The Furious Flowering of American Poetry
Edited by Joanne V. Gabbin
"A blessing. . . a service. . . a race woman's gift in the tradition of benevolent ancestors. This book
brings together voices of middle-aged miltants and brilliantly sophisticated new generations. It is an alchemical chorus, filled with words, music, chants, kitchen-table conversation, august critical intelligence. This book is standard-setting--you cannot know American poetry without reading it. All hail its editor. . . all praise to the black academic activism it represents."Houston A. Baker Jr., Director of the Center for the Study of Black Literature and Culture, University of Pennsylvania
"Anybody writing about the literary history of Black poetry should be interested in really understanding what the poets were trying to do. the first thing that any critic writing about Black poetry should do is read the poetry. There are many people writing about my poetry who read 'A Song in the Front Yard,' 'We Real Cool,' and 'The Bean Eaters." Then they're through. They know nothing about my book Winnie, which marks a very significant change in my writing. . . They need to know that I am interested in Winnie Mandela, not just in Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth. They need to know that I am interested in what goes on in the streets." --from the interview with Gwendolyn Brooks
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. 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.
Joanne V. Gabbin, Professor of English at James Madison University, is the author of Sterling A. Brown: Building the Black Aesthetic Tradition (Virginia).
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