Wrestling With the Muse

by Boyd, Melba Joyce

• ISBN13: 9780231130264
• ISBN10: 0231130260
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-02-01
• Publisher: Columbia Univ Pr

Summary

And as I groped in darknessand felt the pain of millions,gradually, like day driving night across the continent,I saw dawn upon them like the sun a vision.-- Dudley Randall, from "Roses and Revolutions"In 1963, the African American poet Dudley Randall (1914--2000) wrote "The Ballad of Birmingham" in response to the bombing of a church in Alabama that killed four young black girls, and "Dressed All in Pink," about the assassination of President Kennedy. When both were set to music by folk singer Jerry Moore in 1965, Randall published them as broadsides. Thus was born the Broadside Press, whose popular chapbooks opened the canon of American literature to the works of African American writers.Dudley Randall, one of the great success stories of American small-press history, was also poet laureate of Detroit, a civil-rights activist, and a force in the Black Arts Movement. Melba Joyce Boyd was an editor at Broadside, was Randall's friend and colleague for twenty-eight years, and became his authorized biographer. Her book is an account of the interconnections between urban and labor politics in Detroit and the broader struggles of black America before and during the Civil Rights era. But also, through Randall's poetry and sixteen years of interviews, the narrative is a multipart dialogue between poets, Randall, the author, and the history of American letters itself, and it affords unique insights into the life and work of this crucial figure.

Author Biography

Melba Joyce Boyd is professor of Africana studies at Wayne State University and adjunct professor at the Center for Afro-American and African Studies at the University of Michigan.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	ix
Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction. Wrestling with the Muse	1	(17)
Beginnings and Endings	18	(13)
The Fertile Black Bottom of Paradise Valley	31	(12)
Poets of Black Bottom: Dudley Randall Meets Robert Hayden	43	(11)
War at Home and Abroad	54	(14)
The Return: Poetry and Prophecy	68	(17)
Sojourn and Return	85	(13)
The Emergence of the Second Renaissance in Detroit	98	(25)
``Ballad of Birmingham'': The Founding of Broadside Press and the Black Arts Movement	123	(12)
``Ya Vas Lyubil'': Alexander Pushkin, Dudley Randall, and the Black Russian Connection	135	(8)
Cultural Wars and Civil Wars	143	(10)
``Prophets for a New Day'': Diversity and Heritage	153	(19)
The New Black Poets	172	(19)
Dudley Randall's Poetic Dialectics and the Black Arts Movement	191	(19)
``After the Killing'': Dudley Randall's Black Arts Poetry	210	(20)
Poetry as Industry	230	(15)
``Shape of the Invisible'': The Rise and Fall of Broadside Press	245	(19)
``In the Mourning Time'': The Return	264	(13)
A Poet Is Not a Jukebox	277	(21)
At Peace with the Muse	298	(12)
``The Ascent''	310	(10)
Epilogue	320	(3)
Appendix I: Translating Poetry into Film: The Black Unicorn: Dudley Randall and the Broadside Press	323	(19)
Appendix II: Worksheets for ``Frederick Douglass and the Slave Breaker''	342	(5)
Notes	347	(16)
Bibliography	363	(8)
Index	371