Stephen Henderson lecture, "Black Poetry of the 1960s: The Continuing Challenge," at the University of Iowa, June 9, 1978

Speaker 1: The following was recorded June 9th, 1978, as part of the 10th Annual Institute for Afro-American Culture held at the University of Iowa. The theme of the Institute was Black Culture in the Second Renaissance: A Study of Afro-American Thought and Experience, 1954 to 1970. Speaker 1: Black Poetry of the Sixties: The Continuing Challenge is the topic of this lecture by Stephen Henderson, Director of the Institute for the Arts and Humanities. Speaker 1: To make the introduction here is Darwin Turner, Professor of English and Director of Afro-American Studies at the University of Iowa. Darwin Turner: I'm very pleased to introduce our lecturer for this morning, Dr. Stephen Henderson, one of the most distinguished scholars of Black Literature in this country, the author of a book, which I know all of you in literature know, Understanding the New Black Poetry. Born in Key West, Florida, he earned a Bachelor's in English and Sociology from Morehouse, a Master's in English, from the University of Wisconsin and a PhD in English and Art History from the same institution. From 1950 to 1962, he taught at Virginia Union University, except while he was on leave to complete his doctorate. From 1962 to 1969, he was the Chair of the English Department at Morehouse. After two years, as a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for the Black World, the Institute headed by Vincent Harding, who will be our evening lecturer, he accepted a position as Professor of Afro-American Studies at Howard University. Darwin Turner: Since 1973, he has been Director of the Institute for Arts and Humanities at Howard and each year sponsors an excellent conference on black writers. He has won an award for writing fiction, several grants and fellowships, and his book Understanding the New Black Poetry was nominated by Morrow Press for a Pulitzer. He serves now as an Advisory Board Member of the John O. Killens' Writers Guild, the Ascension Poetry Reading Series, and the Institute of the Black World. He is the author of numerous essays, short stories, and poems. He is the co-author of Humanity's Handbook and the Militant Black Leader and his next published book will be The Question of Form and Judgment in Contemporary Black American Poetry. He will talk to us this morning on the topic Black Poetry of the Sixties: The Continuing Challenge. It gives me great pleasure to introduce Dr. Stephen Henderson. Dr. Stephen Hen...: Come on, [inaudible]. Come on, [inaudible]. Dr. Stephen Hen...: Thank you very much, Darwin. Thank you for your very warm welcome. Dr. Stephen Hen...: Well, I was somewhat apprehensive of coming to Iowa for the first time as you might... Can you hear me? Darwin Turner: Incidentally, that's not [inaudible]. Dr. Stephen Hen...: Okay. That's good. Dr. Stephen Hen...: Well, I was a little apprehensive until I stepped into the room, and the first person I met was Lou Emma Holloway, my blues buddy. So if you can deal with the blues, you can deal with me, and that's where I'm coming from, too. And Emma and I go back a little ways and it's always refreshing to see somebody like Lou Emma, because there aren't that many, and in this paper, I'll talk about those things, which encourage me. So right off the top of my head, I want to say that the presence of Lou Emma Holloway and her devotion to the belief and the conviction that the so-called popular culture of black people in this country is the basis of any serious concern, attempt to deal with the character of American life. Dr. Stephen Hen...: Now, I must say that the presentation that I am about to make is part of some ongoing considerations, and as a result of that, it's not as well organized as I would like for it to be. I have 25 written pages and I hand scribbled something of a conclusion last night or this morning, rather, 2:00 your time, 3:00 my time. So in order to avoid confusion, I'll do what the old preacher is supposed to do, just first tell you what I'm going to tell you, hey, whatnot... Tell you what I'm going to tell you, and then tell you, and then you ask the questions. I'll tell you what I've done told you. Dr. Stephen Hen...: I have been concerned for many years over the fact that certain kinds of assumptions were made and not only about so-called folk culture, but also about the so-called black bourgeoisie. And if you would believe some of the things that you'd read, you would assume that all of us were schizophrenic. But I never had any problem, frankly, with reconciling the fact that I was born in Key West, Florida and my people spoke a certain way, and then I automatically spoke that way when I went back home and that there were things that I could express and things that I understood that were not possible if I talked the way they talked at the University of Wisconsin or even at Morehouse College. Dr. Stephen Hen...: So that let me in 1960s to a critical interest in the poetry and in the poetry in particular, because poetry has always had a kind of a special aura of inaccessibility, and it scares off a lot of people and still does scare off a lot of people, including teachers. And I felt that one of the wholesome things that came out of the '60s was the fact that there was a serious attempt for the first time, really, to reconcile those two apparently divergent streams in American Negro portraits, it was called then, so-called folk and the literary, but Richard Wright called the narcissistic complex, the narcissistic residue. Dr. Stephen Hen...: Well, the narcissistic something and the forms of things I know. My point is the forms of things I know. Now, before this poetry and this literature, too, in general, before the poetry has really been assembled for any serious knowledge here, people have already eliminated it, dismissed it from serious consideration, not only the literature, but the entire business. Now all of you have read... And if you haven't able to be solely disappointed... the November 15th, 1975 feature article in Saturday Review that various staid and conservative, but interesting and useful publication, I grew up with, and you all probably did, too, and the title of it, of course, was called The Arts and Black America. Dr. Stephen Hen...: Well, if you examine that title, you'll see all kinds of assumptions that the arts somehow exist in some kind of our priority platonic universe, divorced from black America, that you have something which is superimposed upon an actual living concrete reality. And you have some very strange concept statements, some of which I would allude to. That's not the only thing. That's one type of response. Dr. Stephen Hen...: A more recent kind of response has been... Well, I shouldn't say recent, because there's a history of that, too... But there are some young critic, some of whom are black who feel that it's necessary to eviscerate '60s by saying in the fact that nothing really happened, that what you had again was protest, protest, protest. Well, you know that, you get tired of that. And then there's the whole business of saying that this is not really literary, okay? That of course was happening during the '60s, too. Dr. Stephen Hen...: Another aspect of the thing is even more damaging because while you attack the writing of the '60s as being... or the art of the '60s as being political... you take a political stance yourself. That, of course, is true of the Robert Moss article, and it's true of some others. You read as I do the Chronicle of Higher Education, so maybe if you would just briefly indulge me, I'll read a point of view which you find on the back page of the Chronicle, and it deals with the frustration that a white teacher has with black literature. Dr. Stephen Hen...: Don't misunderstand me now, because some of those same things that white people have been saying about black literature, some black people have been saying, too, and many of those black people grew up... Excuse the expression, English teachers... But here it is. Dr. Stephen Hen...: "White teacher looks at black literature." Now part of this came out of frustration, because all of us have frustrations in teaching literature. But what I'm trying to point to is what I would call a kind of cultural displacement and a kind of willingness to jump to conclusions, which is dangerous in any situation because all of us have been trained in the scientific, so-called, methods. Dr. Stephen Hen...: So this teacher says, Terry Caesar, "a white teacher teaching about... a white teacher writing about teaching a course in black literature finds that he has read it all before. All the characters are stereotypes. All the themes hackneyed, failure of communication, challenge of racial misunderstanding, and so forth. There's a stock plot. Teacher assures students, black and white, of his goodwill, racial sensitivity, whites are sympathetic, blacks hostile and suspicious, a militant black, usually a girl screams racism at every opportunity. The room grows tense, as whites speak more self-consciously and blacks murmur in the back of the room over every comment. There is a blow up, a black militant denouncing the teacher midway through the semester. Black attendance drops off, whites strain to maintain the class as racial attitudes harden, and everyone grows embittered. The class limps to a conclusion, which nothing has concluded, except mutual hostility between the races, greater and more inflexible than the first day." Dr. Stephen Hen...: We can all sympathize with that situation, perhaps we have been involved in it, but that's part of the thing. It's part of what we live with. But anyhow, the teacher goes on to deal with a specific case in which the student takes an examination and the student has... I'll read just a brief part of this. Dr. Stephen Hen...: "One of my final questions to the class was this," and this is the good question. This is what I'm talking about. "One of my final questions to the class was this, 'What's so black about black American literature?' One black student responded with an essay from which I quote the following: 'Through the black literature can be seen the image of the black man as the absurd sufferer. Richard Wright's Native Son as a moving passion filled portrait of a Negro as a man of revolt against fate. Interpreted in the '40s as a sociopolitical tract, Native Son may be in the light of recent historical, political, and intellectual...'" Dr. Stephen Hen...: And she has sic... "'Be seen for its greater merit, which is a record of the black man's tragic and kind of a fake and climate of absurd.'" And further down, she says, "Well, these selections are copied from Esther Merle Jackson's The American Negro and Image of the Absurd." Dr. Stephen Hen...: Now you all know Esther Jackson, and the teacher concludes... I can't read the whole thing, because I don't want to get too much time... "This is the most careful and deliberate act of plagiarism I've ever seen. What can one say about what has been done here? The whole of Western culture, Dante, Shakespeare, Voltaire, Camus is lopped off. Huey Newton, Martin Luther King are pasted in. Man becomes black man. Here is an image of a black student. Here is the consequence of the mandate that his blackness gives him. Here's certainly..." Here's the point. Now this is 1975. It wasn't 10 years ago. Dr. Stephen Hen...: "Here's certainly written very small and inescapably, is what the current study of Black American literature consists of, a black kid fiercely and meticulously erasing white culture and scribbling in the names of his black heroes. He is careless, [inaudible] for identity," in the third passage, "But he is not stupid. He knows exactly what he was doing, when he writes ethnic for ethic." In another passage which I haven't quoted, "It is hardly a mistake at all." Dr. Stephen Hen...: But you see, here is the climate, and the point that I am raising in the essay, is that particularly with regard to poetry, because of the things that I have alluded to, the response to the poetry has essentially been political, although the stalking horse has been literary form and literary judgment. Now, if I don't say that, this is what I intend to say, and I know that the paper is vague in places because I get caught up in a lot of documentation. Dr. Stephen Hen...: So I could have called this Black Poetry: The Achievement and the Challenge, but it would be of course, begging the question to talk about the achievement, because in the first place, there's several things that need to be done. We need to establish the canon, and of course, that's a process that goes on and on and on, but much of the portrait that was written during the period was not published, and much of the portrait that was read not published, and I'll allude to an essay by A. B. Spellman on that. Dr. Stephen Hen...: So the canon needs to be established for the '60s before any serious evaluation can be made. We need to listen to what the poets themselves say their intentions were, and of course, we need to deal with a matrix of that expression, which includes a point that I'll make again and again, a consideration of the musical inspiration and the musical model, which raised all kinds of questions regarding structure and style. It's frighteningly not been solved by the poets themselves, and certainly not by the critics. Dr. Stephen Hen...: So that is my basic text: An explosion of creative energy erupted from the literature of black Americans during the decade of the 1960s, the impulse was black consciousness; the ideology, black power; the chief forms, black drama and poetry. This development of course was not completely new. It was part of an earlier tradition that included some very distinguished writers, among the more recent ones, Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Hayden, Owen Dodson, Margaret Walker, Frank Marshall Davis, Langston Hughes, Samuel Allen, and Sterling Brown. Some of these writers joined their younger colleagues and were very rejuvenated by them. At the same time that their earlier work acted as a catalyst upon the younger generation. Dr. Stephen Hen...: At any rate, by the middle of the decade, there was clearly recognizable, a kind of poetry sufficiently different from that which preceded it as to warrant the appellation, the new poetry or the new black poetry. I think it was Clarence Major who probably coined that phrase, the New Black Poetry on the model of Donald Allen's The New American Poetry, and you know that anthology. The poetry was called black just to distinguish it from the Negro poetry which came before it. And which was still being written by those poets who felt that they were poets first and black people second. Dr. Stephen Hen...: Now you have to project yourself back into the 1960s and see what kind of heartache, what kind of antagonism, what kind of hostility was generated by that. Robert Hayden has a tragic story to tell about that, and if you sympathize with Robert Hayden, at the same time, you sympathize with the younger writers, you find yourself in a bind. Dr. Stephen Hen...: The black poetry was written by those who felt that they were black first and writers second. Although that distinction seems trivial at first glance, it was and is critical to an understanding of the poetry of those writers and the period in which they worked. A certain misunderstanding of the poetry was evident from the beginning, and some of it still persist. And before the work has been adequately evaluated, indeed, before the terms of evaluation had been adequately established, the period has been declared virtually worthless by commentators, both black and white. Dr. Stephen Hen...: The outstanding scholar, Charles R. Lawson, for example, stated in The Washington Post, "That no literature of lasting value has come out of the social and cultural framework of the '60s. That is nothing before the black literary movement was influenced by the feminist movement." Of course, it could have been the other way around. And he cites Alice Walker, Gayl Jones, and Toni Morrison in his review of Toni Morrison's The Song of Solomon. Dr. Stephen Hen...: A similar position was taken by Henry Louis Gates Jr. in his recent review of Robert Hemenway's, Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography. Gates asserts that Hurston was "curiously ignored or disparaged by the Black Arts Movement of the '60s, an otherwise noisy and intense spell of instant black macho image and mythmaking that rescued so many black writers from remaindered oblivion." Dr. Stephen Hen...: And that's quite a mouthful. Now that's one of the things that I am discouraged about because Henry Louis Gates Jr. [inaudible], about 25 years old, and he's very, very sharp, but he's sort of confused. And he's not being fair here, you say, because if there's one fault among many which you can find with the writing of the '60s, particularly from the point of view of the men, was that they idealized black women, and they idealized them in old fashioned kinds of ways, you see. And black women got tired of being called princesses and queens, and all that foolishness, you see. And they also got tired of the rigid ideological aspect of it, in which they were supposed to do this as a reflection of their man. Dr. Stephen Hen...: And of course, one of the crowning achievements of the portrait of the 1960s is the work of people like Sonia Sanchez, of course, Mari Evans, you say. Mari Evans, Nikki [inaudible], you say, and many, many other writers and more recently June Jordan, who is an absolutely fantastic poet. Dr. Stephen Hen...: So to say this, of course, is either to be incorrect or to be perverse. Equally inaccurate, and nastier is the dismissal of recent black poetry by Robert F. Moss in his November 15th, 1975 article in The Saturday Review entitled The Arts of Black America. Moss observes that "a large percentage of creative blacks, young and old appear to subscribe to the philosophy of Woodie King, a leading figure in black theater," which says "Content should always be more important than its package." Dr. Stephen Hen...: Mr. Moss reveals his real concern, however, when he goes on to say that "Matters of form and style have not really been ignored so much as translated into ethnic terms, and in some cases, thoroughly politicized. black verse is perhaps the most obvious example." I don't think I need to batter you over the head to see how, what the assumptions are there. You know, how we use the word verse, you see how you use verse over against poetry. Dr. Stephen Hen...: Translated into ethnic terms as there's something wrong with the translation, the only thing that's wrong with translation is that it's usually not complete and precise, and in some cases, thoroughly politicized. Now, if you remember that article, you realize that it is essentially a political tract. And the thing that bothers him is that for the first time on such a large scale, a group of black people in this country have linked up with black people in other countries, particularly on the continent of Africa and have declared in fact, their independence. And that article, if you remember begins with pot shots at [FESTAC]. Now this is not accidental. Dr. Stephen Hen...: It's going to be very difficult for me to stick to this text. But anyhow, I'll return to it. We'll return to Mr. Moss later. Suffice it to say, now that all three of these critics, two of them white, and one of them black, make sweeping generalizations, which casually ignore not only the facts of the matter, but some basic canons of good and fair criticism. Dr. Stephen Hen...: In the first place, the problem of evaluating the portrait produced by African Americans of the decade of the '60s is much more complicated and vital than superficial concern with the relative priority of form and content. As Robert F. Moss implies, it is also more important than the relative prominence of the poets themselves, which is the thing that bothers Eugene Redmond, who's a friend of mine, but he has problems, in Drumvoices because, Eugene, it's about the people have a thing about Haki Madhubuti, formerly Don Lee, and he spends a lot of time talking about what's wrong with Don Lee, and what's wrong with Steve Henderson, because he relentlessly praises Don Lee. But if I had relentlessly praised Eugene Redmond there would not have any problems with Eugene Redmond. Dr. Stephen Hen...: But that's part of it. But Drumvoices is an important first step because that's the first attempt to make some sense out of this. And the chapter on festivals and funerals is certainly worth your examination. Dr. Stephen Hen...: Despite these reservations I have with questions related to form are meaningful in a discussion of black poetry and questions of rank and achievement, though tricky, are inevitable, especially in retrospect. And what is this poetry like? What are the poets like? Well, I've given you my view of what some of the poetry was like in two places, understanding the new black poetry and better than this, I think... Because I'm sort of proud of that... is the essay that I did with Marisa Cook 10 years ago, Survival Motion, because I was very excited about the poetry. Dr. Stephen Hen...: Dr. King had just been killed. I was in Atlanta and people were going crazy and the poets were there, and you could see them in their real role as consoler, as definer, delineator, as prophets... And as Don Lee as he was then called... cultural stabilizers. Dr. Stephen Hen...: So that gives you at least my impression of what the poetry was like, it was very dynamic, the most exciting thing happening in the literary scene in America, in my opinion, at the time. How were they received? Dr. Stephen Hen...: Well, this is not the essay, so I'll have to tell you. You know how they were received. You were on these various campuses that many of the poets themselves had not even heard about. You had Don Lee or Sonia Sanchez, and particularly Nikki Giovanni went to a campus, they were virtually... What? Made stars. I use that word and people jump down my throat because they felt that, "Why you praising Nikki?" And Nikki does write profound poetry, they're telling me and "Haki, you know, he's very rigid, doesn't have any humor." That's not the point. Dr. Stephen Hen...: The students came and ate them up, you know? And when you hear Nikki Giovanni in Howard's Cramton Auditorium, which seats... How many? Thousands of people, you hear Nikki reading a poem and says, "If Aretha had said it, it would have been done." And there's this tremendous surge of empathy from the crowd, because they knew if Aretha had say, had said "March on the damned Capitol and burn it fucking down," they'd have done it. Dr. Stephen Hen...: And that has to be part of any kind of evaluation because this is what they were able to do at the time, you see. Now we become dishonest when we say, "Well, you're putting us in a historical box." Well, don't you realize... Don't these people realize that when you read this sonnet by Milton, "Avenge, O Lord, thy sordid sermons," The Piedmont Massacre, you have to put that in a historical perspective in order to recapture the energy, you see? So this is something that is part of our function as transmitters of culture and teachers of literature. Dr. Stephen Hen...: That's what the poetry was like. What the poetry was like, again, there's an account by Lorenzo Thomas in Who Do Six and a Half... That's the publication... Who Do Six and a Half, that's the number six and a half. Ahmos Zu-Bolton is one of the new young poets out of the South, and he has this account, Lorenzo Thomas is a Southern writer, and he has this account of his going to Newark with Ishmael Reed to hear Baraka read. And I'll just read just portion of that, if I can find it for you, because this is the kind of data that we need, and frankly, the poets are just giving it to us, you know? I mean, they give you trips. I'm trying to get information about them, but they would kick you very hard, if you make mistakes. Dr. Stephen Hen...: But this is that account. They were somewhere at a club, listening to people... Listening to music, but they got tired. "We split from there, too. We walked through the cold, quiet streets, a few blocks to Union Hall or community center, sort of place where Amiri Baraka was reading feverish, political poems to a handful of cheering, working class black folks, same kind of folks we had left in the Blue Notes, but these were their mamas, sisters, little brothers, and wives, cousins, nieces, nephews of the big talkers in the red lipped private bar." Dr. Stephen Hen...: And here is part of the whole scene, "Baraka was dressed in a flowing, big sleeved dashiki and a Moroccan knit cap. He was shouting and singing his poems. One of them was a severe, but lyrical j'accuse aimed at the horde of colored political hacks sucking up behind Hugh Addonizio, the Newark mayor who later went to jail for extortion. The poem was cold. I mean, when we say cold, the poem was cold. Baraka cynically employed images from popular literature, the doxology and street slang and a skein of tight words stitched in acid." Dr. Stephen Hen...: I read just a part of it. This is Baraka's poem. "We have a nigger in a cape and cloak, Flying above the shacks and hoes, He has just won an election, [inaudible], his godfather. Praise God from whom all blessings flow, The nigger edges sidewise in the light breeze, His fingers scraping nervously in his palms. He has had visions with visions, with commercials, change rattles in his pocket. He is high up, Look, he signals, turns back out for cheers. He swoops. The wop is waving, wave wop." Dr. Stephen Hen...: Now, perhaps rightly Robert Morris, singles out Baraka's attack on ethnic, other ethnic groups, and of course Baraka not only attacks Italians, he attacks people with Jewish ancestry and so forth and so on. But that is part the reality of the situation, and one of the things you have in the '60s is people saying, "Well, you know, all white people aren't friendly, all white people aren't hostile." And because the white person happens to be a Jew, does not necessarily mean that he is sympathetic to you. Dr. Stephen Hen...: So these are things that were frankly hidden before. The audience, just like a church congregation said, amen, when the poem was finished. Speaking directly, you might call them a rabble-rouser here, but the fact of the matter is that he was communicating. Dr. Stephen Hen...: "Ishmael Reed and I sat there with eyes bugged out, wondering, if the nigger was mad, talking like that, talking that talk." You see now, that's part of how the thing was received. There's another account- Dr. Stephen Hen...: That's part of how the thing was received. There's another account which I won't read. I won't read now of Yusuf [Rahman] reading and A. B. Spellman, who is a very good jazz critic and is becoming a good art critic and a very fine poet. Describes the ritualistic nature character of a performance and performance was the word of Yusuf Rahman with the Sun Ra Arkestra, spraying his incense and getting people into that thing. If you've seen or heard or participated in one of these ritual dramas, the atmosphere, the ambiance of it are created by incense and chanting and so forth. The kind of thing that Barbara Ann Teer used to do and still does. Then you have some idea of what I mean. So you see the poetry deliberately breaking down the barriers between the real and the imagined. Between various what dimensions of reality and sucking us into this really recreating ritual. Well, that's what the poetry was like. Dr. Stephen Hen...: I'll make this one further personal observation because it's something that was said to me this morning that triggered that. Some of these poets were tragic. They died very young or had nervous breakdowns and all that. And they did that because they were really serious. I think of one young man who died at age 28, automobile accident. We called him Dante. His name was Donald Graham and who was in the John Oliver Killens workshop and Fisk. Well, I remember Dante is very bright. He was a musician, he was a painter and he's also a poet. But he was a student at the time, 1969. Came to Morehouse where I was for a poetry reading. And this was the poets and developing colleges series that the national endowment funded. Galen Williams was director of that. And these professional poets came to these small colleges in the South and it really energized a lot of kids. And one of those was Dante, but he met Larry Neal for the first time and they just struck it off like that. Dr. Stephen Hen...: And made me feel good because some of the things that they were talking about, I been thinking about them 10, 15 years was old then. And Dante said, "Man, it was just like, when I met Larry, our minds just reached out and shook hands." That was really beautiful. So they set up [inaudible] I left them at two o'clock in the morning. They must've set up until 3:00 or 4:00 or no o'clock in the morning. Anyhow, the next evening they had memorized [inaudible 00:00:33:05] one of his poetry. And after the formal presentations of the poets, they got up and started improvising on one another's work. It wasn't particularly good, but it was courageous. And some of it came off and I have a tape of that, which Larry was kind enough to give to me, which I'll make some use of hopefully sometime. But that's again, one of the things. So everybody was writing poetry. That's another thing. Everybody was writing poetry and they didn't care whether it was bad. Dr. Stephen Hen...: Not that it was bad, you know what I mean? Bad. I mean, bad. But everybody was writing poetry and you didn't have to be a special kind of person to write poetry. Poetry belonged to be to everybody. And that was very important. So it was more of an otherwise noisy and intense spell of instant black macho image [inaudible] making. Well, [inaudible] is there anything from that period, which seems to have lasting merit? And as I go through this, I think that I'll very strongly imply that there's a great deal, which will probably have lasting merits. Was the poetry pure hate-filled propaganda? I don't think so, much of the poetry was love poetry. Much of the poetry of Sonia Sanchez is love poetry, much of the poetry [Baraka] is love poetry. You see much of the poetry was love poetry. I mean love for man and woman, love for family, sexual love, love for people, love ideas. Just a lot of that. Dr. Stephen Hen...: It was a propaganda. It was great [inaudible]. Some of the propaganda was good. Some of it was written for the occasion. And before I forget it, I realized that I'm rambling. Before I forget, I want to say that there were two kinds of black poetry, really of this period. One was a poetry of black power, which I mentioned at the beginning. The other was a poetry, what should I say? Poetry of the forms of things, unknown variety. They were not necessarily in conflict, but of course, occasionally they were. And some poems were written just for the moment, hand grenade poems and Ted Jones used to call them. But other poets, including people like Sonia Sanchez wrote their poetry to be remembered. And I think much of this will be remembered. Well, finally, is there a future for black poetry? Obviously, I think there is. Before I forget it again, you have a part to play in the future. The first thing you can do to ensure a future for black poetry is to ensure a future for the poets. Dr. Stephen Hen...: Ensure a future for the poets. And don't let our poets go the way musicians have been going all too long, all too often. Invite the poets to your campuses read the poet's by their works. The fact that [Don Lee] sells 200,000 volumes of poetry is important. That's another index of how they were received. Well, is there a future for black poetry? Well, I think that there can be. Let me just go back to my text briefly. The phrase question, there's the question with regard to whether the poetry... What the poetry was like. This can be answered by stating that the chief characteristic of the new poetry was an acute racial consciousness, which was directed toward the black community itself. Its aim was the raising of the consciousness, both politically and culturally of that community. The technical strategies took many forms, some traditionally black, which if I had to point out. And some from other sources. Dr. Stephen Hen...: In understanding of the new black poetry. I tried to present a representative sampling of that poetry. It ranges from the lyrical to the declamatory to the jazzy. Much of it is public, much of it is didactic. Some of it is crude by any technical standards. Some of it is accomplished by traditional Western type technical standards. While some of it has to be realized in the aesthetic context of the black lifestyle, which I have taken some time and talked about. The poets, realize this business of presenting the poem in the context of a black lifestyle. They realized this demand when they wrote, but they were also aware that the demands of excellence arising out of the black experience was ultimately related to what one can call a universal concern with precision. In the first issue of Umbra winter 1963, the editors make the following statement, "Umbra and [Dasein]." I'm sidetracking them. Umbra and Dasein where two of the earliest publications to reflect this new consciousness. And this is the reason why I'm talking about Umbra and Dasein. Dr. Stephen Hen...: Dasein appeared in 1961, Umbra appeared first, 1963. Now in the winter of 1963, first issue, the editors make this statement, "Umbra is not another haphazard, little literary publication. Umbra has a definite orientation. Number one, the experience with being Negro, especially in America and two that quality of human awareness often called a social consciousness. We do not exist for those seemingly selected perennial bestsellers and literary spokesmen of the race situation." Those are in quotes, "Who are currently popular in the commercial press and slick in group journals. There are unpublished and infrequently published ethnic writers whose works are excellent, important, and often foster periods of those adopted few with which the standard press habitually and expediently offense, the public. Umbra exists to provide a vehicle for those outspoken and useful writers who present aspects of social and racial reality, which may be called uncommercial, unpalatable, unpopular, unwanted. But cannot with any honesty, be considered not essential to a whole and healthy society." Dr. Stephen Hen...: "Because Umbra is not preoccupied with monetary or prestige considerations. It can afford to offer a platform to writers who are young, unknown, or too hard on society. The subject matter of accepted journals is too often dictated by the fears of the backers and the views of readers, whom those journals fear to lose." And this is just a crucial clinching statement, "We maintain no iron-fisted bigoted policy of preference or exclusion of material. Umbra will not be a propagandistic psychopathic by ideological ax grinder. We will not print trash, no matter how relevantly it deals with race, social issues or anything else. We are not a self deemed radical publication. We are as radical as society demands the truth to be. We declare an unequivocal commitment to material of deliver integrity and artistic excellence." And people don't read those things. One reason Umbra, early issues of Umbra are hard to get. That's again, one of the things that scholars need to do. Dr. Stephen Hen...: The foreword concludes with a brief statement of the origin of the publication and its method of self support, along with a solicitation for manuscripts. The final words are, "Umbra exists for you." That's a very enlightening statement because it shows that from the beginning, these writers were concerned with the business of craft and so forth. And Umbra as I said was one of the earlier publications. And you can trace this through the history of black American poetry. I can go back to somebody like Albery Whitman, who said that he's going to write and what does he call this? And the [inaudible] stance. I forgot what he called that. But he said that eventually a Negro, was going to write in all of those forms. So that has been part of our history, not only in literature, but in other things as well. The whole emphasis on meeting standards. From the Umbra forward it is clear that the editors felt that there are such things as literary excellence and literary integrity and that moreover they will not incompatible with the primary orientation of the publication. Dr. Stephen Hen...: So the, "Experience with being Negro, especially in America and that quality of human awareness, often terms social consciousness." It is also clear that the youthful editors are not intimidated by the literary establishment and feel that they are perfectly capable of distinguishing excellent from inferior work. And in anticipation of critics like those mentioned earlier, they do not equivocate on the question of message and package. "We will not print trash," they insist, "No matter how relevantly it deals with race, social issues or anything else." Well, that is certainly plain. An examination of the contents of the first issue of Umbra indicates to this writer at least that the judgment of the editors was sound for the most part. Although some of the work is amateurish, some of it has novel merit. The work of Calvin C. Hernton, David Henderson, Roland Snellings who later became Askia Muhammad Touré, and Lerone Bennett merits particular attention. Here's Lerone Bennett. Dr. Stephen Hen...: And you see, when you start putting these names together, these people aren't dummies. Robert F. Moss [Inaudible] these lines, and Hernton's, the long blues reveal a genuine talent, which is worthy of serious consideration. And this is just a little of that. I'm not saying this is a perfect poem or anything it's just a natural poem. But it gives you some idea that here's a real poet or a man who can become a poet. "And sun or cold, the weather picks scarecrow bones clean. I am tired of ghost of water and willow years, tired of porn shop dreams and the tumult of clashing swords locked in my jaw bones. So long I have yearned to shake the chimney sweepers set from the marrow of my mind and sail beyond these cutting blades with that horror a fellow knew. Sail beyond the sensuous strat of sickness unto death." And that is a beautiful line, "Sail beyond the sensuous strat of sickness unto death." Well, that's the blues, that's the blues re-factored through this language, "The sensuous strat of sickness and death." Dr. Stephen Hen...: [inaudible] side of Hernton and of the Umbra people. And a poem called Flood Tide, which he dedicates to the black tenant farmers of the South. Roland Snellings shows us a [inaudible] with the work of Langston Hughes and Sterling Brown. Refracted, of course, through his own experience in the South. And this is, you can and see the [inaudible] antecedents. I'm not going to tell you your business. "The rain comes and washes the green mountains, floods the cotton land. The rain comes, ruins the tobacco, kills the livestock, making a mockery of our prayers for rain. The killer rain comes, the river is a raging madman. The river breaks our hearts." That simplicity has its roots in other American things. But the point is this sparse realistic language is also a special aspect of so-called folk speech. And Sterling Brown makes a lot of that. I mean the pithiness, the directness and the fantastic common sense of folk speech. Not as simple as it seems. Dr. Stephen Hen...: Tom Dent a Southerner, New Orleans. He's very important, very open, very generous full of life. Tom Dent, the editor captures that special flavor of black speech and a brief poem entitled Miles. This is of course it's Miles Davis. "'Can't nobody blow like Miles,' says JT." We don't know who JT is, we don't even care, but we do know that's black because it's [inaudible]. What does JT stands for? "JT. That's all it is. JT, that's my name." "'Can't nobody blow like Miles,' says JT. It's because he knows how to be low down, but he's sweet too. 'Cutting the [inaudible] fours. The exceptional Mr. Davis goes to town,' says the record album. Hell, Miles is funky. That's because he's dark brown." And that which seems to be a non-sequitur is so. I can't explain, but there it is, "And that's because he's dark brown." What the hell has that got to do with anything except [inaudible]? Dr. Stephen Hen...: Yeah. Well, this laconic humor is typical, not only of Dent, but of the pithy oral tradition in which he is deeply emerged. Another example is found in Julian Bond's famous couplet, and it has two versions. One in Rosey Pool, anthology and the original. And the original, it says, "Can't," and Rosey Pool's version says, "Cannot." "Look at that girl shake that thing. We can't all be Martin Luther King." Another example of the black oral tradition appears in a poem by Leroy McLucas entitled Kicks. This is more contemporary than Julian Bond, which is rooted in children's games and blues and advance. The expression, "Shake that thing." For example, hearkens back to Little Sally Walker, the ring game. Especially to, "Shake it to the East, shake it to the West, shake it to the very one that you love the best." And Julian Bond probably had Ray Charles' song in mind when he said, "See that girl with the red dress on, she can do the bread line all night long. Well all right." Dr. Stephen Hen...: And exhortation, "Shake that thing now." Martin Luther King is great. Is a great gift of world sanity besides the sister with the red dress on just shaking that thing. And one gathers of course that the action is not nonviolent. Imagine like that. And [inaudible] poem, the style is the rap. Kicks refers to shoes, but may also refer to good times. "Hitting 14, half the split, sold installed, the spatters mop bitches floors. Thereafter, Stacy Adams [inaudible] leave didn't matter. I was clean." That was very cryptic, very compressed and captures the racy flavor of black speech. I was in North Carolina, was knocking around essential [inaudible] some years ago, child's race program. And I was having lunch with some students and the students were just clowning around. And this guy was talking about how he went into the store and the guy didn't want to wait on him because he was black. Dr. Stephen Hen...: He said, "Man, I was going to pick up those Stacy Adams shoes. That yellow..." Recite all these band names, "and beat him on the head." Just like that [inaudible] all off. And a step virtuosity that I try to talk about and understand with that culture. And that's what the basis of this is. There's also a poem and the [inaudible] by Robert F. Williams. And I see on the program, it's going to be here. It's fantastic. We were so close to this and we forget you see, because this is a man who is in exile from 1961 until recently. A man who put his life on the line, who said that the way to do this now y'all is to get you some guns. But in this poem, he's talking about an ocean row of peace. It just shows you that peace and on the fence were concerns that live side by side. That's an old fashioned kind of poem. "We are the people silenced and meek and righteous indignation. Let us speak. You must put an end to tension and fright and those who plot terror and the shadows of the net." Dr. Stephen Hen...: "We have heard enough of better dead than red." So not withstanding the fact, it's an old fashioned point. This is 1963. And since 1961 Robert F. Williams had been living in exile in Cuba where he had escaped from the Ku Klux Klan. Let's not forget Q in 1962, where he had escaped from the Ku Klux Klan in his native Monroe, North Carolina. And his book Negroes with Guns advertised. And that was advertised in this premier issue of Umbra, was on the back. [inaudible] I brought all this mess to let you know that I'm serious about what I'm trying to say. It's hilarious. "Negroes with guns. Some comments on Negroes." [inaudible] where he says, "'The issues raised in this crucial book by Robert Williams, Martin Luther King and Truman Nelson, deserve their fullest and calmest, the most honest discussion.' Statement by the Lorraine Hansberry, John Killens, Ossie Davis and Hammond Speaks." And that means that these people are serious and the book is serious. Dr. Stephen Hen...: Well, the book also contains statements by Truman Nelson and King. All of this is significant because it helps to locate the moral and political as well as the aesthetic concerns of Umbra and the [inaudible]. Aesthetically, the inclusion of the Williams poem implies that it progressive political stance was more important than a poetic conservative strategy. And it would be difficult to blame the editors for Williams was the core [inaudible]. And here he was including a poem in their very first issue. It shows a great deal about Williams to be on top of that [inaudible] occurrence and of the editors who being aware of his presence. And let us not forget that when they start talking about structure and style and tone and gradations of this, that, and the other. Because these are gradations of the human spirit, perennially political context. Self-defense. Self-defense, the deacons for justice and self-defense. The Black Panthers [inaudible] and Lowndes County then in California. Dr. Stephen Hen...: Askia Muhammad Touré who reminds you to go back and look at that article in the New Republic. There was ample and Williams had shown that armed defense, armed self-defense was effective and essential. In addition, that was ample literary precedent for armed self-defense in African American literature. Besides the counts of slave revolts in addition to a work-like Van Thompson's, back then there was of course, Sterling Brown's The Ballad Of Joe Meek. And especially in the folk tradition, the tradition of the bad Nigga at the top of the heap standing Stagger Lee. And in real life, Jack Johnson, Nat Turner, and Malcolm X. Sonia has spoken to you already. Sonia has talked to you about the importance of Malcolm X to the writers and the musicians, everybody in that period. You remember Dudley Randall's and Margaret Burroughs', book on Malcolm X. That's a milestone. And if you have those things, keep them and pass them onto your children. Dr. Stephen Hen...: So we're viewing this first issue of Umbra. Lets us see in microcosm, many of the concerns and the strategies of the poetry, which was to be so characteristic of the 60s. In some we see the racial consciousness, the political and social aspects of liberation and a deep sympathy with and understanding of the lives of ordinary black folks. We especially note the continuing interest in black music and the exploration of contemporary black speech as a medium of poetic expression. What we have is a formal involvement. I mean, formal in whatever terms, whatever gradations of the word you want to apply to it, what we have as a formal involvement with the mulch, as Sterling Brown calls it, of the black experience. Later, this concern will be more consciously developed and will emerge with sharper political perspective as the Black Arts Movement all our purposes here of the new black poetry. Dr. Stephen Hen...: This new black poetry comes to fruition in the latter half of the decade. Because when you look at the publication dates of the anthologies beginning with the Black Fire, from 1968 on. And when we talk about the 60s, what we're really talking about is the 60s and the first part of this decade you see. It is important to note also the names of the contributors of this first issue of Umbra among them, editor Tom Dent founder for Free Southern Theater, Julian Bond information officer for SNCC, who was not a seat in the Georgia Legislature for the standing against the Vietnam war. And you have to read the newspapers of the period and see how Julian Bond was maligned and see how Martin Luther King was maligned in the, can't call the constitution liberal, but certainly a moderate paper, in the moderate Atlanta constitution. Harris King, and a host of bigots, including Ku Klux, Klan. And black power becomes the thing after '64. Dr. Stephen Hen...: Here is a cartoon in two sections, one, that's the various ethnic components of American society building up the building. Somebody with a [inaudible] hat comes on, he's tooting [inaudible]. Somebody with some other identification mark comes in, puts the ladder up against the wall. And then here comes this huge shambling shadow blackness the [inaudible] down. And that was the Atlanta constitution. And that's part of the context of this. How much of Dante is lost because we don't know who those enemies of his were? Those obscure factions in Italian politics of that time. Julian Bond information officer for SNCC, who was not a seat in the Georgia Legislature for standing against the Vietnam war and who was later nominated for vice president of the United States at the Democratic National Convention was that 1968. I forgot to check it. Lerone Bennett, who almost single-handedly, you may not [inaudible] of this spot of a vowel of popular interest in African and African-American history with his series of articles in Ebony Magazine. Dr. Stephen Hen...: Later on Life imitated Ebony, you remember that? And then Life did a series and imitation of Ebony wasn't as good because Lerone wasn't doing it. But that series became Before the Mayflower. And the historians later started sharing, before the Mayflower did this because it [inaudible]. But they weren't getting to people, but Lerone was. Well, that was published in 1962. And it became a must item in black history and black studies courses. Other notable names of David Henderson, the youngest member of the group who was 20 at the time and one of the most gifted. But curiously in this first issue of Umbra, David Henderson's poems are very abstract, very smooth, very lyrical. And you get some hint of what he can do, but you don't get very much. Calvin C. Hernton, called the most gifted by some of the members of the group. Raymond Patterson, who has since developed into a fine lyrical poet, Joe Johnson, who with Ishmael Reed later established Reed, Cannon & Johnson publishing company, which produced among other important items Yardbird Reader. Dr. Stephen Hen...: And Lorenzo Thomas a fine poet, who has now producing very important essays [inaudible] alluded to one. And deserving of special interest, special mentioned is Roland Snellings. And I've already talked about Askia, but he was the person who was very influential in bringing LeRoi Jones into the Black Arts Movement from the village to his people. Under both names Snellings was to make important political and aesthetic statements, especially regarding the political and aesthetic significance of black popular music. He was also a founding editor of Soulbook, a revolutionary publication, which linked the black struggle in America with a lot of struggle against imperialism in the third world. Touré also helped to pioneer a rhapsodic delivery style for the new poetry. And a similar style for the critical and [inaudible]. And that's important because Touré feels very put upon at times. And because he helped pioneer of these things. And he wrote me a long letter, it wasn't nasty, but he had to put my coat down because I'm ignorant, but the material wasn't there. Dr. Stephen Hen...: He said, "Well, I wrote this the and I helped teach the brother how to do this." And it was so because Baraka would say, and I've heard him say publicly that, this man, he's really the pioneer. So you have all of that complexity- Dr. Stephen Hen...: ...the pioneer. So you have all of that complexity, I'm trying to say, in the art from the very beginning because I'm talking about these two publications because they were the leading publications. And you have all of this complexity then. And you can very well know that this complexity multiplied as many other influences came into the picture. But the delivery style is important. And of course, there were other people who were developing their styles, Yusuf [Rahman] and Larry Neal among others. Now I'll talk about briefly [inaudible], published by Howard University, 1961. This is when I first became aware of some of the ramifications of this movement because I was then in Richmond, Virginian Union, and we had something which we called our fine arts festival in April. You remember [inaudible] don't you? [inaudible] They've been going out for about 27 years. Wow, wow. Fantastic. Dr. Stephen Hen...: And that was 1961. And here are these young guys from Howard, I had a student who was in love with one of the guys. [inaudible] you talk about all those old people here. Here are these young guys right there in Howard. And they came down and started reading this... And reading poetry was new. Now, it wasn't especially and exclusively a black phenomenon because we do have the enormous popularity of Dylan Thomas on campuses. And you also have at this time, the Beats. So all of those things were sort of overlapping, but let me call your attention to the fact that the Beats themselves were drawing inspiration from black music in particular. The black music, Ginsberg talking about writing a [inaudible]. And it's very complex. So just to dismiss the whole thing, the Beats have been dismissed too, summarily. First issue does not appear at [inaudible] 61. Dr. Stephen Hen...: It was called A Quarterly Journal of the Arts and was broader in scope than the first issue of Umbra. Their purpose, it was the purpose of a group who called themselves the Howard Poets. They said their purpose was, "The aim of [inaudible] is to bring an exhibition space." Notice that, an exhibition space. That's another concept all together. "An exhibition space for contemporary art and all the media that can be reduced to the printed page." Now they are aware of all kinds of technical problems. "There is thus no overt political stance or social concern that's manifested in Umbra, the poetry itself occupies only about one quarter of the space, in contrast Umbra occupies over 90% of the space." Design was more professional looking and it was typeset, they had more money than the first issue of Umbra. Then a handsome black and white cover, then abstract design in silver, which was reminiscent of [Rothco]. The title itself is a German word for [inaudible] and reflects the existential orientation of some of the editors, especially that a Percy Johnston. Dr. Stephen Hen...: One of the advisors to the journal was the Harvard Philosophy, [inaudible]. Other members of [inaudible] was still in Sterling Brown, Arthur Davis, Owen Dodson. This writer has no specific information regarding the influence of the board upon the publication except Sterling Brown's recollection of the group was less radical, less political than the members of the Howard University Lyceum. Some of whom have become highly influential in SNCC and included Edward Brown, the brother of H. Rap Brown, Cortland Cox and others. Stokely Carmichael, Brooke [inaudible], Rap too participated in some of the weekly discussions, which included among other philosophical and literary topics, [inaudible] the stranger. Later, the SNCC leaders, were to thank Brown and the other discussion leaders for preparing them to deal with the illogical moral questions, which arose in their interaction with their Northern white counterparts in SNCC. Dr. Stephen Hen...: Well, that has all kinds of meaning. And if you want to do... Or if you want your students to do a original master's thesis, or dissertations or whatever, let them... See we have to create the primary documents, the primary documents and people's hands. And this day of electronic [inaudible], we have to pull out. We have Standing By on tape. We have now over 14 hours or so of Standing By on tape. I'm not going to let you hear it until I write my books but it's there. But think of the people. And again, it's that generational cross over, which fairly complicated the thing. When Gwendolyn Brooks gets re vilified and Margaret Walker gets back into the thing. [inaudible] gets back into it because he never was out of it. But people were believing that here is something they had. The movement just sprung full blown from the [inaudible]. I suppose I'd have to say and make a consistent. But there was a living generation of people who had like Sterling Brown and others done their pioneering job. Dr. Stephen Hen...: So now with regard to [Dasein] a certain sense of historical anchorage of institutional extension and tradition thus appears in the face issue of Dasein. For the very least, the names of advisory board numbers were established. They were all important authors and scholars, all the master teachers and this is an important thing. These were master teachers. They had an Owen Dodson in the class, they had a Sterling Brown in the class, they had Arthur Davis in the class. That is incalculable. And we start evaluating the history of black people in this country, and the role of the black teacher. Or to be generous, the role of teacher in black colleges and high schools. One must assume about the teachers, about the advisory board members, that they felt a certain confidence in the abilities of a youthful editors. Stanley Brown and Arthur Davis aren't going to put their names on anything if they don't feel it has some kind of merit. Dr. Stephen Hen...: In a statement in memoriam, Richard Wright, professor [inaudible], Wright movingly off his friendship with the novelist. He concludes with these words, "[inaudible] at times. Betrayed by the turn of events at others, caustic and acerbic with critics, Wright nevertheless made his influence felt whenever he appeared." And this is the clincher, "His work will be carried on by his friends, his fellow artists and his family." Now coupled with the poem by Clyde Taylor, who is one of our better critics. A poem entitled His Gift was Fire, which Clyde Taylor dedicated to the memory of Richard Wright. Dasein, thus implies its political, implies and artistic sympathies. But the porch is self-consciously literary with exception of Taylor's poem and other [inaudible] Lance Jeffers and Owen Dodson. These exceptions include the initial version of Lance Jeffers' My Blackness is the Beauty of this Land, and Leroy Stone's famous Calypso, the sensitive handing of the West Indian speech, rhythm and imagery. Dr. Stephen Hen...: That's another thing. In that first issue of Dasein, you have three of the poets are West Indian and the orientation is different. The orientation is different. For most part, they were more scholarly. And in the case of Leroy Stone, you have the use of black speech from another part of the world. And one of the things that I anticipate happening in the future is that there will be a greater interchange among the various components of the black diaspora. And that the poets will draw upon the fact that there is as much difference at times between black English that's spoken in Jamaica, and black English that's spoken in Harlem as there is between Italian and Spanish. And they will use that. And it wouldn't be detrimental to their cause to draw upon what they can learn from James, Joyce and other people. There are other competent poems, but significantly the, "Blackest poems," in the issue about Lance Jeffers," who at that time was in his 40s and Owen Dodson, who at that time it was in his 50s. Dr. Stephen Hen...: The oldest contributors and both faculty members. Well, I will summarize some of the... But I have to say about the second issue, which is really two issues combined. But in a prelude to a collection of poems called [inaudible] for Girl and Convertible, we get a clue as to the arts and for the term Dasein and why it was used as the title of the publication. Percy Johnston was very much under the influence of T.S. Eliot. And he writes in that vein. So you can understand some of this, "The Genesis of a title of a [inaudible]. It seems like in the title poem, [inaudible] and Zen. Illusive objects of a poets search." And the final wisdom is, "Go back to the expresso houses and art galleries and the Potomac and Rock Creek park where you contracepted Zen. Grasp design when you scan [inaudible] pages of movie views and comic pages, diminutive psychologist." Well, this is Greenwich Village [inaudible] to Howard University. Dr. Stephen Hen...: And you can see what I'm trying to suggest that if you take these two primary and premier publications, you see a complex of influences. But both were nominally, at least black. The Howard Poets will not make a clear statement of the new black consciousness until 1963, with the publication of an anthology of their poetry edited by Walter [inaudible] and titled Burning Spear and anthology of not Afro-American by Afro-Saxon poetry. The title [inaudible], and translates the name of Jomo Kenyatta. The father Kenyan independence about half of it is engaged poetry, which is no longer hung up on Zen and Design. The cover drawing shows a jazz combo, the basic inspiration perhaps of the group and notable in this anthology is [inaudible] rhapsodic poem, A Song for Sonny Rollins which is in the anthology. And Johnston's in memorium prayers. But the finest clearest statement comes from Leroy Stone's Flamenco Sketches, which is here. Dr. Stephen Hen...: And notes from the cubicle of a disgruntled jazz man, both [inaudible] with precise knowledge of black music. And it's very interesting because they talk about court intervals. You see, they talk about nights in 13th and all of that. [inaudible] very much more because we're in a chapel. But that's very important because we'll see that some of the criticism also starts to pick up some of the language of music criticism. When Larry Neal talks about a poem, Sheets of Solid with references to [inaudible]. But that's taken from... The cliche is really of the critics. 1963 was an unforgettable year. The president of United States was assassinated, four little black girls blown to bits in Birmingham, [inaudible] died for his belief in democracy, Martin Luther King did a massive launch on Washington and proclaimed his dream to the world. In New York Umbra made a statement about blackness and politics and art. Dr. Stephen Hen...: And in Washington DC, the Howard Poets realized that Dasein was mirror self-indulgence if they ignored the real life force around them and in them, which their people were calling soul. And were trying to objectify by something they would soon call black poems. 1964 the Freedom Summer. It was Watts 1964? Audience: '65. Dr. Stephen Hen...: 65? And '65 also Malcolm X and Sonia told you the shattering impact of the death of Malcolm X. Of course, this was a double explosion and Malcolm X died. Certain hard people turned around. Baraka came out of the village. People wrote [inaudible] and so forth. Don't Cry and Scream in '68. "What can a poor black women do to destroy America?" [inaudible] Yeah, of course. I'll have to summarize this, Baraka was the poet who articulated most of the tendencies. But to bring the two publications and the two groups together, Dasein in Washington, DC and Umbra in New York. Again, we come to Baraka. Baraka was in [inaudible] before the Dasein group. But he and A.B. Spellman knew Sterling Brown, they were some of the few people who were interested in [inaudible]. Sterling tells you of all the problems that he had with various people that's not [inaudible] and so forth and so on. So you had these little seminars at his home. Dr. Stephen Hen...: Baraka and A.B. Spellman I saw them, I have a picture of Baraka talking to Sterling about [inaudible]. And just, well, I don't want to get too much of a point besides running out of time. Of course, Baraka in 1963 wrote a very important book, or published a very important book, Blues People, Blues people. And before that, 1962, a very famous essay, [inaudible] again, deals with the connections between ideology music and the craft literature, the myth of a Negro [inaudible]. Now we don't want to say that this began with Baraka because it didn't, that's the whole history of that. Somebody needs to just to do a history of that idea. And it comes to summation kind of critical mass in the 60s. That is the relationship between the written and the music, or the relationship between the oral tradition, which includes the song, [Sermon], The song Sermon you see, and the literature. And you'd have to go back from Baraka to Sterling, to James Weldon Johnson and the people before that. Dr. Stephen Hen...: Or even to an anthology in 1925 with Robert [inaudible]. Was it the [inaudible] for the Negro. I forgot what it's called. But then you have that thing being pointed out. You have to go again to the folklorist. [inaudible], but anyhow, Baraka adds an important dimension to a tradition, which goes back eventually to the sources of the music itself. And these dimensions are etiology and craftsmanship. But again, James Weldon Johnson talked about the craftsmanship. What the limitations of the dialectical tradition, his introduction to Southern [inaudible] makes a critical judgment of efficacy, of Sterling Brown's experimentation. And of course, there's the monumental work of Langston Hughes. So a study of Baraka's poet development is indispensable to an understanding of the period. So if you want a good brief introduction, I call your attention to Kimberly Benston's, Baraka: The Renegade and the Mask, chapter four. Dr. Stephen Hen...: Now let me just go very quick. Stop me whenever you want to. If I come to a logical place, I'll try to stop, but I know that I'm running over time. What should I do? Audience: [inaudible]. Dr. Stephen Hen...: Okay, but I'll stop briefly. Let you ask questions, that's probably the best way to get this out. Okay. Robert Moss talks about the poetry and it says, "Perhaps the last important accommodationist... The eldest statesmen among black poets, notably Robert Hayden, Melvin Towson, Benton [inaudible] achieved recognition from the literary establishment, by adjusting their timber and rhythm. Their style and vocabulary to the requirements of mainstream [inaudible]. Although the subject matter was sometimes Rachel. Perhaps the last important accommodationist was Baraka, a competent Beat poet who was beached by the receding currents of the short little movement in the early 60s. Taking the technique of Ginsberg and company, a declamatory voice, deliberate formlessness, street language, and fusing them to virulent outburst of racial protest. Baraka was able to found a new school of poetry." But as I have tried to indicate, that's not the case because, in Baraka's very early poetry. We see his concern with racial things. Although he's quite aware and states is influences, theoretical and otherwise Olsen and others. Dr. Stephen Hen...: He still was drawing upon another tradition. "As a brief examination of Umbra shows the school, if you want to call it that, was already formed when Baraka came into the picture in 1964." And as I said, he acknowledged that. "There is, in other words, a complex tradition of Afro-American poetry of which the mood of the 60s was what the latest and logical development. Now the reaction [inaudible] is highly different from the earlier reaction of [inaudible]. Let's not forget Dr. Reading, "Not only to Baraka and Larry Neal, but also specifically to Burning Spear by the Howard Poets 1963." I don't have a precise reference number. It wasn't the Afro-American [inaudible] he viewed this and he was very, very hostile. And that hurts because, you have to [inaudible] reading. And the problem was not merely racial. So if there's any point that I want to make is that the problem is not merely racial. It's largely that, but it's not merely that. It is aesthetic and fundamentally political. One needs only to cite the controversy surrounding Ginsberg's, How, and before that, [inaudible]. Dr. Stephen Hen...: And Baraka was there to be subjected to police violence and a miscarriage of justice in his native [inaudible], allegedly for possessing firearms. And of course at his trial in January '68, the judge read a poem entitled Black People. And the poem was used as evidence against him. In 1971 when I was finishing up a new black poetry, I wrote the [inaudible] for permission to quote a poem, I can't... Since I think about... I forget the name. But it's a point that uses the dozens technique and they will not let me use that because it put [Lyndon] Johnson, Ladybird Johnson to the dozens. [inaudible] may not like that. A lot of the things we read, we don't like, but it was done well, and it hurts so good." I think I will stop right there because there's no way for me to finish this. So you have the continuing challenge of a serious study of that work. We can't talk about the achievement though, because the data... Dr. Stephen Hen...: The whole story is not in, but if you want to do something original, almost anybody can do something original who tries to deal with this work and who tries to deal with it honestly. Who looks at the thing in a scientific man and says, "Well, I can deal with this on the basis of my background." But here is something which defies my explanation. He has an anomaly, "But how do I deal with it?" That's the scientific method. If you have this variation in a planet's orbit. What causes the variation? It's supposed to do... This was [inaudible] something else. Well, if you try to find it, you make that leap of imagination, which the creative mind, whether it's scientific or poetic mix. And when you make your justification, your justification becomes either a poem or theory. Now we have the poems, we need theory. Thank you. Dr. Stephen Hen...: Thank you very much. [inaudible] I'd like to the take time out for a commercial message. The message is that I'm very happy to be here and especially to be on a program, with Vincent [inaudible], because Vincent and I worked together at the Institute of the black world in Atlanta and whatever I try to do in understanding the new black poetry was a result of the support of the Institute. And that's part of the whole story too, because many of the ideas that were circulating in the 60s were crystallized the places like the Institute for the Arts and Humanities, Institute of the Black World. And many of those ideas had to be formulated in independent or ancillary kind of structures like the Institute of the Black World, because the established universities and colleges found it uncomfortable to Harbor those people who made those kinds of statements and those kinds of ideas. And again, if you are interested in the survival of these kinds of ideas, then you got to involve yourself in the survival of those institutions. Dr. Stephen Hen...: Talking to you today about the 60s, brought back a lot of memories. A lot of those are not altogether pleasant because the 60s was a period of very, very high tensions. This afternoon, I'm not going to talk for 30 minutes. I like to do is have you talk because I know you get tired of listening to people read out loud texts. But they are awesome things that I'd like to try to bring to some focus. To recapitulate briefly. What I wanted to say this morning was that it's much too early to be placing arbitrary stamps of evaluation or disapproval on an entire period like the 60s. It's much too early to be placing a rubber stamp on a very complex movement, like the Black Culture Movement of the 1960s. And it's much too early for all kinds of reasons. It's much too early because number one, all of the data have not come in. And that means in terms of the literature, that there were many people who published just a few things in the 60s and kept a lot of things unpublished. Dr. Stephen Hen...: It means also that if you take into consideration anybody's anthology, what you have is a highly selective viewpoint. And my particular case, I made no [inaudible] to say that I was presenting a thesis and I stand by the thesis. And of course the thesis has been criticized and some of the criticisms are good. And there are things that I would like to clarify, but it's much too early to say that the 60s was just a period of noisy black macho image making. It's much too early for that. I think after we have had the time and the space to distance ourselves from this period, you'll realize the very powerful catalytic impact of these young people and older people who came to intellectual and spiritual fruition in the 60s. If you think in terms of the Free Speech Movement, the women's movement, the gay movement. All of those movements, which helped to liberate many people, you'll see that much of that energy came off black college campuses first, then it was course spread to other campuses. Dr. Stephen Hen...: And when look at ourselves... And again, in reaction to the 60s and try to justify ourselves as pampered academicians, you say, who were not involved in action or not involved community. That those of us who did try to come to grips with these ideas with these circumstances were in effect doing what we were best prepared to do. And now we have another job and it seems to me that the job now is the continuing job of the university. And I'm very old fashioned because I still think that people like John Henry Newman have something to say about what a university is. Universities are by definition, of course, conservative. But a university, it seems to me provides a [inaudible] for all kinds of mess, bubbles and boils. But it has to be made of very important material, strong material. So to offer those contradictions will be kept into a mix. Now a [inaudible] can be made out of lead, a [inaudible] could be made of out of iron. Dr. Stephen Hen...: But in the 1970s, and what we're talking about is an electromagnetic battle, which we hold all off this tremendous plasma physicists talk about in some kind of shape. And the hope that we really eventually get a controlled spiritual theme on nuclear reaction. Okay? This is what I hope. And one of the things that... I talked already about some of the origins as I saw them in a brief probe of two of the important documents, journals coming out of this movement, namely Umbra and Dasein. I tried to show that the article that appeared in Saturday Review was a vicious attack. It was also an unfortunate manifestation of the arbitrary uses of political power masquerading has free speech and free enterprise. And there you had an attempt to give the coup de grâce to an entire period you see. And it was very, very unfortunate. You read in all probability, the responses that the Saturday Review allowed to be made. And these were of course, highly selective responses. Dr. Stephen Hen...: You had a little response by [inaudible] had prepared something much longer, which I saw, and some of which appeared in Yardbird Reader. You had a emotional outbursts by Nikki Giovanni, which was the way she wanted to deal with that. But then you had one of these old but effective devices, what I call, the melting pot ploy. Now you don't have to be Jewish ploy you see, in order to enjoy kosher food. Well, that's true. You don't have to be black in order to enjoy a black literature or even understand the part. That's not the point. The point was who controls the image. The point is whether or not we have to spend in America, the rest of our lives together, continually struggling with the real challenge or the real basis on which this country was founded. And the promise that it is not an old problem. All of you remember of course, images of Negroes in American fiction, that whole series of things, biased people like Sterling Brown, modernized by Jean Yellin... what's her last name? Jean Yellin... She's in front of... Audience: Jean Fagan Yellin. Dr. Stephen Hen...: Jean Fagan Yellin, right? And Sherley Anne Williams. So the thing is continuing, but the fact of the matter that it's not only in literature, but it's in the media. And when you think in terms of a satellite 2000 miles, apparently stationary, relatively stationary in space able to project cultural images all over the world. When you can think in terms of economic disparities between people, when you think in terms of cultural differences, when you think of the fact that we are living indeed on planet earth, spaceship earth. That we do have a capability to wipe out life on this earth, then things like image building are not frivolous. Things like telling the truth are not frivolous. Because it's not so much a matter of eliminating a people as it is a matter of eliminating the fact they ever were. So those are some of the things at the basis of a concerned. Now, many of the people who reacted to this literature, like some of the responses that I mentioned, made, essentially it seems to me, political counter reactions. Dr. Stephen Hen...: Not that everything that was stated in the 60s of course was good, or was even accurate. But the fact of the matter is this for me, if I have to say what I feel, the accomplishment of the cultural movements of the 60s was, the Black Cultural Movement. I would have to say, number one, it represented a major declaration of independence, a major declaration of independence. Everybody didn't make it, but it was made now whether people had problems with saying that, "I am black," rather than, "I'm Negro," or that, "I'm colored," or whatever. The fact of the matter is that that was said with such force and such conviction that the newspapers stopped- Dr. Stephen Hen...: With such force and such conviction that the newspapers stopped saying negro and they started saying black. Now, or those of us, those of you who are my age, it was important to how the word negro capitalized. And we all kinds of chills when we saw the word negro with a small N. But it was another thing, and it represents a shift in consciousness. But there was a further shift when black Americans started to say that we are an African people. Dr. Stephen Hen...: It didn't make a bit of difference whether you knew Yoruba, Swahili, Hausa or whatnot. The crucial awareness comes when we realize that on the American continents, we already have a prefiguring of what Africa can be and will be. An embryo. Because other factors are still on the continent. But we have a prefiguring. We already have a pan African culture in certain dimensions on the American continents. Dr. Stephen Hen...: And that is part of the part of the mix. And it's very, very complex. Another aspect of that, of course, is the jet travel. We have a very truncated sense of time and very truncated sense of space, so that it's possible now to talk to Africans face to face. You have dense concentrations of African cultures in a place like New York City, a place like Washington, D.C. In particular, and you have a new process going on. Dr. Stephen Hen...: And that is going to affect American culture. It's already affected American culture in all kinds of ways. Now, these people in the 60s were talking about the music because ... And they're using the music as a point of reference because music has ... Well, they use Walter Pater, this thing. It's, "Or I can aspire to the condition of music." Music can be very precise. At the same time, it's very abstract, you see. Dr. Stephen Hen...: And the people in the 60s and the 50s too were saying that this music carries a social and political fate, whether you interpret that as message on that. And people jived around and said that, "Music is supposed to be this. Lyrics is supposed to be the other. Politics and sociology are not relevant." Dr. Stephen Hen...: But the fact of the matter is that if you're going to play the Mozart sonatas, and if you don't realize what liberties a pianist could take in embellishing the music of that period, and if you insist on playing the thing as it's specifically written, then you aren't being true to the music. You aren't being true to the circumstances. Dr. Stephen Hen...: If you assume that Mozart's orchestra is the same as the symphony orchestra of the day, and you assume that what you're hearing is what they heard, then of course you're fooling yourself. So, what I'm saying is that all we have to do for dealing with this period, if we are honest in calling ourselves scientists, if we are honest and calling ourselves scholars and students - is what I call myself, a student - then of course, we would apply the same judgments, the same seriousness that we apply to anything else. Dr. Stephen Hen...: That's all the same. You see. So, we look at the data. Number one, the data's not in. Okay. Number two, how are we going to get it in? We have to go out and get it. Okay. [Lou Ella]. You have to go out and get it. Get it out of people's heads. Get it before people neigh. Get it before they get confused. Get it before they start lying. Get it before they start getting corrupted. It's part of it. We need to organize research. It's difficult. Dr. Stephen Hen...: I've just been talking to some people at lunch, and they are quite aware of the problems that are involved. But I'm pleased to find out that you are still hanging in there and that you realize the seriousness of the problem. Now, I have singled out poetry, not only because we have a certain kind of impatience with some other forms of writing, but because poetry has had a kind of exalted place in the West. A special ... Particularly, in modern times. Dr. Stephen Hen...: The poet has been separated from the rest of society. And you think of particularly the romantic conception of the poet as the alienated outsider, over against another conception, which was in another model, which was revitalized in the 60s of the poet as a spokesman for the people, the poet as a priest, the poor as a seer, the poet as a prophet. And these things were said specifically in deliberately by people like Larry Neal, by people like Baraka. Dr. Stephen Hen...: And you have to see. That's another dimension of the thing. You have to see the poet in the context of his statement. So, these are some of the dimensions that have to be brought to an understanding of the poetry, and by extension an understanding of the literature. A critical framework has not been established. A critical framework needs to be established. People took hard lines. Darwin was talking about the fact that people are talking about a black aesthetic. Dr. Stephen Hen...: I have been cleaned by various parties on various sides. But what I try to do is to take a position on the black aesthetic, so-called, to do a critique of the black aesthetic. And I thank Joseph Jenkins for saying in The Afro American Newspaper in the review, for understanding the new black poetry, that what I have tried to do is to make ... Just for us to do a position paper on the black aesthetic. And this is what I try to do. Dr. Stephen Hen...: But somehow or the other, those of us who are black and who teach literature and who teach English literature, American literature, whatnot, aren't schizophrenic. We read Shakespeare and understand Shakespeare. But when I study Shakespeare under Daniel Tillman, who is legendary in certain circles at Morehouse College in Atlanta ... And Tillman plays this big stack of 78 records, in which we hear the magnificent voice of Paul Robeson as a fellow. Dr. Stephen Hen...: That's a special kind of experience which I don't lose, because I need that. Not only that. When I talk about that, it's a part of my entire value system. When I'm sitting at the desk of the library at the University of Wisconsin, studying Chaucer ... I didn't like Chaucer in high school because the teacher couldn't teach it. Why should she? Our teacher couldn't teach it and now, what is this funny looking stuff? Dr. Stephen Hen...: But I'm reading it because Frederic Cassidy, who was born in Jamaica ... You understand. Frederic Cassidy seduced me into Chaucer. And I love Chaucer. But then I look at Chaucer, and I hear ... And Chaucer, when I read Chaucer, I'm hearing the people in my hometown talk. Do you understand what I'm saying? When I read John Millington Synge and that the Irish speech, it's not Irish speech to me. What I hear is black speech. Dr. Stephen Hen...: You see what I'm saying? So, my point of reference was not divided. My point of reference was black. So, the thing that bothered me in the January of 1968 issue of Negro Digest in, which the survey was made of 38 writers involving questions like the black aesthetic and role of artists and all that. The thing that bothered me was the fact that people were beating around the bush. They were talking about creating a black aesthetic. Dr. Stephen Hen...: Now, Larry [Neal] immediately endeared himself to me when he said, "You don't need to create one. One already exists." I said, "Hallelujah. I already knew that." All of us knew that. Do you understand? I know that although I have been away from Cuba's plight for all these many years. When I get excited, I sound just like where I'm from. I know that when I listen to my sister talk on the telephone and she's talking about food, you understand, she's talking poetry. Dr. Stephen Hen...: And I know that when [Vertamae Grosvenor] writes about food, she's writing about what my sister talks about. And my sister talks poetry, and Vertamae writes poetry, although it's pros. You understand what I'm saying? So, why I had hoped to do is to show, on a personal level ... I have never said this before in public, but you were so kind to make today and make me feel so much at home, I feel I can be personal. Dr. Stephen Hen...: But what I felt was that I'm going to, in my way, demonstrate the wholeness of my sensibility. And I think that what has happened, what happened in an ideological sense in the 60s was that the writers said, "We are going to state our wholeness." And Larry is very precise because he takes the archetypal metaphor of the boys and souls of black folks, double consciousness this business, and says what the poets, what writers are going to do is to break down the double consciousness. Dr. Stephen Hen...: And of course, after you do that, you start breaking down the barriers and various degrees of the relationship with self to the other society. And after you do that, you have created a kind of chaos, as far as your relationship to the rest of the thing is concerned. And you have to restructure all of that. You have to destroy in order to recreate. And so now, we are at that stage. Dr. Stephen Hen...: Well, a little beyond that stage, hopefully. But when people made the whole black aesthetic kind of argument, they said, "Well, we have to destroy this." But if you destroy, you have to destroy with a tool or you have to destroy with a weapon. So, a lot of the harsh language was necessary. We use hard words with ourselves. Often, harsh language was necessary and people had to be shocked. Dr. Stephen Hen...: And the hardest word of all, ladies and gentlemen, the hardest word we all used against ourselves was not nigga, because we had gotten too accustomed to that. The hardest word was black. The hardest word was black. You see? And when you confronted that blackness head-on, you detonated all of the energy that was there. So, what the poets and other cultural work was trying to do was to begin to harness that energy. You see? Dr. Stephen Hen...: And what people like Lou Ella, Lou [Emma] and Bettye, Steve Henderson, Darwin are trying to do is to say, "This is respectable, and let's deal with this. And if we deal with this honestly, the sensibilities of all of us can be large. And that we are serious about living together, and freedom, justice and all of that, then let's begin where we live." Dr. Stephen Hen...: Now, I just want to suggest something. My hope for the future of this poetry, some of the directions that we could maybe possibly go. These are some things I scribbled down at 3 o'clock in the morning my time, at 2 o'clock your time. So, if it's incoherent, it's probably because I was sleeping. [inaudible] time. These are some of the things. In the first place, it seems to me that there should be and would be further explorations of the oral tradition. That was the word that was thrown around. A lot of people talked about blues. Dr. Stephen Hen...: Hadn't heard five blues in their lives. [Lu Yamahalaway] has listed thousands, and so has Stephen Henderson, and so has Sterling Brown. But there were people who knew blues. Many of these poets are authorities on jazz, are authorities on jazz. And they were interested in that aspect of what they call the new music that drew on these roots. This is roots before Haley. Haley didn't invent roots. This is roots before Haley. Dr. Stephen Hen...: So there, I would expect a further development of the jazz idea, the idea of jazz as poetry. The idea of jazz as poetry. And of course, the idea of jazz as a form of expression of modern sensibility. It's absolutely indispensable for us to deal with at some point, because here you have a mechanism for unifying various aspects of what appears to be a chaotic universe. And you have a form which is perpetually changing, which is perpetually voracious, yet essentially the same. We have that. The danger is that the capitalistic system is similar. Dr. Stephen Hen...: And in the hands of the people who are running certain things, could be dangerous. And death can mimic life. Strontium- 90 can mimic calcium in the blood, in the marrow of the bones. That's the danger. So, we need to keep the two separate. I would expect if this poetry continues to be encouraged, linguistic explorations based on the vast varieties of black speech. I touched on this, this morning. Speech in the various islands of the Caribbean and Africa and elsewhere. Dr. Stephen Hen...: One of the very interesting things that came out of this movement was that we have had Africans living in this country for 10, 15 years who have their ancestral memories, their childhood memories, who have a full, firm grasp of the political situation, who understand American life, and who particularly swing with American speech and understand it. Black speech in particular. And people like Willy [inaudible] are very important. Dr. Stephen Hen...: People from the Caribbean like Edward Brathwaite. Brathwaite does linguistic explorations and speech that go down to the mythic level, which come to the point where you say, "Here is speech emerging from consciousness." He has a poem in which a person that's going through a ritualistic experience, a kind of a rebirth. And what you have in that is a kind of stammering from English through folk English, through a realization that the word is essentially what ... The word is African in this context. Dr. Stephen Hen...: So, the person stammers and ends up by saying Shango. And it's a fantastic to hear Brathwaite do that. A word that was introducing to the consciousness of the reading public in the 60s was [Nomo]. Okay. We owe the [hypothesization] to Janheinz Jahn's book, Muntu. And you can see if you're looking at just a few periodicals, see that word creeping into use. But it was always out there like a kind of foreign excrescence. Dr. Stephen Hen...: I remember a poem by S.E. Anderson in which Anderson used Nomo, Kinte, whatever the other words were, but it was sort of dead on the page. And he was recapitulating his memories, recapitulating his knowledge. But then my beautiful sister, June Jordan, wrote a poem which I read an Essence Magazine. You see, in Essence Magazine, not College Language Association Journal, not MLA, PMLA, not Blackwell, but Essence Magazine. A commercial magazine for black. Dr. Stephen Hen...: And June would forgive me because I can't read it. But there's just a portion of it in which she talks about the names of women, you see. And she ends up with the word Nomo. If I can find that, I'll read it. Oh, here it is. The poem is called Getting Down To Get Over. Getting Down To Get Over. Now, you know what that means. Don't you? "Mama, mama, mama." She doesn't begin with a Swahili word. She has to start Nomo, and she doesn't care if white people say mama or Chinese people say mama, because they are Americans. Dr. Stephen Hen...: She said mama, because she happens to have said mama when she was eight, nine, 10. Mommy, mama, mama, mama, mama, mammy, nanny. And she's made a conscious exploration. Granny, woman, mistress, sister, love, black girls, slave girl, gal, hey child, sweet stuff, sugar sweet baby, baby, baby, baby, mama, mama, black mama, black bitch, black pussy, piece of tail, nice piece of ass. Hey, daddy. And so forth, and so on. Dr. Stephen Hen...: "Hey daddy, hey bro. We're walking together and talk together and dance and do together. Dance and do. Hey, daddy, bro. Hey. And this. Hey Nina, Nicki Nani, Nomo, Nomo, mama, black mama. And at that particular point, you have to hear her read it, because it's part of the meaning of it. Nina, [Nikki], Nani, Nomo, Nomo. But that time she has domesticated the concept and the feeling of normal. You see, as the creative word, which is the original source of creation, which is woman, which is ancestral black woman. Dr. Stephen Hen...: A black man could not have written this. Do you understand? That's part of her poem. Well, I hope that more of that would be happening. Another thing that could happen and I hope will happen. You see, poets, just as academicians have become sort of self-conscious about certain kinds of backgrounds ... Well, if you happen to have studied English literature and knew all those forms, well, why not use it? Why not use it? You see? Why not use it? Dr. Stephen Hen...: Musicians don't have any problems with the fact that they know Scarlatti. That's just the a matter of technique. If they love it and they're powered when they change it to something else. Now, if you can imagine that it's possible to take the heroic couplet. If you have a certain distance from it, it's not contaminated. If you are not completely brought up in that tradition of a heroic couplet or whatever, or the sonnet, it's still possible to revitalize that tradition from your particular stance. And you have a kind of displacement. Dr. Stephen Hen...: Now, that has happened. And I'll tell you just a quick example of that. It's been the young British singers, musicians in the 50s, discovered blues. And first of all, they were imitating the lines directly. Then they realized they can get into the feeling of a thing. And of course, there was some of them were fantastic technicians and Americans too. But then, they started to use the blues form to express their own sense of alienation or whatever. And they did something right, because some of the black musicians said, "Well, they sure can play it. Dr. Stephen Hen...: Then they said, "We can sing it." They said, "They sure can play it." But it was useful to them. That's the point. I'm saying by reversing that, there are other things that could be possible. It's still possible to write an epic. There's still a sense of the heroic in black life. It hasn't been explored. The historical hasn't been explored fully. Now oddly enough ... Maybe it's not so odd after all. Now, some of the writers who were not in the so-called black aesthetic thing have moved into that. Dr. Stephen Hen...: Michael Harper for example, makes very subtle use of history. Robert Hayden makes very subtle use of history. Another thing of course, is the fact that we are living in 1978 in a thermonuclear world, a world in which thermonuclear energy for good or for ill. For ill, at least is possible. For good, it's possible. But I'm saying that the whole world of science fiction is another potentially useful set of materials for the black writer, particularly the poet. Dr. Stephen Hen...: There's a science fiction short story by Baraka. There's some science fiction kinds of poems by Sun Ra, and that's a direction. And of course, and Robert Hayden. One which I don't think is a very good one, An Angle of Ascent. But one use of science that I want to close this brief set of remarks on is taken from a poem of Robert Hayden's. I was talking to Robert Hayden earlier this year, and I discovered that he liked UFO business or UFOs. Said, "Okay, you're crazy. I'm crazy too." Dr. Stephen Hen...: UFO's. Fantastic possibilities there, where mythic or scientific or whatever because the thing about science fiction is that quite often it prefigures what can be discovered and sometimes what will be discovered, because it makes you think in a certain kind of way. There's not, it seems to me, a great deal of difference in creative thinking, whether it's in physics or in poetry. So, Robert Hayden told me that ... I said, "Man, I really liked that poem on stars. I really like that poem on stars." Dr. Stephen Hen...: He said, "Man, you know one thing? I just was reading and got hung up on these stars and read every damn thing I could find my hand on. He had this 40 cents thing of Coca-Cola, drinking and we were talking. So, he has this long poem and I'm going to read it all, on stars. Now, it's a black poem. It's a black poem. And it's what I would call a saturated poem. And by that, I mean that it has absorbed as much blackness as it needs. Dr. Stephen Hen...: And to know that Robert Hayden is black and is writing this kind of statement is important, because it suggests that those people who have problems with so-called sociology and politics and literature can deal with the spiritual, but the spiritual is seen through the eyes of a black man who happens to be a behind. Now, I can't interpret the symbols of the nine pointed star at the end, but there's an article in CLA journal which does. Dr. Stephen Hen...: So, it's very short. This is from Angle of Ascent. You see. That's section one. Stood there then among spirits and kindled shields, praising Orion. Then the names of stars, Betelgeuse, Aldebaran, abstracters, future yesterdays. The Starlight crosses ions of meta space to us. That's the language of science. Meta space. And things we take for granted that the scientists on the cutting edge of discovery does not take for granted, that a Keats for example, would a project in a poem, On First Looking into Chapman's Homer. Dr. Stephen Hen...: Then felt out like some lonely watch of the stars when a new planet spins into his kin. And that sense of discovery, it's like the sense of geographical exploration and discovery. And Hayden has recounted that. Because you say, "A light year. What the hell is a light year? A light year?" You can't even grasp it. 186,000 miles a second. A minute, an hour, a year. And then, you say that the nearest star to us is six or eight, I've forgotten which, six light years away. Dr. Stephen Hen...: Then you start talking about thousands of light years, hundreds of light years. 186,000 miles as your basic unit of measurement, that you say meta. Great beyond space to us. Algol, Arcturus, Almack. How shall the man keep warm? Save at spectral fires? How thrive, but the light of paradox. Altel Vega, Polaris, Maia. And I don't know what his response is to these names, but I see on one level certainly, the fact that these ... And he told me this. The names are just lovely names, but it has more to it, of course, to it than that. Dr. Stephen Hen...: Then with all of that, you see, the mythical and the physical. The mystical and the astronomical. Now, he comes to the historian, section three, Sojourner Truth. Comes walking barefoot out of slavery. Ancestors, childless mother, following the stars, her mind has started. Hallelujah. Her mind a star. Now, he's not fooling around and says, "Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight," which has its own significance. Her mind, a star. He's already set the context in here. Dr. Stephen Hen...: Then he goes on. Pulsars, just discovered 10 years or so ago. Blue receding quasars, less than 10 years ago. They're vibrant radio waves. He knows what he's talking about. You see. Cosmic Ouija. Cosmic Ouija. You're probably too young to know the Ouija board is. Cosmic Ouija. What is the mathematics of your language? Then the nine pointed star. Stabled stars, variable stars, hydrogen into helium, fusions. That's the basic operation going on in stars. Radiations, spectral fires, how he repeats that. Dr. Stephen Hen...: And the nine pointed star. Sunstar in the constellation of the nuclear will. Fixed star whose radiance filtering down to us, lights mind and spirit, signals future light. It's still a black poem. It's a universal poem. And it's reflected through the mind of a single black poet. I suspected there were ... I hope there will be more of that. Technical questions of course, still remain to be solved. And I think that the most difficult ones have to deal with the incorporation of music into poetry. Dr. Stephen Hen...: Just how far can you go? Now, the poets are starting to make certain kinds of statements, certain kinds of confessions even. And a piece which A.B. Spellman prepared for our writer's conference in May. He said that really the poets sort of envy the musicians, but I knew that all along, but it was good to hear A.B. say that. The poets envy the musicians. And the reason, of course, is obvious. Dr. Stephen Hen...: And I told you this morning about the improvisation, poetic improvisation by Dante A.B. But it wasn't good, you see. It wasn't good by A.B. and ... I mean, by Dante and Larry. But the idea was good, and it's still possible for some of that to eventuate into another kind of poetry. You see? And if people were honest, this could transform not only to poetry of black people, but the poetry of the entire country. Dr. Stephen Hen...: And I hope that you as stars, teachers will take this poetry and the context of this poetry with the same serious consideration that I think most of these writers wrote it in. At this time, if you would like to talk and take some of this weight off me, I'd be very happy. Audience: [inaudible].