Here are some questions to get you guys thinking for tomorrow...
Discussion Questions
1. The poetry we have read for the last few classes has become more creative, dramatic and jolting in its composition. World play gives the poems a list-like feel, but also conveys a different emotion and rhythm in their reading, that I’m not sure I know how to place or completely understand, but that I do think asks to read differently. What do you interpret from this style choice? Why do you think they wrote this way? Does it change or contribute to what they are saying?
2. In comparing and contrasting “Jail Poems” by Bob Kaufman and “A Journey to Auburn by Ken McClane, what commonalities to you see in the presentation of jail life? How do the continued references to jail reflect the feelings of African Americans about their place in society? What might jail imagery represent about non-literal jail experiences?
3. Both Kaufman and Major use a lot of imagery in their poems. “On watching a caterpillar become a butterfly” and “Would you wear my eyes” are two examples of poems with differing levels of reality, but poignant and strong images. How does the use of the imagery contribute to the poem and affect the reader? Why do you think they might have chosen these images or metaphors? Can you think of other examples?
4. There seem to be some common images in the poems we have recently read. Do you think there is any significance to the similar subjects in “The Glowworm” by Ken McClane and “On watching a caterpillar become a butterfly” by Major? What other pairings can you make? Or, what similar topics or subjects reoccur in these poems that we have seen before: for example “Bird with painted wings” by Kaufman and “Sympathy” by Paul Laurence Dunbar.
5. “Would you wear my eyes” seems to ask the reader to put themselves in the shoes of the speaker in the poem. What types of commentary do we get about what life is like for African Americans during this time? Does it differ from the images we saw around emancipation, or the Harlem Renaissance? If so, how?
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
What We Don't Know
When reading the articles for class today, the only thought that came to my mind is: “Why don’t we already know this?”
June Jordan pointed out that “California will spend 2.5 times more money on prisons than it will spend on education” (106). This fact makes we wonder why. Shouldn’t education be the priority of our country? How can we evolve without it? Why isn’t it public knowledge that there are more African American men in prison than college? Why didn’t I know before today that in 1997, “39.9 percent of black children [are] living in poverty and in 1993 the net worth of African-Americans averages $4,418 compared to $45,740 for whites”?
According to Mishra, Arnold, Oteino Cross, and Hong’s article (written in 2007), 1/8 children in sub-Saharan Africa are orphans. These children are also at a much higher risk of having HIV. A guest lecturer came in on Monday, and I was surprised to find that although the medicine for a pregnant HIV positive woman to take to ensure her child not to have HIV, many people refuse to, or don’t have the funds take it. Shouldn’t some issues be global? I know that it costs money to make medicine, but shouldn’t every person, no matter where they live, or how much money they make have access survival?
I’m not saying that I know the answers, or believe in extreme solutions that only work on paper, but I do think that it is important that we know this, and I am upset that this is not common knowledge. If this was common knowledge, then people would be more willing (and able) to create solutions to the problems.
June Jordan pointed out that “California will spend 2.5 times more money on prisons than it will spend on education” (106). This fact makes we wonder why. Shouldn’t education be the priority of our country? How can we evolve without it? Why isn’t it public knowledge that there are more African American men in prison than college? Why didn’t I know before today that in 1997, “39.9 percent of black children [are] living in poverty and in 1993 the net worth of African-Americans averages $4,418 compared to $45,740 for whites”?
According to Mishra, Arnold, Oteino Cross, and Hong’s article (written in 2007), 1/8 children in sub-Saharan Africa are orphans. These children are also at a much higher risk of having HIV. A guest lecturer came in on Monday, and I was surprised to find that although the medicine for a pregnant HIV positive woman to take to ensure her child not to have HIV, many people refuse to, or don’t have the funds take it. Shouldn’t some issues be global? I know that it costs money to make medicine, but shouldn’t every person, no matter where they live, or how much money they make have access survival?
I’m not saying that I know the answers, or believe in extreme solutions that only work on paper, but I do think that it is important that we know this, and I am upset that this is not common knowledge. If this was common knowledge, then people would be more willing (and able) to create solutions to the problems.
Roses and Revolutions
Roses and Revolutions by Dudley Randall, spoke true to the time and place from which he hails. Dudley witnessed the race riots in Detroit, and his poem reflects the grievances of the time or that building up to it. He talks of the city as if it exists on the face as being just that, a city like every other, but he sees the dispair of the people living in the city and the injustices they deal with. I thought the line about the Negro man lying in the swamp with his face blown off, was a very strong line with gruesome imagery. He doesn’t just tell the reader the hardships that people deal with on a daily basis but instead the more brutal realities, of black people who step out of line and what (I assume, the police or white people will do to them). The line where he talks of being hunted down like a hair reminded me of the poems from the earlier poets before emancipation, when the poems talk about trying to run away from the slave owners who are trying to hunt them down and catch them. It is interesting that this theme of being hunted down continues on even into the 60’s, after so much time had passed since then. Then he talks of groping in darkness and feeling the pain of millions. This line speaks of how hard it is when, like I said so much time has passed and so little has changed. The riots that are talked about in New Thoughts of the Black Art Movement reflect the feelings in the poem. This shows that like the article said the poets and artists played a big role in speaking for the people and portraying the feelings of many as Randall says, I feel the pain of millions.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
literary aesthetics
Like I said in class, I’m intrigued by the notion of Black literature always having to play catch up, and how this notion ties into the “Black aesthetic.” I am caught between the necessity of creating a Black aesthetic by which to judge Black literature, and the implication of such a creation with respect to the division between _______. Without awareness of a Black aesthetic, essays about the brutality of slavery or Jim Crow would have little value outside of being intensely emotional historical accounts. Moreover, their stylistic departures from the [White] literary cannon would work against their value and acceptance. On the other hand, the availability of a Black aesthetic makes any literature to which it can be applied easy to dismiss as unworthy of the cannon by default. This is something I have a deep interest in, and honestly cannot come to a conclusion. I would love to discuss it in class, but I’m not sure if there will be time. Maybe we can get a little conversation going here? I also think about this in terms of a “Feminist aesthetic,” or even a “Female aesthetic.” As part of my honors thesis, I plan to write some fiction with a man as the narrator. When my advisor asked me why I didn’t decide to have a woman narrate, I realized that there has to be a reason for a woman to be the narrator; in other words, men are still the standard/model for a character. Is White still the standard of race for characters? Is White still the standard of race for authors? How is this tied to the necessity for a Black aesthetic? These aren’t rhetorical questions. I seriously want to know what everyone thinks.
Illustrative Essays
We talked briefly last class about how the subject matter for the poetry we are reading has shifted slightly, focusing more on black power and black beauty. In reading the poems for today, I would say that the style has also shifted again. The poetry has become more creative, dramatic and jolting in its composition. World play gives the poems a list-like feel, but also conveys a different emotion in their reading, that I’m not sure I place or completely understand, but that I do think asks to read differently. I wonder how everyone else will respond to this type of writing. What do you interpret from this style choice? Why do you think they wrote this way?
In reference to the essays by Ken McClane, I was struck by the final questions of “The School” in which he was unsure whether his education actually benefited him or not. I think the questions in both essays ask a lot about society, human nature, and present such vivid pictures of his experiences that they only help contribute to our understanding of what these experience would be like. I found both essays extremely helpful, as they are much easier for me to digest than poetry, but also because they illustrated some of the key topic areas of the poetry we are reading. It would be interesting to see if any of his experiences in school or jail would be different if they were today?
In reference to the essays by Ken McClane, I was struck by the final questions of “The School” in which he was unsure whether his education actually benefited him or not. I think the questions in both essays ask a lot about society, human nature, and present such vivid pictures of his experiences that they only help contribute to our understanding of what these experience would be like. I found both essays extremely helpful, as they are much easier for me to digest than poetry, but also because they illustrated some of the key topic areas of the poetry we are reading. It would be interesting to see if any of his experiences in school or jail would be different if they were today?
Questions for Wednesday
Sorry I didn't get these to you guys sooner. I will also print out copies so you don't need to.
1. In “Walls: A Journey to Auburn” and “The School,” Kenneth A. McClane compares both the Auburn prison and his experience at the Collegiate school to hell. What do you think of this comparison? Also, what do you make of McClane’s experience at Auburn? He describes his fear of the prison and its occupants, yet when he speaks with the men he realizes they are just like you and me.
2. In “The School,” McClane describes the Brearly dinner that he was ultimately dreading, but upon going had a good time. Afterwards, he feels that he would have probably had an even better time had he “not come in there wearing the wariness of color” (59). What do you think about McClane’s statement in relation to W.E.B DuBois’s theory of the double consciousness? Does this change your view about double consciousness and whether it is a gift or burden?
3. June Jordan speaks about the need for affirmative action in “An Angry Black Woman on the Subject of the Angry White Man”: “And neither the Emancipation Proclamation nor one constitutional amendment after another one nor one civil rights legislation after another could bring about a yielding of the followers of that gospel to the beauty of our human face. Justice don’t mean nothin’ to a hateful heart! And so we needed affirmative action” (101). What are your thoughts about Jordan’s statement? Do you agree?
4. Looking at Langston Hughes’s “A Negro Speaks of Rivers,” what are your thoughts on McClane’s “To Hear the River”? How are they similar and different? Do the poems share the same metaphorical use of the river?
5. Compare and contrast Jordan’s “I Must Become A Menace To my Enemies” and Brown’s “Transfer.” What themes do these poems share? Looking at the two poems, it is obvious that much has happened historically between the times the two poems were published? What does this say about the progress of African Americans?
1. In “Walls: A Journey to Auburn” and “The School,” Kenneth A. McClane compares both the Auburn prison and his experience at the Collegiate school to hell. What do you think of this comparison? Also, what do you make of McClane’s experience at Auburn? He describes his fear of the prison and its occupants, yet when he speaks with the men he realizes they are just like you and me.
2. In “The School,” McClane describes the Brearly dinner that he was ultimately dreading, but upon going had a good time. Afterwards, he feels that he would have probably had an even better time had he “not come in there wearing the wariness of color” (59). What do you think about McClane’s statement in relation to W.E.B DuBois’s theory of the double consciousness? Does this change your view about double consciousness and whether it is a gift or burden?
3. June Jordan speaks about the need for affirmative action in “An Angry Black Woman on the Subject of the Angry White Man”: “And neither the Emancipation Proclamation nor one constitutional amendment after another one nor one civil rights legislation after another could bring about a yielding of the followers of that gospel to the beauty of our human face. Justice don’t mean nothin’ to a hateful heart! And so we needed affirmative action” (101). What are your thoughts about Jordan’s statement? Do you agree?
4. Looking at Langston Hughes’s “A Negro Speaks of Rivers,” what are your thoughts on McClane’s “To Hear the River”? How are they similar and different? Do the poems share the same metaphorical use of the river?
5. Compare and contrast Jordan’s “I Must Become A Menace To my Enemies” and Brown’s “Transfer.” What themes do these poems share? Looking at the two poems, it is obvious that much has happened historically between the times the two poems were published? What does this say about the progress of African Americans?
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Discussion Qs for Monday
I will bring copies of this to class, so no one needs to print their own.
1. What do you think of the assertion that Black literature served more to perpetuate the negative differences between Blacks and Whites than to earn Black writers respect within the literary cannon of the time? Is there a catch-22 happening, between Black attempts at literary respect, and the claim that such attempts only highlighted their “Blackness”? (Mitchell 167)
2. Based on the poems and essays we have read, do you agree that “Negro writing was always ‘after the fact’”? That Black writers were always stuck writing with the tools of their White peers? What is the evidence? And if your answer is yes, is there evidence that this lag was detrimental to progress of Black literature? (169)
3. Based on what we have read, do you agree that Black writers “contented themselves with the imitation of the useless ugly inelegance of the stunted middle class mind”? Evidence one way or another? What are the implications of a statement like this? (171)
4. What do you think the “Black aesthetic” is? Can we determine one from the poems we’re read, which span 200 years? Should we be looking for a common thread aside from the Black experience? Why or why not?
5. Unpack Shange’s “Elegance in the Extreme,” especially with respect to the concept of a Black aesthetic. Does the poem address this concept? Confront it? Endorse it? What about her other poems?
6. Examine Randall’s “Coral Atoll.” With the claim that Black literature is always “after the fact” in mind, what does this poem tell us about the progress of the Black Arts Movement? How does it relate to earlier Black poetry?
1. What do you think of the assertion that Black literature served more to perpetuate the negative differences between Blacks and Whites than to earn Black writers respect within the literary cannon of the time? Is there a catch-22 happening, between Black attempts at literary respect, and the claim that such attempts only highlighted their “Blackness”? (Mitchell 167)
2. Based on the poems and essays we have read, do you agree that “Negro writing was always ‘after the fact’”? That Black writers were always stuck writing with the tools of their White peers? What is the evidence? And if your answer is yes, is there evidence that this lag was detrimental to progress of Black literature? (169)
3. Based on what we have read, do you agree that Black writers “contented themselves with the imitation of the useless ugly inelegance of the stunted middle class mind”? Evidence one way or another? What are the implications of a statement like this? (171)
4. What do you think the “Black aesthetic” is? Can we determine one from the poems we’re read, which span 200 years? Should we be looking for a common thread aside from the Black experience? Why or why not?
5. Unpack Shange’s “Elegance in the Extreme,” especially with respect to the concept of a Black aesthetic. Does the poem address this concept? Confront it? Endorse it? What about her other poems?
6. Examine Randall’s “Coral Atoll.” With the claim that Black literature is always “after the fact” in mind, what does this poem tell us about the progress of the Black Arts Movement? How does it relate to earlier Black poetry?
Thursday, March 19, 2009
The Tuskegee Experiment & Dr. Mengele
Hi, folks. I just wanted to share information about a couple of topics that came up recently in class and whose details I wasn't able to supply:
The Tuskegee Experiment
Joseph Mengele's experiments on humans
A word about Wikipedia: I know I've used it quite a bit for sharing information here on the blog. I just want to make it clear that Wikipedia really isn't a trustworthy scholarly source--not one you should use for formal papers, for example. Why? Because anyone who wants to can edit it--that's the wiki format's great strength and also its great weakness.
In my experience, Wikipedia tends to be pretty good for finding out basic facts--but occasionally it's wrong. So in cases where the facts really matter, it's best to verify what you've found on Wikipedia using a vetted print source. I use Wikipedia a lot, though, simply because it's convenient (perhaps that's lazy of me?)--and also because I find that although it's not a good authority for the final word on things, it *is* a great starting point--particularly because the articles generally end with good bibliographies of more trustworthy sources. These bibliographies can be invaluable when you're doing research.
The Tuskegee Experiment
Joseph Mengele's experiments on humans
A word about Wikipedia: I know I've used it quite a bit for sharing information here on the blog. I just want to make it clear that Wikipedia really isn't a trustworthy scholarly source--not one you should use for formal papers, for example. Why? Because anyone who wants to can edit it--that's the wiki format's great strength and also its great weakness.
In my experience, Wikipedia tends to be pretty good for finding out basic facts--but occasionally it's wrong. So in cases where the facts really matter, it's best to verify what you've found on Wikipedia using a vetted print source. I use Wikipedia a lot, though, simply because it's convenient (perhaps that's lazy of me?)--and also because I find that although it's not a good authority for the final word on things, it *is* a great starting point--particularly because the articles generally end with good bibliographies of more trustworthy sources. These bibliographies can be invaluable when you're doing research.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Out of the poems we had to read for today, I really like Etheridge Knight's "Haiku," especially the lines "To write a blues song / is to regiment riots / and pluck gems from the grave." This goes back to the blues tradition and the fact that blues songs were about the hardships that people going through, essentially anything that got someone down. Obviously, thus, the genre is called blues. But really I just love the idea of using music as an outlet for emotions. Also, that music can be used to give a voice to problems that are going on that people wouldn't know about or choose to ignore. The line "is to regiment riots" made me think of this. Like making a purpose more clear to others. Or creating order out of chaos. This way the song is used as a healing process. This reminds me of of Harper's "Songs for the People." Creating music to heal the injustices of the world. The idea just seems so beautiful and lovely. Then this way individuals can "pluck gems from the grave." The idea of picking the good out of the bad. Turning what ultimately is a terrible experience and see some good out of it. I think its an important part of being able to move on or get through something. I think it shows how strong willed people can be and I find it rather amazing.
New Shift
It is interesting to note the clear shift in the poetry that we have read for this class. Not only have the form of the poems taken a leap towards informal and artistic, with Audre Lord's "Sahara" as just one example, but the content has also shifted. While there is certainly a strong similarity in the commentary on social injustices, stereotypes and hardships faced by African American people despite the passage of time, there is a new focus on life, blackness and internal pride. The commentary on time spent in jail and run-ins with racist law have come to the forefront. In addition, the questionings of identity continue to wage on as seen in "Hard Rock" and "the Idea of Ancestry."
The language, like the form, also moves closer to the colloquial or vernacular including slang and the use of the "n" word while the arrangement and diction still carry an air of art. This seems to support the reading by Collins and Crawford about the Black Power and Black is Beautiful movements.
On a specific note I was struck by Etheridge Knight's "Belly Song" becuase I found the metaphor of the internal river to be so powerful, and thought the ending left a strong feeling in the mind of the reader. Not only did it bring about a kind of kinship, or commonality in the struggle of living life and persevering together, but the poem itself served as a summary of the difficulties of life, the honor of those who have died and the commitment to each other to continue to fight together. I would be interested to know how this poem was intended and how it was recieved by its audience.
Just a few thoughts from me! Hope class goes well today and sorry I cannot be there!
The language, like the form, also moves closer to the colloquial or vernacular including slang and the use of the "n" word while the arrangement and diction still carry an air of art. This seems to support the reading by Collins and Crawford about the Black Power and Black is Beautiful movements.
On a specific note I was struck by Etheridge Knight's "Belly Song" becuase I found the metaphor of the internal river to be so powerful, and thought the ending left a strong feeling in the mind of the reader. Not only did it bring about a kind of kinship, or commonality in the struggle of living life and persevering together, but the poem itself served as a summary of the difficulties of life, the honor of those who have died and the commitment to each other to continue to fight together. I would be interested to know how this poem was intended and how it was recieved by its audience.
Just a few thoughts from me! Hope class goes well today and sorry I cannot be there!
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
poverty, stereotypes, abuse, etc.
I was really disturbed by Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem “Merle ‘Uncle Seagram.’” We’ve read a lot up to this point about the injustices and abuses that blacks have faced, but this one disturbed me more than the others. It’s always troubling to hear of any crime of a sexual nature being perpetrated against children, but for a child to be harmed or inappropriately touched by a family member that’s supposed to care for them makes the behavior that much worse. The family appears to fit into the stereotype of a larger, impoverished black family, and the alcohol abuse adds to that stereotype. I guess I don’t really have anything else to say about this. It was just disturbing, but really, it was straightforward enough that I have nothing else to contribute.
I think the preceding poem, “Ulysses ‘Religion,’” also illustrates some effects of a likely impoverished lifestyle. It’s another stereotype—the poor, black kid bringing weapons to school—but it makes me think of self-fulfilling prophecies and missed opportunities. These kids go to school, spurn the knowledge their teachers try to impart on them, and go home at the end of the day, returning to the same situation they left that morning; there’s no improvement, and no foreseeable change.
I think the preceding poem, “Ulysses ‘Religion,’” also illustrates some effects of a likely impoverished lifestyle. It’s another stereotype—the poor, black kid bringing weapons to school—but it makes me think of self-fulfilling prophecies and missed opportunities. These kids go to school, spurn the knowledge their teachers try to impart on them, and go home at the end of the day, returning to the same situation they left that morning; there’s no improvement, and no foreseeable change.
Out of the Gwendolyn Brooks poems that we had to read for today, I would have to say that "Merle 'Uncle Seagram'" hit me the most. Obviously the subject matter of the girl being molested by her uncle was disturbing. Also, I think that the speaker added a lot to the shock value and disturbance of the poem. The speaker is a young girl and she describes the situation from the standpoint of the little girl. She doesn't really know exactly what is going on, yet seems to know this is something that shouldn't be happening when she says, "I do not like my uncle anymore." The lines of the poem that really discussed me the most is when her uncle tells her, "We're Best Friends, and Family, and we know how to keep Secrets." Reading this really made my skin crawl. I could just imagine him whispering in her ear and licking her ear while no one was looking. I also think its insane to think no one has really noticed this is going on while there are a large number of people in the house. It just really made me sad. I thought that the poem was well executed and really got the situation across. I also liked that her poems contained a lot of subject matter. I found the poems really interesting, although I was confused by some.
Cruelty
In Monday’s class, we discussed lynchings, as it applied to Richard Wright’s “Between the World and Me”, in this poem, the narrator lists several deaths that could occur during lynchings. We further discussed the idea of how the bodies of the people who were lynched were dessecrated and further mauled, even after the person had died. People would have picnics as they watched these people harmed for intertainment, and it made me begin to wonder how and why people can watch someone else get maimed for intertainment.
The more I thought about it, the more I wondered about the nature of people. Even outside of war, we take joy in another person’s pain.We laugh when someone falls down the stairs, there are television shows (America’s funniest home videos, almost all of the reality televisoin shows) dedicated to the humiliation of people, and there are television shows only comprised of people being hurt while trying to comlplete tricks for extreme sports, car crashes, etc. There are even six videos of Sadam Hussien’s hanging on youtube.
At first, I was at awe of the cruelty that people displayed towards eachother during the lynchings, but we still portray the same cruelty towards one-another today. I guess I’m trying to figure out why.
The more I thought about it, the more I wondered about the nature of people. Even outside of war, we take joy in another person’s pain.We laugh when someone falls down the stairs, there are television shows (America’s funniest home videos, almost all of the reality televisoin shows) dedicated to the humiliation of people, and there are television shows only comprised of people being hurt while trying to comlplete tricks for extreme sports, car crashes, etc. There are even six videos of Sadam Hussien’s hanging on youtube.
At first, I was at awe of the cruelty that people displayed towards eachother during the lynchings, but we still portray the same cruelty towards one-another today. I guess I’m trying to figure out why.
Third Grade was a Breeze
Hey, I was set back by the description of the "Moloch". It is an extremely intense description, he was considered to be one of the generals in the battle against Heaven and he spoke out on the need for an immediate attack, who knew that such a gallant and fiery warrior's name would be used to symbolize this thing: http://www.outback-australia-travel-secrets.com/thorny-devil.html Ha ha, it does exist. It was interesting to see all of this history eluded to in Walker's poem, also it is interesting to see how it is eluded to in other profound literary works as it is an unbelievably strong character in biblical history. However, this is not what i want to talk about in this blog, no, i wish to address Richard Wright's insertion of communist hints in his poems. It is speculated that he is guilty of this subliminal messaging in many of the poems we read for Monday: "I Have Seen Black Hands", "Between the World and Me", and "Red Clay Blues". All of these poems are considered to be protest poems, politically, socially, and culturally. The things we speculated on Monday about the use of the word "red" and its ties to communism are reaffirmed by many scholars on line, thus he is accomplishing myriad things in his poetry: he is pushing the idea that communism will set everyone free of the burdens they carry and that Blacks should consider the conversion, as it would be particularly benefiting for them and their pursuit of equality. If you don't feel that i am speaking the truth please regard this section of "I have Seen Black Hands": "I am black and I have seen black hands/Raised in fists of revolt, side by side with the white fists/Of white workers,/And some day -- and it is only this which sustains me--/Some day there shall be millions and millions of them,/On some red day in a burst of fists on a new horizon!" All of the components of a protest poem are present here, it impossible not to acknowledge the fact. Every line in this section is aggressively set to impose a certain kind of emotion on its reader: Revolution.
Mass Media?
I found much of Gwendolyn Brooks’ poetry to be extremely interesting in its varied form, content, and time. Her poem “the Mother” was particularly different than other ‘mother’ poems we have read so far and also connected with the piece we read by Hortense Spillers in a unique way. I also found her commentary on the Civil Rights movement, black pride and the leaders of this time period particularly interesting and felt that she covered an enormous amount of space and issues in very short, descriptive writing. Her form, diction and content choices seemed in particular parallel.
The final thing that struck me about Brooks was the mention in her bio about how she strove to keep her books short, small and cheap so as to be affordable to the black community. It was interesting to read this because while many of the poets we have read so far may have had similar goals (publishing in papers and other mass-media forms) we have yet to hear a literary author with similar considerations of her audience. I wonder then, how successful she was in this drive to appeal to a larger audience? Did they buy her stuff? Did they like it? How did the influence the world of African American thought and the future generations writing on similar issues?
The final thing that struck me about Brooks was the mention in her bio about how she strove to keep her books short, small and cheap so as to be affordable to the black community. It was interesting to read this because while many of the poets we have read so far may have had similar goals (publishing in papers and other mass-media forms) we have yet to hear a literary author with similar considerations of her audience. I wonder then, how successful she was in this drive to appeal to a larger audience? Did they buy her stuff? Did they like it? How did the influence the world of African American thought and the future generations writing on similar issues?
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Wikipedia links to elucidate some of the allusions . . .
. . . in Monday's Margaret Walker poems. Check it out:
Moloch
Amos
Selma
Birmingham
As you prepare for the midterm and look back at Countee Cullen's work, this may also be of use:
The Scottsboro Boys
Here's something that seems really important to me. As a teacher of American poetry, I'm always talking about Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman as the two parents of the poetic tradition that's really American (not just English people writing in the Western Hemisphere) and as the two mid-19th-century poets who foreshadow the coming of Modernism. I talk about Dickinson the modest poet, the poet of the domestic, the intellectually rigorous poet, the poet of complicated diction and complicated philosophical questioning; and I talk about Whitman the poet-as-public-figure, the poet of the nation, the progressive, labor-affirming, diversity-affirming poet, the poet of inclusion, of long, ragged lines, of anaphora.
Then I talk about Allen Ginsberg as Whitman's great inheritor, using the same long raggy lines, the same bombastic I-am-America tone, the same attention to the oppressed and overlooked, the same anaphora. In poems like "A Supermarket in California" he even explicitly sets himself up as Whitman's inheritor.
But I want to point this out: Allen Ginsberg leapt to poetic prominence with the publication of Howl in 1956. But the Whitmanesque poems we read by Margaret Walker and Richard Wright were published in the mid-'30s and early '40s! What that says to me is that Ginsberg is probably indebted to Wright and Walker as well as to Whitman. The Beats were famous as a group of white poets who intentionally aligned themselves with underground political and artistic movements, with jazz, with black artists. Ginsberg may possibly not have been reading Walker, but I'd bet money he read Wright. I can't articulate everything I want to say about this right now, but it does seem really important to me that Wright and Walker were channeling Whitman well before Ginsberg was.
Moloch
Amos
Selma
Birmingham
As you prepare for the midterm and look back at Countee Cullen's work, this may also be of use:
The Scottsboro Boys
Here's something that seems really important to me. As a teacher of American poetry, I'm always talking about Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman as the two parents of the poetic tradition that's really American (not just English people writing in the Western Hemisphere) and as the two mid-19th-century poets who foreshadow the coming of Modernism. I talk about Dickinson the modest poet, the poet of the domestic, the intellectually rigorous poet, the poet of complicated diction and complicated philosophical questioning; and I talk about Whitman the poet-as-public-figure, the poet of the nation, the progressive, labor-affirming, diversity-affirming poet, the poet of inclusion, of long, ragged lines, of anaphora.
Then I talk about Allen Ginsberg as Whitman's great inheritor, using the same long raggy lines, the same bombastic I-am-America tone, the same attention to the oppressed and overlooked, the same anaphora. In poems like "A Supermarket in California" he even explicitly sets himself up as Whitman's inheritor.
But I want to point this out: Allen Ginsberg leapt to poetic prominence with the publication of Howl in 1956. But the Whitmanesque poems we read by Margaret Walker and Richard Wright were published in the mid-'30s and early '40s! What that says to me is that Ginsberg is probably indebted to Wright and Walker as well as to Whitman. The Beats were famous as a group of white poets who intentionally aligned themselves with underground political and artistic movements, with jazz, with black artists. Ginsberg may possibly not have been reading Walker, but I'd bet money he read Wright. I can't articulate everything I want to say about this right now, but it does seem really important to me that Wright and Walker were channeling Whitman well before Ginsberg was.
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