The Spirituals in the African American Poetry Tradition (original) (raw)

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