16: The Vintage Book of African-American Poetry

[hapex-legomena.livejournal.com]

So Black History Month is almost at an end; have 50 African-American poet as presented by The Vintage Book of African-American Poetry edited by Michael S. Harper and Anthony Walton.

In alphabetical order:

1. Elizabeth Alexander
   
2. Benjamin Banneker
   
3. Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones)
   
4. Gwendolyn Bennett
   
5. William Stanley Braithwaite
   The House of Falling Leaves | Lyrics of Life and Love | [He also edited mad anthologies]
   
6. Gwendolyn Brooks
   
7. Sterling A. Brown
   
8. Lucille Clifton
   
9. Joseph Seaman Cotter, Sr.
   Caleb, the Degenerate: A Play in Four Acts | Negro Tales | A White Song and a Black One
   
10. Countee Cullen
    
11. Toi Derricotte
    
12. Rita Dove
    
13. Paul Laurence Dunbar
    The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar | The Fanatics | Folks from Dixie | The heart of happy hollow: A collection of stories | The Negro Problem (contibutor) | The Sport of the Gods | The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories | The Uncalled: A Novel
    
14. Cornelius Eady
    
15. C.S. Giscombe
    
16. Jupiter Hammon
    An Address to the Negro Slaves of New York
    
17. Frances E.W. Harper
    
18. Michael S. Harper
    
19. Robert Hayden
    
20. George Moses Horton
    The Hope of Liberty. Containing a Number of Poetical Pieces | Poems by a Slave
    
21. Langston Hughes
    The Mule-Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life in Three Acts (play, co-written with Zora Neale Hurston)
    
22. Georgia Douglas Johnson
    Bronze: A Book of Verse
    
23. James Weldon Johnson
    The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man | The Book of American Negro Poetry (editor) | The Conquest of Haiti: Articles and Documents | Fifty years & Other Poems | God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse | Self-Determining Haiti
    
24. Gayl Jones
    
25. Bob Kaufman
    
26. Etheridge Knight
    
27. Yusef Komunyakaa
    
28. Audre Lorde
    
29. Nathaniel Mackey
    
30. Haki Madhubuti (Don L. Lee)
    
31. Claude Mckay
    Harlem Shadows: the poems of Claude McKay
    
32. Thylias Moss
    
33. Marilyn Nelson
    
34. Raymond Patterson
    
35. Carl Phillips
    
36. Ishmael Reed
    
37. Sonia Sanchez
    
38. Reginald Shepherd
    
39. Anne Spencer
    
40. Melvin B. Tolson
    
41. Jean Toomer
    An Interpretation of Friends Worship
    
42. George Boyer Vashon
    Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (contributor) [a/n: I have no idea where vol. 1 is]
    
43. Derek Walcott
    
44. Margaret Walker
    
45. Anthony Walton
    
46. Phillis Wheatley
    Poems on various subjects, religious and moral
    
47. James Monroe Whitfield
    America and Other Poems
    
48. Sherley Anne Williams
    
49. Jay Wright
    
50. Al Young
    

[all links go to public domain works - the ones that I could find anyway]

If you look at the list of writers you may notice that the editor, Michael S. Harper included himself in his own anthology, which I think is kind of suspect, but I guess that's what co-editors are for.

I was going to write about every individual writer, but, yeah, no. Too lazy; don't feel like it. Also, it's a lot harder tracking down public domain works on the big wide internets than I thought it would, or think it should. Seriously, if the book was originally published in 1910, I don't google books or whoever pointing me to amazon. Just give me the text JFC.

It's was a good anthology. Not an excellent anthology, but a good one. The editorial inserts were informative, if sometimes annoying. (One of the editor's and I have a slight difference of opinion on the use of dialect in poetry.) By choosing the poets that they did, the editor's try to the diversity of style and identity that falls under the term "African-American poetry" and they also attempt to show growth over time.

Two poems that got me:

White Lady by Lucille Clifton (recently passed, may she rest in peace)

AKA my new go-to poem to explain why White Women's Syndrome and the trope of the Nice White Lady does not give me the warm and fuzzies.

On Being Brought from Africa to America by Phillis Wheatley

'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
"Their colour is a diabolic die."
Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,
May be refin'd and join th'angelic train.

This poem is so sad. The woman named Phillis Wheatley received the name Wheatley from her owner
and the name Phillis from the slave ship she was brought to America. She lived a hard and short life. And here is this poem pleading for "Negros, black as Cain" to be seen human.

Those two were downers. Here, have a happier one:

Dawn by Paul Laurence Dunbar

An angel, robed in spotless white,
Bent down and kissed the sleeping Night.
Night woke to blush; the sprite was gone.
Men saw the blush and called it Dawn.

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