The May issue of Poetry has a review of the new Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry, entitled Angles of Ascent, edited by Charles Henry Rowell. It is a tirade against the book: "My God, what imbecilic garbage." Baraka sees Rowell's interpretation as rejection of the Black Arts Movement in order to present a more literary and artful Black poetry.
I can remember my first reading of LeRoi Jones' "An Agony. As Now."
"I am inside someone who hates me.
. . .
It burns the thing inside it. And that thing screams."
It was painful to read.
I waited to write this blog till I could lay my hands on a copy of this anthology. My own favorite was Cavalcade, with Dark Symphany a close second. Only in my first year of teaching did I discover the poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks and Countee Cullen, whose work does offer the grace that Baraka would reject as too literary. He too rejects Yusef Komunyakaa's work as "dull and academic."
For Baraka, "Poems are bullshit unless they are / teeth or trees or lemons piled/ on a step." ("Black Art")
It's the fist-in-your-face attitude that I object to in Baraka's stance. For him, if it doesn't speak the language of protest, it doesn't speak true.
Angles of Ascent has lots of familiar names: Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Hayden, Melvin B. Tolson. Amiri Baraka is included himself; Mari Evans, Nikki Giovanni, Lucile Clifton, too.
When I was teaching at Coppin State, I was in charge of a poetry reading by Llucile Clifton. She was delightful. A student asked her why she didn't use punctuation. She laughed: "I always had trouble knowing where to put the commas, and when I found out I didn't have to in poetry, that was for me." She admitted too, that during the riots of the 1960s, she was as terrified as her white neighbors.
There are many new poets here, younger poets, unfamiliar names, contemporaries of my own children.
I most remember attending a poetry festival in Asheville, NC, especially to see and hear LeRoi Jones, aka Amiri Baraka. But he didn't come. "Nelson need me." That was his excuse. So much for poetry.
One thing our editor did get right. He quotes Gwendolyn Brooks' poem in his headnotes for the introduction: "First fight. Then fiddle . . . ." I have loved that sonnet since I first found it. Her protest poems don't scream, but they make you shiver. Here in this an, our editor would choose the grace of the violin that is poetry.
Yet I much commend Poetry for including Baraka's review in their pages. Somebody out there is reading.
I can remember my first reading of LeRoi Jones' "An Agony. As Now."
"I am inside someone who hates me.
. . .
It burns the thing inside it. And that thing screams."
It was painful to read.
I waited to write this blog till I could lay my hands on a copy of this anthology. My own favorite was Cavalcade, with Dark Symphany a close second. Only in my first year of teaching did I discover the poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks and Countee Cullen, whose work does offer the grace that Baraka would reject as too literary. He too rejects Yusef Komunyakaa's work as "dull and academic."
For Baraka, "Poems are bullshit unless they are / teeth or trees or lemons piled/ on a step." ("Black Art")
It's the fist-in-your-face attitude that I object to in Baraka's stance. For him, if it doesn't speak the language of protest, it doesn't speak true.
Angles of Ascent has lots of familiar names: Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Hayden, Melvin B. Tolson. Amiri Baraka is included himself; Mari Evans, Nikki Giovanni, Lucile Clifton, too.
When I was teaching at Coppin State, I was in charge of a poetry reading by Llucile Clifton. She was delightful. A student asked her why she didn't use punctuation. She laughed: "I always had trouble knowing where to put the commas, and when I found out I didn't have to in poetry, that was for me." She admitted too, that during the riots of the 1960s, she was as terrified as her white neighbors.
There are many new poets here, younger poets, unfamiliar names, contemporaries of my own children.
I most remember attending a poetry festival in Asheville, NC, especially to see and hear LeRoi Jones, aka Amiri Baraka. But he didn't come. "Nelson need me." That was his excuse. So much for poetry.
One thing our editor did get right. He quotes Gwendolyn Brooks' poem in his headnotes for the introduction: "First fight. Then fiddle . . . ." I have loved that sonnet since I first found it. Her protest poems don't scream, but they make you shiver. Here in this an, our editor would choose the grace of the violin that is poetry.
Yet I much commend Poetry for including Baraka's review in their pages. Somebody out there is reading.
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