Shockley's the new black (2011), and Celeste Doaks's Cornrows and Cornfields (2015) to name just a few.

Related:
• A Notebook on Black Poetry After the Black Arts Movement

A Notebook on Black Poetry After the Black Arts Movement

Institute director, Maryemma Graham reads Tyehimba Jess's Leadbelly

The NEH-funded Institute, Black Poetry After the Black Arts Movement "responds to the resurgence of interest in contemporary poetry, its expanded production and wide circulation." During the institute:

Special attention will be paid to the divergent and yet cross-fertilizing trajectories of black poetry since the 1980s, which has produced both the sharp and vocal critiques of spoken word poetry and the refined academic poetry that garners so much critical attention from the literary establishment.

The Institute director is Maryemma Graham, and the scholar and poet Evie Shockley and I served as lead resident faculty members for the Institute. I covered week 1, and Shockley is covering week 2. Presenters for the Institute include Tyehimba Jess, Brenda Marie Osbey, James Smethurst, Kathy Lou Schultz, William J. Harris, Harryette Mullen, Joanne Gabbin, Meta DuEwa Jones, Jerry W. Ward, Frank X. Walker, and Kevin Young.

Most notably, the Institute brought together an eclectic group of scholars, artists, and cultural workers to read, study, listen to, and talk about black poetry and consider ways to advance the field and their pedagogical interests. Now that my officials duties for week 1 are complete, I'll try to provide a few write-ups and reflections on  my involvement with the project.

Entries
• A convergence of scholars, artists, and scholar-artists
• Black Poetry and the History Section: a partial list
• The Race for History Among Contemporary Black Poets, Pt.1
• The Race for History Among Contemporary Black Poets, Pt. 2
• Kent Foreman, Tyehimba Jess, and the histories of spoken poetry
• A poetry room of their own 
• Paratexts and the Race for History Among Contemporary Black Poets
• Black Poetry after BAM (NEH Institute)

Yao Glover on Bookstores and Such, Pt. 1

A few selections from my personal collection 

I owe a tremendous debt to bookstores like the Strand as well as to a range of black bookstores I visited over the years. I'm also indebted to black folks who collected books and shared their personal collections with me like my good friend Donald Garcia.

At some point, moving forward, I'm trying to reflect on some my experiences engaging bookstores and also folks' personal collections that I checked out. Looking back might help me come to a clearer understanding of the routes of some my current activities such as hosting book sales on campus and developing my own expansive collection. I'm also wondering how changing times and economics shaped the struggles that black bookstores faced, leading many to close.

Having said that, I've been distracted the last few days with this piece "Karibu Story Part 1: Exhausting a Means of Struggle" by poet and teacher Yao Glover,  the former owner of Karibu Books. It's a really useful article from a cultural worker who has a key grasp on the industry of bookselling, particularly black bookselling. Typically, you hear nostalgic takes when folks are talking about their relationships to black books. Bro. Yao ain't on that though.

Reflections on an Illegible book proposal

Some years ago, I spoke with an acquisition editor at a university press about a book proposal I was developing. I wanted to cover four emergent black writers in different genres. Colson Whitehead, a novelist. Aaron McGruder, a cartoonist. Kevin Young, a poet. Ta-Nehisi Coates a blogger.

At first, the editor really liked the idea. She thought it was a good and timely topic. But she had two main concerns. For one, she wasn't sure readers would be interested in my chapter on a poet. Second, "who is Ta-Na...? What did you say her name was? I don't think people will know of her work. Try to find someone more well known." This was 4 or 5 years ago, you know, before Coates was so popular. 

"It's Tah-Nah-Hah-See. Yeah, he's a him, not a her," I said.

"Ohhh, he's a male? Well, let me offer you some professional advice. You won't get a book published that focuses on just black men. Look around. It's mostly black women here," she said. The "here" was the Modern Language Association (MLA) Conference where we were at the time. Actually, by my standard, there weren't many of any kind of black people at (MLA), but I understood her point.

"Ok," I said.

Returning to Mark Anthony Neal's Looking for Leroy

Two summers ago, I read and wrote about Mark Anthony Neal's thoughtful Looking for Leroy: Illegible Black Masculinities (2013), a book that focuses on, among other things, how we read and misread black men. Neal uses the notion of legibility as a frame for thinking about a range of black men, including Gene Anthony Ray (Leroy from the show Fame), Avery Brooks, Luther Vandross, Stringer Bell from The Wire, Jay Z, and others.

I've had many reasons to return to Neal's book since 2013. Among other things, wasn't illegibility a central feature of the mindsets of the police officers involved in killing black men and black boys like Eric Garner and Michael Brown by police? What did we read and fail to read with "America's favorite dad" Bill Cosby over the years, the decades?

Blog entries about black women poets

2019
June
• June 29: 150 volumes of poetry by black women poets, 2000 - 2019

April
• April 1: Allison Joseph's 19 books and 508 poems
• April 1: Notes on Allison Joseph book collection

March
• March 20: "Oldest of the young poets": On Jericho Brown, Elizabeth Alexander, and crucial connectors

February
• February 19: Allison Joseph and Black Book History
• February 17: Ai and Black Book History
• February 16: Lucille Clifton and Black Book History
• February 9: Nikki Giovanni and Black Book History
• February 9: A Notebook on Nikki Giovanni
• February 5: Elizabeth Alexander and Black Book History

2018
December
• December 13: Tiana Clark and poetic lineages
• December 11: Eve L. Ewing, poetry, comic books, and infinite possibility
• December 2: Riri Williams, Ironheart, Eve Ewing, and Maya Angelou

November
• November 7: Black girls and women count

October
• October 26: A notebook on Tiana Clark
• October 26: Photo-review of Tiana Clark reading at SIUE bookstore
• October 26: Tiana Clark takes flight
• October 26: Tiana Clark reads her poem from Poetry
• October 26: Tiana Clark offers a prompt for rethinking Amiri Baraka's Dutchman

September 
• September 2: Why spoken word poetry appears infrequently in literature courses

August
• August 3: 53 black women poets, 106 poems: Audio recordings
• August 1: Poetry, high school students, and Nikki Giovanni's Power Pose

June
• June 28: An Index for Eve L. Ewing's Electric Arches
• June 4: Eve L. Ewing, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Black Studies, and creativity

May
• May 30: A notebook on the sound of black women poets
• May 23: The popular appeal of black women poets reciting their works
• May 18: Listening to 100 black women poets reading 200 poems
• May 18: 30 black women poets reading their works

April
• April 29: Tracy K. Smith and Kevin Young in the New York Times
• April 28: Dynamic black women speakers vs. flat sounding poets
• April 27: Why some black poetry sounds boring to black students (abstract)
• April 26: Understanding the favorite poets of black women students
• April 19: Notes on "Beyond Poet Voice"
• April 16: Duos of poets -- Evie Shockley & Patricia Smith, Tracy K. Smith & Kevin Young -- in the news

2017
October
• October 18: Cindy Reed, black girls, and poetry
• October 9: Taking a look at Evie Shockley's books

August
• August 30: Danielle Hall: when the poet, dancer, and historian are one
• August 18: Evie Shockley, Amiri Baraka, and consequential questions in African American artistic thought

May
• May 4: Reading & re-reading Allison Joseph's poetry in 2017

March
• March 16: Tracie Morris's extraordinary poetry reading pace
• March 7: Evie Shockley gives reading in St. Louis

February
• February 23: Cross gender play in black persona poetry
• February 17: Elizabeth Alexander, the history, and the rise of African American poetry

January
• January 28: Blogging about Elizabeth Alexander, Allison Joseph, Marilyn Nelson, Evie Shockley & Patricia Smith
• January 25: The poetics and politics of protest signs
• January 12: Locating Patricia Smith in histories of contemporary poetry

2016
December
• December 30: Teaching an Af-Am lit. course with audio recordings of black women reading poetry as the basis

August
• August 30: How do we get from Gwendolyn Brooks to Mahogany L. Browne?
• August 22: An African American literature course: Recordings of black women reading poetry   
• August 11: Meta DuEwa Jones and the mix of black poetry scholarly work 
• August 11: Meta DuEwa Jones & Evie Shockley as guides  

July
• July 13: List of audio recordings by black women poets and lyricists

June
• June 30: Situating the bold & bodacious poetic voice of Mahogany L. Browne
• June 27: Can the sounds of black women's poetic voices get a witness?

May
• May 2: Margaret Walker almost won the Pulitzer in 1943 
• May 2: Margaret Walker and exclamation points in African American poetry

April
• April 11: Poets as Researchers: Tyehimba Jess and Robin Coste Lewis  

March
• March 28: Toward Histories of Contemporary Black Women's Poetry
 • March 11: A Notebook on Robin Coste Lewis
• March 4: Poets as Catalogers: The Cases of Robin Coste Lewis, Kevin Young, and Amiri Baraka

February
• February 27: A Notebook on Marilyn Nelson 
• February 27: Notebook on Gwendolyn Brooks   
• February 26: Poetry magazine published two of the most anthologized poems
• February 25: Two of the most popular non-anthologized poems
• February 24: Adding poems by Frances E. W. Harper & George Moses Horton

January
• January 31: Elizabeth Alexander's Venus Hottentot & John Keene's Miss La La 

2015
December
• December 26: Reading Celeste Doaks in 2015   
• December 26: Talking poetry with Tony Bolden, Yao Glover & William J. Harris in 2015 
• December 26: A Notebook on 2015 Poetry Reflections 
• December 26: The year in African American poetry, 2015
• December 24: Blogging about Elizabeth Alexander, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, and Robin Coste Lewis in 2015
• December 23: Reading Kevin Young in 2015 
• December 23: Notes on compiling an expansive list of award-winning poets 
• December 22: A list of award-winning African American poets, 1975 - 2015 
• December 18: A checklist of poems featuring ex-slaves
• December 17: Reginald Flood channels Harriet Jacobs and Mary Prince
• December 14: Black men, poetry, awards & fellowships, 1975-2015 
• December 12: Black Women, Poetry, Awards & Fellowships, 1975-2015 
• December 9: Reginald Flood's Frederick Douglass Poetic Contributions  
• December 2: African American poets and the Cave Canem Poetry Prize
• December 1: African American poets and the Whiting Writers' Award
• December 1: Blogging about Poetry in November 2015

November
• November 21: Robin Coste Lewis, Black poets & the National Book Award
• November 15: Cindy Lyles gives opening reading at the EBR Learning Center 
• November 9: Black Female Figures & Poetry Book Covers
• November 8: 10 years reading Leadbelly, Pt. 6: Jess, Shockley, and Lewis

October
• October 31: Treasure Shields Redmond's chop: 7 notations
• October 31: What it's like to read Treasure Redmond's chop
• October 31: Locating Treasure Shields Redmond among black women poets 
• October 31: Treasure Redmond, C. Liegh McInnis, Jolivette Anderson & useful poetic templates
• October 31: Treasure Shields Redmond's chop and Facebook
• October 31: 30 Volumes of poetry between Treasure Redmond's poems and book
• October 31: Treasure Redmond's and Tara Betts's chapbooks
• October 31: Treasure Redmond: Embracing and Advancing a Form
• October 31: Remixing Kelly Norman Ellis's "Raised by Women"
• October 14: Remixing Allison Joseph's "Thirty Lines" Poem at the East St. Louis Charter High School  

September
• September 10: A notebook on Tara Betts
• September 10: The serendipity of poetry releases by Tara Betts & Treasure Redmond
• September 7: Searching for Sarah Webster Fabio in Negro Digest and Black World

August
• August 26: Bad, Phenomenal Women and Black Poetry
• August 12: Cultural Nationalism and Black Women's Poetry
• August 11: Women's Work and Black Poetry
• August 4: The Visual Artist as Poet: The Case of Rachel Eliza Griffiths
• August 4: Rachel Eliza Griffiths's surrealist moments
• August 4: A connection between Lighting the Shadow and Mule & Pear 
• August 3: Rachel Eliza Griffiths's dedications to women

July
• July 12: The Worlds of Elizabeth Alexander  
• July 6: Cultural Signifiers in Cornrows and Cornfields
• July 3: Celeste Doaks's Father-Daughter poems
• July 1: The value of 'Cornrows and Cornfields'

March
• March 13: Claudia Rankine's Citizen becomes a "first"

January 
• January 17: Elizabeth Alexander as a crucial connector
• January 3: Danielle Hall, Margaret Walker, and #BlackPoetsSpeakOut

2014
December
• December 31: Blogging about Ai, Nikky Finney, Allison Joseph, Marilyn Nelson & Gwendolyn Brooks in 2014
• December 11: Acknowledging the tremendous loss of Amiri Baraka and Maya Angelou in 2014
• December 10: Amiri Baraka, Rachel Eliza Griffiths & #BlackPoetsSpeakOut
• December 10: From Jonterri Gadson to Audre Lorde to Cheryl Clarke and back again

• December 7: Evie Shockley, Amanda Johnston & #BlackPoetsSpeakOut
• December 5: Maya Angelou, Kelly Norman Ellis, poetry & collegiate black women
• December 3: A Notebook on Lucille Clifton
• December 3: Lucille Clifton and #BlackPoetsSpeakOut

September
• September  25: Gwendolyn Brooks, "We Real Cool" & Poetry Magazine (1959)

August
• August 4: The Connectivity of Allison Joseph's My Father's Kites

Graywolf Press and African American Poetry

A selection of books published by Graywolf Press

Next week at an institute on African American poetry at the University of Kansas, I'm sure I'll mention Graywolf Press, which has facilitated the publication of a number of prominent poets over the last decade or so in particular. Here's a look at some of their authors and books:

2000: Natasha Trethewey's Domestic Work 
2000: Carl Phillips's Pastoral
2001: Elizabeth Alexander's Antebellum Dream Book
2002: Natasha Trethewey's Bellocq's Ophelia
2002: Carl Phillips's From the Devotion
2002: Carl Phillips's Cortege
2003: Tracy K. Smith's The Body's Question 
2004: Carl Phillips's Coin of the Realm: Essays on the Art and Life of Poetry
2004: Claudia Rankine's Don't Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric
2004: Elizabeth Alexander's The Venus Hottentot (reprint)
2005: Elizabeth Alexander's American Sublime
2005: Thoma Sayers Ellis's The Maverick Room 
2006: Harryette Mullen's Recyclopedia: Trimmings, S*PeRM**K*T, and Muse and Drudge 
2006: Constance Quarterman Bridges's Lions Don't Eat Us
2009: Elizabeth Alexander's Praise Song for the Day
2010: Elizabeth Alexander's Crave Radiance: New and Selected Poems (hardcover)
2010: Thomas Sayers Ellis's Skin Inc.: Identity Repair Poems (hardcover)
2010: Gary Jackson's Missing You, Metropolis
2011: Tracy K. Smith's Life on Mars
2012: Kevin Young's The Grey Album
2012: Elizabeth Alexander's Crave Radiance: New and Selected Poems (paperback)
2013: Thomas Sayers Ellis's Skin Inc.: Identity Repair Poems (paperback)
2013: Harryette Mullen's Urban Tumbleweed: Notes from a Tanka Diary
2013: Dexter L. Booth's Scratching the Ghost
2014: Claudia Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric
2015: Christopher Gilbert's Turning into Dwelling
2016: Donika Kelly's Bestiary

And those are only some of the books. There are more as well as additional African American writers published by the press.

In discussions of poetry, people usually concentrate on poets and their poems. That's necessary and makes sense. However, I want to also push for conversations about publishers. When it comes to contemporary African American poetry, W.W. Norton and Company, Knopf, and Graywolf have been key players. Unlike those other two companies, Graywolf is not based in New York City nor is it for profit. 

Still, the press has managed to attract talented, accomplished poets.  Graywolf has also done a good job making sure volumes by those poets have gotten broad attention. The poets, in turn, have helped add value to the imprint. The successes of writers have no doubt made Graywolf Press more widely known and respected among African American poets who are apt to view the publisher as a advantageous platform.

Related:
• Black Poetry published by Graywolf Press
• Black Poetry published by W. W. Norton and Co.

A Baraka book Sighting at the Strand

Last month while in New York, I took a group of students to the Strand Bookstore. While walking around and photographing the students perusing books, I was pleased to come across a display featuring the late Amiri Baraka's book S O S: Poems 1961-2013. I've looked for Baraka's work for years in various bookstores, and I can't recall ever seeing a display of any of his books.

Now that I think about it, I've rarely seen book displays of any of the many African American poets that I follow. So I was pleased to make this Baraka sighting at the Strand, and it was good I had my camera handy to snap a photograph.

During my time in New York, I met with my former grad school professor and longtime poetry and cultural guide William J. Harris, who is also a Baraka scholar. It was Professor Harris, in fact, who really led me into and through the many worlds of Baraka. At dinner, Professor Harris gifted me Amiri Baraka and Edward Dorn: The Collected Letters (2013).

Notes on coverage of Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me

“Our grievance then is not that we are not painted as angels of light or as goody-goody Sunday-school developments; but we do claim that a man whose acquaintanceship is so slight that he cannot even discern diversities of individuality, has no right or authority to hawk ‘the only true and authentic’ pictures of a race of human beings.” Anna Julia Cooper, A Voice From the South (1892)

Some of the same commentators who praise Ta-Nehisi Coates's work for addressing racism ultimately and likely unknowingly contribute to a traditional practice in the histories of white supremacy whereby one black person is elevated above the all others. Early on, when you'd hear the old-timers bemoan this "one-at-a-time" approach, you assumed they were overreacting. Now you know better. 

It is less important that Coates is "the single best writer on the subject of race in the United States," as one white commentator noted and others have regularly repeated, and instead, it matters more that he is actively corresponding to rich creative and critical domains produced by generations of black writers well over more than 150 years. Sure, Coates is one of my favorite writers, but why stretch and say he's the "single best writer" given the wide range of writings on race and racism and black people?  What gives people "whose acquaintanceship is so slight" with African Americans and black writing the authority to state who is "the single best" and what is "essential"? 

The Worlds of Elizabeth Alexander

This summer, I'll work at an institute on African American poetry, so of course, I've been re-reading Elizabeth Alexander's work. She's a foundational and gateway poet for me, or as I've said, she's a crucial connector. Her works really are touchstones for all kinds of topics that appear throughout African American poetry.

Although I own several of her books -- pictured above -- I'm still missing a few of her books. That's a problem I'll correct over the next month or so.

Alexander reminds me of some of my favorite black arts era writers in the sense that she produces works across genres, especially poetry and essays. She's also an editor, and her home department for the last 15 years has been in African American Studies, not creative writing. 

The mix of her varied interests and travels fuse into her poetry, or her poetry fuses into her mix of interests. And so what we end up with while reading are these worlds of Elizabeth Alexander.

Related:
• Elizabeth Alexander 

Pre-publication activities: Colson Whitehead and Ta-Nehisi Coates

Advance Readers' Editions of Colson Whitehead's Zone One and Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me

The pre-publication activities of publishers tells you a lot about how much they value their authors.

While there is an extensive conversation among scholars of African American literature concerning writers who are overlooked and "forgotten" and thus presumably in need of rediscovery or recovery, we might also turn our attention to the efforts of publishers who encourage you to consider authors' works long before they are published.

In 2011, I noticed that Colson Whitehead's publisher Doubleday, a division of Random House, invested considerable resources in pre-publication activities for the upcoming publication of Zone One. Months before the scheduled October publication of Whitehead's novel, Doubleday circulated dozens, if not hundreds, of advanced reader copies of the book to a wide range of readers (journalists, bloggers, general fiction enthusiasts). The goal was to build considerable buzz for the book prior to its publication.

A similar path was taken with Coates's book. His publisher Spiegel & Grau, also a division of Random House, circulated large numbers of free, advance copies of Between the World and Me, which was initially scheduled for publication in October and then September. The publication date for the book was eventually moved up to July 14.

A Selection of books

 
A few weeks ago, I purchased a few different books that I've read or that I'm planning to read soon. I got the set of books as a birthday gift for my good friend Donald Garcia.

Those books, pictured above, include:

Marcus Rediker's Slave Ship
Ta-Nehisi Coates's The Beautiful Struggle
Sarah Lewis's The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery
Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration 
Manning Marable's Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention 
Jacob Lawrence the Migration Series -- a catalog complementing the exhibit One-Way Ticket

Mr. Garcia and I have been talking books for years, and more importantly, he has a really outstanding collection. Thus, I had to choose carefully to make sure I had books that I thought he didn't have already. Of course, I knew he would've had the Marable book; however, he and I both believe in having multiple copies of some books.

Related:
• Donald Garcia's marvelous collection 
• Summer Reading 

Black Poetry: A Timeline, 1854 - 2015

A partial timeline on the histories of black poetry:

1854: Frances Ellen Watkins Harper's volume of poetry Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects is published. 
1864: Frances E. W. Harper's poem "Bury Me in a Free Land" is published in Liberator, January 14.
1893: Paul Laurence Dunbar's first collection of poems Oak and Ivy is published.
1895: Alice Moore's Violets and other tales is published.
1896: Dunbar's Lyrics of Lowly Life is published.
1900: "Lift Every Voice and Sing," written by James Weldon Johnson, is performed for Booker T. Washington.
1905: John Johnson, brother of James Weldon Johnson, sets "Lift Every Voice and Sing" to music.
1913: Fenton Johnson's first volume A Little Dreaming is published.
1918: Georgia Douglas Johnson's The Heart of a Woman is published. "The Heart of a Woman."
1919: The NAACP adopts "Lift Every Voice and Sing" as "The Negro National Anthem."
1919: Claude McKay's "If We Must Die" is published in the July issue of Liberator. 
1921: Langston Hughes's "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" is published in the June issue of The Crisis magazine.
1922: The Book of American Negro Poetry, edited by James Weldon Johnson, is published.
1923: Jean Toomer's Cane is published.
1925: The New Negro, edited by Alain Locke, is published.
1925: Countee Cullen's first volume Color is published.
1926: Langston Hughes's first volume The Weary Blues is published by Knopf.
1926: Langston Hughes's "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" appears in the June issue of The Nation. 
1932: Sterling A. Brown's Southern Road is published.
1937: Margaret Walker's "For My People" is published in the November 1937 issue of Poetry magazine.
1942:Margaret Walker's For My People,  recipient of the Yale Series of Younger Poets award, is published.

The EBR Digital Collections & new directions in recovery work

Scholars of African American literature spend considerable time focusing on "recovery work" or on ways to promote writers who have been largely overlooked. We make conference presentations, publish articles, and occasionally produce full-length books in order to bring attention to neglected figures. Yet, since a tremendous amount of time and resources are required to make an author "major" and "well-known," our efforts usually have limited success.

What if we re-thought some of our approaches?

The digital exhibits and collections that Lovejoy Library has produced related to the Eugene B. Redmond (EBR) Collection offer some useful possibilities. Taken together, the series of easily accessible and searchable materials based on Redmond's photographs, editorial work, and chronicling activities are an important breakthrough on the preservation and presentation of a writer's literary and extra-literary productions. 

Cultural Signifiers in Cornrows and Cornfields

African American cultural signifiers constitute distinguishing features of black artistic expression. Cultural signifiers are those people, places, activities, and things that writers and other artists present that link or refer to a broader system or discourse community. The uses of multiple cultural signifiers  assist in making a work recognizably African American.

Part of the resonance of Celeste Doaks's  volume Cornrows and Cornfields relates to her use of a wide range of African American cultural signifiers throughout the volume. What follows is an alphabetized list of just 30 signifiers with page numbers from her book.

• A Love Supreme (53)
•A.M.E. Church (34)
• Bronzeville (22)
• Cornrows (cover, 15)
• Diana (68) 
• Don Cornelius (22-23)

Celeste Doaks's Father-Daughter poems

In Cornrows and Cornfields, Celeste Doaks contributes to a long-running and important creative domain by producing a series of poems about the loving and sometimes tense relationship between a black father and daughter. Doaks's poems remind us why such relationships are so vital.

[Related: The value of 'Cornrows and Cornfields']

Taken together, Doaks's series of father-daughter poems offer a variety of perspectives. In "Boy First, A Doaks Girl, or Daddy Say," Doaks takes on the first-person persona of father who must now deal with having a daughter instead of a son: "Now my mind was all set on Eric or Anthony or Raymond / and I get a girl. I mean, how many basketball games can you play with a girl?" And later, he acknowledges that his child "got my blood in her but hopefully she don't turn out to be a smoker like me. Or a drinker."

In additional poems, Doaks provides childhood reflections on sharing moments with her dad. In "Father-Daughter Time," she describes the regular practice of helping her father wash his car. The seemingly minor details of cleaning the car "got special attention, / the way I wished my announcements of another 'A' would elicit a grin. But instead this [washing the car] was our father-daughter time."

Summer Reading

This fall, we'll continue our bi-annual reading groups with SIUE students. We'll have about 125 participants, and I'll coordinate three different groups. 

Last month, I read an advance reader edition of Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me, and over the coming weeks, my graduate student Jeremiah Carter and I will reading Shifting: The Double Lives of Black Women in America (2003) Charisse Jones and Kumea Shorter-Gooden and The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery (2014) by Sarah Lewis.

My colleagues Joycelyn Moody, from University of Texas at San Antonio, and Elizabeth Cali, from SIUE, suggested Shifting and The Rise, respectively, when I circulated a call asking for book recommendations.

I'm looking forward to working with Jeremiah to think through questions and small exhibits based on the books, which we'll in turn explore with students in the fall.

Related:
• Reading Groups

A select chronology of the EBR Collection

1976: Eugene B. Redmond publishes Drumvoices: The Mission of Afro-American Poetry, A Critical History

1976: Redmond is named Poet Laureate of East St. Louis

1986: Redmond co-founds EBR Writers Club and begins to dramatically increase photographic chronicling.

1990: Redmond begins as professor at SIUE.

1991: Redmond edits/publishes magazine Literati Internationale.

1992: Redmond edits/publishes first issue of Drumvoices Revue.

2003: Eugene B. Redmond and I begin organizing select photographs for exhibit.

2003: I suggest to that we begin referring to his materials as the "EBR Collection."

EBR Digital Exhibits & Collections

Here's a look at the digital exhibits and collections hosted by Lovejoy Library concerning the Eugene B. Redmond (EBR) Collection.

Drumvoices Revue -- The digital collection contains the complete run (16 volumes) of Redmond's cultural arts magazine.

EBR African American Cultural Life -- This searchable digital collection contains photographs, posters, and pamphlets selected from the EBR Collection.

The Eugene B. Redmond Interviews -- A series of extended video interviews, including interview transcriptions, with Redmond concerning his experiences as a scholar, writer, teacher, and cultural organizer.

Path to "Visible Glory": The Million Man March in the Redmond Collection -- This exhibit showcases materials from Redmond's chronicle of the October 1995, Million Man March as well as documentation on the production of Visible Glory: The Million Man March, a special issue of Drumvoices organized by Redmond, Sherman Fowler, and Marcus Atkins.

Related:
• A Notebook on Lovejoy Library's EBR Digital Collection
• Eugene B. Redmond

Select list of debut collections by African American poets, 2000 - 2015

While reading Celeste Doaks's debut poetry collection over the last couple of days, I thought about and looked through my collection of first volumes by poets. I decided to organize a list, showing just one debut for each year between 2000 - 2015.

2000: Domestic Work by Natasha Trethewey
2001: Rise by A. Van Jordan
2002: Black Swan Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon
2003: The Body's Question by Tracy K. Smith
2004: Armor and Flesh by Mendi Lewis Obadike
2005: Leadbelly by Tyehimba Jess
2006: Blue-Tail Fly by Vievee Francis
2007: TBA
2008: Please by Jericho Brown 
2009: Arc & Hue by Tara Betts
2010: Shahid Reads His Own Palm by Reginald Betts
2011: Negro League Baseball by Harmony Holiday
2012: me and Nina by Monica Hand
2013: Moon, Kamilah Aisha. She Has a Name
2014: Prelude to Bruise by Saeed Jones
2015: Cornrows and Cornfields by Celeste Doaks

 *******
Note: I don't think I have a "debut" collection from a poet from 2007.

Related:
• The value of 'Cornrows and Cornfields' by Celeste Doaks
• Celeste Doaks's Father-Daughter poems
• Cultural Signifiers in Cornrows and Cornfields  

The value of 'Cornrows and Cornfields' by Celeste Doaks

Many, not all, but many of the volumes of poetry I've enjoyed over the last several years have featured memorable main "characters." Such is the case with Celeste Doaks's Cornrows and Cornfields (2015), a collection of poems powered by the experiences of a black girl. Given my own studies of "bad men" in poetry as well as the prevalence of poetry about a range of historical subjects and figures, this debut volume by Doaks constitutes an important intervention and continuation.

Cornrows and Cornfields is, among other things, a poetic repository of ideas, amusements, frustrations, interests, and cultural figures represented by a poet recalling aspects of her childhood. The poems showcase a black girl navigating her environment and cataloging useful lessons.     

In the opening poem, "Cornrows," the poet remembers longing for "Black Barbies and Strawberry Shortcake dolls at Christmas." In another poem, she recalls her mother speaking up for her child, telling the teacher "But she's not stupid." In yet another poem, she pays tribute to Don Cornelius of Soul Train, and in one poem, she reflects on the moment she was prompted, by a teacher, to read one of her stories in front of her 6th grade classmates.

There are individual poems from the perspective of a mother and then a father reflecting on the marvel of a newborn black girl. The persona of the father stands out because he apparently wanted a boy, and is thus inclined to express his anxieties about raising a girl. The poem foreshadows the ongoing, sometimes tense relationship between father and daughter chronicled throughout the volume.

 Cornrows and Cornfields is a solid book. I'm thankful to now have it added it to my larger collection, and more important, I'm glad to integrate these poems by Celeste Doaks into my mental catalog of poetry. This debut volume is valuable for what it tells us about black girls, a poet remembering her childhood, the relationship between a father and daughter, African American cultural experiences, and more.

Related:
• Celeste Doaks's Father-Daughter poems
• Select list of debut collections by African American poets, 2000 - 2015
• Cultural Signifiers in Cornrows and Cornfields    

Blogging about Poetry in June 2015

[Related content: Blogging about Poetry]

• June 30: Developing the EBR African American Cultural Life
• June 30: The Eugene B. Redmond Interviews as a Blueprint
• June 30: Eugene B. Redmond, Mary Z. Rose, and the Million Man March
• June 30: A Notebook on Lovejoy Library's EBR Digital Collection
• June 29: Black poetry in a time of mass murder
• June  18: A Photographic Catalog of Poetry Books 
• June 12: Hip Hop Books as Shields
• June 10: Poetry, Data, and Blogging
• June 5: Allison Funk & Wonder Rooms
• June 1: Blogging about Poetry in May 2015