The Furious Flowering of African American Poetry

by Gabbin, Joanne V.

• ISBN13: 9780813918419
• ISBN10: 0813918413
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-06-01
• Publisher: Univ of Virginia Pr

Summary

AFRICAN-AMERICAN POETRY, with its wellsprings in jazz and vernacular culture and its inescapable political dimension, stands among the most important bodies of literary work of the twentieth century. This collection of essays and six lively interviews with practicing poets, arising from the now-famous Furious Flower Conference of 1994, provides a mosaic of the major critical and aesthetic issues emerging from the poetry and its literary milieu.African-American poets writing in the last fifty years have raised their voices in the struggle against racism, sexism, political and economic exploitation, violence, and injustice. Gwendolyn Brooks, Rita Dove, Haki Madhubuti, Sonia Sanchez, Amiri Baraka (aka LeRoi Jones), Joyce Ann Joyce, Sherley Anne Williams, Michael S. Harper, Margaret Walker and many others have created lyrical beauty in their exploration of public and private concerns. Unlike any previous scholarship, The Furious Flowering of African American Poetry draws readers into a dialogue with leading poets and critics of African-American literature and culture. The interviews and critical essays address the adequacy and appropriateness of theoretical models for assessing the work of black poets, the construction of a literary framework in which to place the poets and their work, and the art and purpose of the poets themselves.Furious Flowering offers students, scholars, readers, and writers of African-American poetry a chance to take part in an unprecedented discussion of a complex literary culture.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Essays and Conversations in African American Poetry	1	(16)
Joanne V. Gabbin
Part 1. African American Poetry and the Vernacular Matrix
Langston Hughes: A Poet Supreme	17	(8)
Kalamu Ya Salaam
Message to the Generations: The Mythic Hero in Sterling Brown's Poetry	25	(13)
Eugenia Collier
Langston Hughes and Melvin Tolson: Blues People	38	(9)
Mariann Russell
Bardic Memory and Witness in the Poetry of Samuel Allen	47	(13)
Edward A. Scott
Rooted Displacement in Form: Rita Dove's Sonnet Cycle Mother Love	60	(17)
Therese Steffen
Conversation:	77	(14)
Michael S. Harper
Aldon Lynn Nielsen
Conversation:	91	(8)
Eugene Redmond
Jabari Asim
Part 2. Critical Theories and Approaches in African American Poetry
Bantu, Nkodi, Ndungu, and Nganga: Language, Politics, Music, and Religion in African American Poetry	99	(19)
Joyce A. Joyce
The Ballad, the Hero, and the Ride: A Reading of Sterling A. Brown's The Last Ride of Wild Bill	118	(17)
Mark A. Sanders
Illocutionary Dimensions of Poetry: Lee's ``A Poem to Complement Other Poems''	135	(12)
Jerry W. Ward Jr.
Conversation:	147	(7)
Amiri Baraka
Askia Toure
Consciousness, Myth, and Transcendence: Symbolic Action in Three Poems on the Slave Trade	154	(15)
Jon Woodson
Alice Walker: Poesy and the Earthling Psyche	169	(13)
Ikenna Dieke
``The Calligraphy of Black Chant": Resiting African American Poetries	182	(12)
Aldon Lynn Nielsen
Conversation:	194	(15)
Sherley Anne Williams
Deborah Mcdowell
Part 3. Writing a Literary History of African American Poetry
African American Epic Poetry: The Long Foreshadowing	209	(14)
Raymond R. Patterson
Personal and Public: Three First-Person Voices in African American Poetry	223	(16)
Eric A. Weil
Conversation:	239	(13)
Margaret Walker Alexander
Joanne V. Gabbin
Blooming in the Whirlwind: The Early Poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks	252	(22)
Joanne V. Gabbin
Conversation:	274	(7)
Gwendolyn Brooks
B. Denise Hawkins
Song of Herself: Lucille Clifton's Poems about Womanhood	281	(17)
Hilary Holladay
``Flashbacks through the Heart'': Yusef Komunyakaa and the Poetry of Self-Assertion	298	(12)
Angela M. Salas
What Is This New Thing?	310	(7)
Jabari Asim
Contributors	317	(8)
Index	325