A History of African American Poetry (original) (raw)
Related papers
More Than the Sum of Its Parts: The Sociological Impact of African American Poetry
African American verse differs significantly from poetry composed in either Western or Eastern contexts. It stems, not from a longstanding written tradition, but from a spoken tradition which has consistently evolved over time. Originally, oral stories were used to preserve cultural traditions from the African homeland, providing continuity amid trials and tribulations of forced relocation. To resolve subsequent cultural, linguistic, and social barriers brought about by imposed diversity, a common means to communicate through song and dance was developed. Shared musical compositions allowed slaves to establish familiar linguistic structures, gestures, and thematic content that everyone could understand, thereby facilitating communication and cultural consolidation. Such oral media and content, along with the sociological functions with which they were imbued, were then encoded within African American verse. While the adoption of past cultural traditions has made African American poetry distinctive, it is the synergistic impact of this poetry on American society which makes the art form truly exceptional. Not only has it served to develop the African American community, it has invoked significant responses from white hegemonic institutions of discrimination. In an attempt to further ascertain the sociological impact of African American verse, the following paper investigates how characteristics of form and meaning coalesce to evoke emotion, cultivate ethnic solidarity, and prompt social reform.
The Spirituals in the African American Poetry Tradition
Vol. 38 No. 5, 95-105, 2016
The spirituals—the verses created by enslaved African Americans on Southern plantations—are rarely categorized as lyric poetry, and often overlooked as foundational sources of the African American poetry tradition. Yet their influence on modern and contemporary African American poetry is pervasive, which calls for a reexamination of their place in African American poetry, and of the scope of the African American poetry canon itself. Based on the pattern of allusions and citations of spirituals, this fresh focus also offers an opportunity to recognize that the poems created by enslaved African Americans are more diverse and formally innovative than is often recognized. As a result, the origins of African American poetry are shown to be rooted in a body of diasporic texts that is integrally connected to methods and motives associated with avant-garde practice. In 1882, the African American Rev. Marshall W. Taylor, D.D. wrote prophetically of the spirituals, " Their influence is not done. " (Taylor 4) The spirituals, created and performed by anonymous enslaved African Americans, are essential to the foundation of the African American poetry tradition. The spirituals are among the most original artistic products created in America. Combining African survivals with the experiences of enslavement in the American South, the spirituals very likely date to the early seventeenth century as oral texts, but were not transcribed until the early nineteenth century. This brilliant body of sung verse, encompassing some 6,000 or more examples, has not been fully credited for its influence on American or African American literature and culture, or its rightful place in the lyric poetry tradition. It is a common practice for African American poetry of the last hundred years to cite and allude to spirituals, but these foundational poems are rarely considered as an integral part of the canon. Many modern and contemporary African American poems are infused with phrases, forms, themes, techniques, and rhetorical strategies of the spirituals. Through greater awareness of the spirituals' presence, function, and influence, readers can better understand both the continuities and progressions in African American poetry, including its most innovative manifestations. This pattern of marginalizing the spirituals as lyric art and a major source of textual appropriations also shows how an exclusionary and ideological canon has developed that misrepresents and limits the scope of African American poetry. This essay is intended to provide a brief introduction to a vast topic in hopes of inspiring further research and exploration. Since they first were discussed in print by musicologists, critics, scholars, clergy, slavers, seafarers, and other auditors, there has been curiosity and debate about the messages and creators of these unique songs, and what to call them. Eileen Southern explains that they were originally called " hymns, " but it quickly became clear that they differed significantly from conventional Protestant church music. (Southern 180) Reflecting the dilemma of how to describe these unusual lyrics, Slave Songs of the United States, one of the earliest compilations, uses the term " slave songs " in its title and " sperichils " in its introduction. (ii) As I have discussed in Slave Songs and the Birth of African American Poetry, nineteenth century abolitionists commonly portrayed the enslaved African Americans as free of any malice or resentment about their status, and solely concerned with Christian patience and piety. By popularizing the term " spirituals, " abolitionists reinforced the message that the enslaved people were innocent and compliant, and former slaves, after Emancipation, would bear no anger and pose no threat towards their former oppressors. (Ramey 110-11) But the word " spirituals " fails to reflect the critique and mockery in these
A History of African American Poetry Chapter 1 Excerpt .pdf
A History of African American Poetry, 2019
African American poetry is as old as America itself, yet this touchstone of American identity is often overlooked. In this critical history of African American poetry, from its origins in the transatlantic slave trade, to present day hip-hop, Lauri Ramey traces African American poetry from slave songs to today's award-winning poets. Covering a wide range of styles and forms, canonical figures like Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784) and Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) are brought side by side with lesser known poets who explored diverse paths of bold originality. Calling for a revised and expanded canon, Ramey shows how some poems were suppressed while others were lauded, while also examining the role of music, women, innovation, and art as political action in African American poetry. Conceiving of a new canon reveals the influential role of African American poetry in defining and reflecting the United States at all points in the nation's history.
Paul Laurence Dunbar and the Spirituals (pre-print)
Black Music, Black Poetry: Blues and Jazz's Impact on African American Versification, Ed. Gordon E. Thompson (Ashgate), pp. 39-54., 2014
This chapter shows how spirituals provided Dunbar with his most significant source of allusions.
The Heritage Series of Black Poetry, 1962-1975: A Research Compendium, Introduction Excerpt
The Heritage Series of Black Poetry, 1962-1975: A Research Compendium , 2013
In 1962, the Heritage Series of Black Poetry, founded and edited by Paul Breman, published Robert Hayden's A Ballad of Remembrance. By 1975, the Series had published 27 volumes by some of the 20th century's most important and influential poets. As elaborated in Lauri Ramey's extensive scholarly introduction, this innovative volume has dual purposes: To provide primary sources that recover the history and legacy of this groundbreaking venture, and to serve as a research companion for scholars working on the Series and on twentieth century African American and African diasporic poetry. Never-before-published materials include Paul Breman's memoir, retrospectives and poems by poets published in the Series, scholarly essays, bibliographical and biographical information, and a photo-documentary of W.E.B. Du Bois's 1958 visit to the Netherlands.
Reconstructing The African Identity in the Poetry of Hughes and Al-Fayturi
This paper investigates the dialectics between homeland and identity in the poetry of the Sudanese poet, Muhamed Al-Fayturi and his master, Langston Hughes in order to underline their attitudes toward crucial issues integral to the African and African American experience such as identity, racism, enslavement and colonisation. The paper argues that, in Hughes's early poetry Africa is depicted as the land of ancient civilisations in order to strengthen African American feelings of ethnic pride during the Harlem Renaissance. This idealistic image of a pre-slavery, a pre-colonial Africa, argues the paper, disappears from the poetry of Hughes, after the Harlem Renaissance , to be replaced with a more realistic image of Africa under colonisation. The paper also demonstrates that unlike Hughes , who attempts to romanticise Africa, Al-Fayturi rejects a romantic confrontation with the roots. Interrogating western colonial narratives about Africa, Al-Fayturi reconstructs pre-colonial African history in order to reveal the tragic consequences of colonisation and slavery upon the psyche of the African people. The paper also points out that in their attempts to confront the oppressive powers which aim to erase the identity of their peoples, Hughes and Al-Fayturi explore areas of overlapping drama between the turbulent experience of African Americans and the catastrophic history of black Africans dismantling colonial narratives and erecting their own cultural mythology.
HyperCultura, 2014
This article examines the portrayal of African-American people in the contemporary American literature and culture. Through a close reading of a selection of Lorenzo Thomas' poems from his collection Chances Are Few (1972), it becomes evident that black people are still confused regarding their identity, due to the influence of white people on the construction of their image. The role of the poet is to subvert this situation and offer new grounds upon which racial identity can be determined. Lorenzo Thomas revisits the clichéd images of black people in order to comment on them and expose their artificial nature as well as demonstrate the negative impact they have had on the way black people have viewed themselves. He maintains that mass media have perpetuated this artificial image of black people and exposes them as a means of propaganda led by the hegemonic white culture. This negative depiction has resulted in an inner conflict for black people who are torn between their Ameri...
The Function of Poetry in the Modern World: A Case Study of Walt Whitman and Audre Lorde’s Poems
Language Literacy: Journal of Linguistics, Literature, and Language Teaching
Lyric poetry has historically referred to a genre that we think of as brief, musical, and personal as well as subjective. This article addresses the role of lyric poetry in the modern world, and how critical analysis enables us to better appreciate the potential impact of poetry today. Specifically, we will offer brief contrastive assessments of two landmark exemplars of American poets, Walt Whitman and Audre Lorde. These two figures demonstrate some of the varied ways of the American poetry tradition. We compare Walt Whitman, a canonical white male poet from the 19th century, with an equally important 20th century African American woman poet, Audre Lorde. These American poets differ in historical periods, sex, race, and other factors, yet both uphold the conventional functions of lyric poetry and prove its continuing relevance to a global readership. The results show that as the reflection of human life, poetry could represent honesty, realism, democracy and even power.