Sarah Fabio lecture on contemporary black verse at the University of Iowa, May 7, 1970

Speaker 1: The broadcasting service of the University of Iowa in cooperation with the Department of English and the Afro-American Studies Program at the University presents a series of programs by Black specialists as material for the University's course, Afro-American Literature. The lecturer for this week is Sarah Fabio from the University of California at Berkeley speaking on Contemporary Black Verse. Sarah Fabio: Roland P. Young, in the summer of 1967, has this to say about Black poetry in the Journal of Black Poetry. "Our poetry, like our music and our unique handling of the English language reflects our heritage, our history, and our culture. Black poetry reflects the mood and the culture of Black people. It is that form of poetry which has, as its pivotal force, the physical and our cultural aspect of Black people, the poet's people. It moves with emotions of Black people. It sings our songs, chants our chants and delivers forth the message from within our souls. Our physical images are constructed and praised. Our culture is described and glorified, while on the other hand, our poets chastise, mock and expose those persons and/or things that hamper, ridicule, or block in any manner our search for identity." Sarah Fabio: And Stanley Crouch, in the Negro Digest article Towards a Black Aesthetic, July 1969, refers to the blues as the most important art form ever produced in America, ever possibly in the West because it had the big feeling, and he said, "The heaviest growls, the biggest truths always come together to make the strongest art forms, and I believe that the blues, or rhythm and blues, a popular art form amongst Black people have kept us sane as a mass, as opposed to the modern and weeping of a white folk form like country and Western music, though both musics, the folk Black and the folk white, deal with the same areas of challenge; death, natural disaster and anguish." Sarah Fabio: Today, I promised that I would largely read from the work of poets, and I think in making the selection of Black poets, I was concerned with two things. One of them that they not only be biologically Black people, but their work be about Black subjects, and secondly, that the poems that I read are concerned individuals working toward a craft of poetry, whether they are young poets or old poets, well-known poets or unknown poets. And I thought I would start with Paper Soul by Carolyn Rodgers, who is a fellow poet of Don Lee with the Obasi Writers Group in Chicago. A group of young poets, very concerned with craft, who do a lot of work with Gwendolyn Brooks, who is our Pulitzer Prize winning poet. And I thought I would end with Don Lee's poems, and in between those two, I would very eclectically select some poems. Sarah Fabio: For those of you, particularly for the Blacks, who have a problem evaluating Black poetry and want to see how you could go about making an explication of some works, I thought I would read a very short explication that I had published in Negro Digest on Paper Soul by Carolyn Rogers. Sarah Fabio: Great was my first reaction to Paper Soul. Why great, was something else. Carolyn Rodgers seems to know what she is about in each poem, and she does whatever it is that she sets out to do with the utmost precision. I think that this mastery of material is very important. Hoyt Fuller's description of this writer in the introduction is very appropriate, and his comments on her poetry intimates the integration of artist and artistry so evident in her work. She is "boldly eloquent, brandishing words like steel knuckles, sometimes cold, young and vulnerable, and open to life, but she is real." And of her work, he says, "Her poems are bridges on which the heart and will may pass from the world her disgust would level to the world her love would build. Her prose is spare and angular, geared to essence, but hardly only when she wields it, and always it is stamped with an elegance so effortless and deep that it seems inborn. It is like her own frame, slim and straight and is subtly feminine as the virgin's blush." Sarah Fabio: Now, two of her poems, Eulogy and Now Ain't that Love, are fine poems. The first is filled with pathos and rhetoric of concern, and the latter with the stutter of fluttering pulses, knocking knees, drooled words marking a bad case of puppy love. Sometimes in a poem such as soliloquy, the aim is to project a human voice and the special quality of that voice, the rhythm-forced persuasion in the diction, and in the case, in only 13 words. The title and the description of the setting, ironically, use twice as much language as does the actual capsule drama. This economy of words is a very Black thing, I think, almost as Black as the young fellow's cool stance toward an affair and the excessive feeling invoked by it, which threatens to sweat up my dew. There's another kind of irony used in You Name It that comes from the juxtaposition of two voices. One as old as time, a Biblical chant, abstract and with little meaning, the other a flippant, defiant, determined young voice. Sarah Fabio: "I will write about people who eat, as it was in the beginning. I will write about people who sleep, is now." Et cetera, et cetera. The cataloging in what I'm talking about is original, particular, right, right on, mingled with fresh-cut grass dew or chitlins smells and urine brews, gothic structures, screened cleaned windows, Mantan rooms, tuck-pointed stones. The near rhyme of dew and urine brews underscores the wide difference in sensibility between the two. Screened cleaned uses an internal near rhyme to point out a certain built-in obscurity of vision which this necessitates. Mantan rooms, probably evoked that old ghosty quality that made Mr. Mantan Moreland's celluloid eyes bug dance. Sarah Fabio: And it doesn't matter that I don't know what tuck-pointed stones look like, because the phrase is such a boldly perceptive one that the poet establishes an authority which I must accept. And may I interject here, after Carolyn read my review of her poem, she sent me a letter that explained to me what tuck-pointed stones were. And that's a process which makes the white stones by sort of sand blasting or so look whiter. The belabored ceremony in the perfectly balanced six-foot strong land of spondees and trochees is so ripe for interpretation. Gothic structures, screened cleaned windows. This kind of meticulous attention to details of craft reminds me of the genius of Gwendolyn Brooks. Sarah Fabio: And the poem Portrait of a White Nigger takes a hard look at the spineless flat subject who talks like a biscuit that will not rise, got a jelly mind and shimmy thighs, and his purpose in life has been reduced to an odyssey in order to find the magic that will presto Black off. The range of Carolyn Rodgers voice, the breadth of her diction suggest more a quality of transcendentalism rather than mere ventriloquism. For also there is that extra special something there, so she is Aretha Franklin's natural woman living and breathing the Black world, knowing and loving it, projecting its many voices, moods, and faces. Sarah Fabio: Like Don Lee whose Black Pride was reviewed in the June 1968 Negro Digest, Carolyn Rodgers is a word alchemist and a metaphysician, great. Paper Soul is only small in volume, and otherwise it is something else. Now, I feel that any Black student who is asked to evaluate Black poetry ought to be able to do that in a Black idiomatic fashion to make it real. It is ridiculous to have, in the first place, Black poetry translated through maybe white eyes, and then a Black person asked to respond, and this person have to translate her remarks in a white idiom in order to get to the meaning of the Black poem.You can understand how that would be if you were dealing with any poetry in translation, say German poetry, and you had to go in and out of a language in order to deal with that. It doesn't make any sense. It's the kind of built-in racism that institutions take for granted that cause Black students to get very upset. Sarah Fabio: Her poem, Now Ain't That Love. Who would, who could understand that when I'm near him, I'm a skinny, dumb, knock-kneed, lackey drooling on the words of my Maharaja, or whatever they call them in those jive textbooks? Me, I am hot, panting for a pat from his hand so I can wag my love in front of his face. A princess, Black, dopey with lust, waiting for the kiss of action from my prince. I know that this whole scene is not cool, but it's real. So alive, dig it? Sometimes we be so close, I can cop his pulse and think it's my heart that I hear in my ears. Uh, now ain't that love? Sarah Fabio: You Name It. I will write about things that are universal so that hundreds, even thousands of years from now, white critics and readers will say of me, "Here is a good Black writer who wrote about truth and universal topics." I will write about people who eat, as it was in the beginning. I will write about people who sleep, is now. I will write about people who screw and ever shall. I will write about babies being born world without end. I will write about Black people repossessing this earth. Amen. Sarah Fabio: Read one Gwendolyn Brooks poem. Some of these will be poems in a regular traditional form. Some of these will be poems free and innovative. Of De Witt Williams on His Way to Lincoln Cemetery, by Gwendolyn Brooks. He was born in Alabama. He was bred in Illinois. He was nothing but a plain Black boy. Swing low, swing low sweet chariot. Nothing but a plain Black boy. Drive him past the pool hall. Drive him past the show. Blind within his casket, but maybe he will know. Down through 47th Street, underneath the L and Northwest Corner, Prairie that he loves so well. Don't forget the dance halls, Warwick and Savoy, where he picked his women, where he drank his liquid joy. Born in Alabama, bred in Illinois, he was nothing but a plain Black boy. Swing low, swing low, sweet, sweet chariot. Nothing but a plain Black boy. Sarah Fabio: That was from Gwendolyn's selected poems. I'll read some poems from a very important work of Black poetry, The Poetry of The Negro 1746, 1949 by Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps, two of the great anthologizers who nourished their people's poetry through very hard times, and shouldn't be forgotten for that. And the poem that I'm reading now is by another great in Black poetry who also anthologized, notably in Negro Caravan and others. Sterling A. Brown. And this one is called Old Lem. Sarah Fabio: I talked to old Lem and old Lem said: They weigh the cotton. They store the corn. We only good enough to work the rows. They run the commissary. They keep the books. We gotta be grateful for being cheated. Whippersnapper clerks call us out of name. We got to say mister to spindly boys. They make our figures turn somersaults. We buck in the middle say, "Thankyuh, sah." They don't come by ones. They don't come by twos. But they come by tens. They got the lawyers. They got the judges. They got the lawyers. They got the jury-rolls They got the law. They don't come by ones. They got the sheriffs, and they got the deputies. They don't come by twos. They got the shotguns, and they got the rope. We get the justice in the end. And they come by tens. Sarah Fabio: Their fists stay closed. Their eyes look straight. Our hands stay open. Our eyes must fall. They don't come by ones. They got the manhood. They got the courage. They don't come by twos. We got to slink around hang-tail hounds. They burn us when we dogs. They burn us when we men. And they come by tens. I had a buddy, six foot of man, muscled up perfect, game to the heart. They don't come by ones. Outworked and outfought any man or two men. They don't come by twos. He spoke out of turn at the commissary. They gave him a day to get out the county, and he didn't take it. He said, "Come and get me." They came and got him. And they came by tens. He stayed in the county, and he lays there dead. They don't come by ones. They don't come by twos. But they come by tens. Sarah Fabio: That poem is well over 40 years old, when Black people were the only ones that people were coming after. This one about Frederick Douglass by Robert Hayden. When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful and terrible thing, needful to man as air, usable as the earth, when it belongs at last to our children, when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole, reflex action, when it is finally won, when it is more than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians, this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world where none is lonely, none hunted, alien, this man superb in love and logic, this man shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues' rhetoric, not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone, but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives fleshing his dream of the needful, beautiful thing. Sarah Fabio: When someone asked me to pick poems that would pass FCC ruling, or whatever those initials always stand for, censorship really, I think they really felt that Black poetry couldn't exist if you didn't say all of the four letter words that people want you to show off and say anyway. But we built a whole 300 year of poetry without that, and it's cool. But you can change some of those words as I have, and you don't necessarily know even when I do. It would be best if I didn't change poets' words, because I think poets put in them what they want in them. But they work just the same. Sarah Fabio: Harriet Tubman by Margaret Walker, who is a writer who received her PhD degree here at University of Iowa. Dark is the face of Harriet, darker still her fate deep in the dark of southern wilds, deep in the slavers' hate. Fiery the eye of Harriet, fiery, dark, and wild. Bitter, bleak, and hopeless is the bonded child. Stand in the fields, Harriet. Stand alone and still. Stand before the overseer mad enough to kill. This is slavery, Harriet. Bend beneath the lash. This is Maryland, Harriet. Bow to poor white trash. You're a field hand, Harriet. Work in the corn. You're a grubber with a hoe, and a slave child born. You're just 16, Harriet and never had a beau. Your mother's dead long time ago. Your daddy you don't know. This piece of iron's not hard enough to kill you with a blow. This piece of iron can't hurt you, just let you slaves all know. I'm still the overseer. Old master'll believe my tale. I know that he'll keep me from going to jail. Get up, bleeding Harriet. I didn't hit you hard. Get up, bleeding Harriet, and grease your head with lard. Get up, sullen Harriet. Get up and bind your head. Remember, this is Maryland, and I can beat you dead. Sarah Fabio: How far is the road to Canada? How far do I have to go? How far is the from Maryland and the hatred that I know? I stabbed that overseer. I took his rusty knife. I killed that overseer. I took his lowdown life. For three long years, I waited. Three years I kept my hate. Three years before I killed him. Three years I had to wait. Done shook the dust of Maryland clean off my weary feet. I'm on my way to Canada and freedom's golden street. I'm bound to get to Canada before another week. I came through swamps and mountains. I waded many creek. Now tell my brothers yonder that Harriet is free. Yes, tell my brothers yonder no more auction block for me. Come down from the mountain, Harriet. Come down to the valley at night. Come down to your weeping people and be their guiding light. Sing deep, dark river of Jordan. Don't you want to cross over today? Sing deep, wide river of Jordan. Don't you want to walk freedom's way? Sarah Fabio: I stole down in the night time. I come back in the day. I stole back to my Maryland to guide the slaves away. I met old marster yonder coming down the road, and right past me in Maryland my old marster strode. I passed beside my marster and covered up my head. My marster didn't know me. I guess he heard I'm dead. I wonder if he thought about that overseer's dead. I wonder if he figured out he ought to know this head. You better run, brave Harriet. There's ransom on your head. You better run Miss Harriet. They want you live or dead. Been down in the valleys yonder and searching round the stills. They got the posse after you a-riding through the hills. They got the bloodhounds smelling. They got their guns cocked too. You better run, bold Harriet. The white man's after you. They got 10,000 dollars put on your coal-black head. They'll give 10,000 dollars. They're mad because you fled. I wager they'll be riding a long, long time for you. Yes, Lord, they'll look a long time till Judgment Day is due. Sarah Fabio: I'm Harriet Tubman, people. I'm Harriet the slave. I'm Harriet, free woman. And I'm free within my grave. Come along children, with Harriet. Come along, children, come along. Uncle Sam is rich enough to give you all a farm. I killed the overseer. I fooled old marster's eyes. I found my way to Canada with hundreds more besides. Come along to Harpers Ferry. Come along to brave John Brown. Come along with Harriet, children. Come along 10 million strong. I met the mighty John Brown. I know Fred Douglass too, enlisted abolitionists beneath the union blue. I heard the mighty trumpet that sent the land to war. I mourned for Mr. Lincoln and saw his funeral car. Come along with Harriet, children. Come along to Canada. Come down to the river, children, and follow the northern star. I'm Harriet Tubman, people. I'm Harriet the slave. I'm Harriet, free woman, and I'm free beyond my grave. Come along to freedom, children. Come along 10 million strong. Come along with Harriet, children. Come along 10 million strong. Sarah Fabio: Margaret Walker. I think she's one of the greatest poets that we have alive. I'd like to read two things by LeRoi Jones. One from Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note, and one from Black Arts, a more recent one. For Kellie Jones, born 16 May, 1959. Lately, I've become accustomed to the way the ground opens up and envelopes me each time I go out to walk the dog. Or the broad-edged silly music the wind makes when I run for a bus. Things have come to that. And now, each night I count the stars, and each night I get the same number. And when they will not come to be counted, I count the holes they leave. Nobody sings anymore. And then last night, I tiptoed up to my daughter's room and heard her talking to someone. And when I opened the door, there was no one there, only she on her knees, peeking into her own clasped hands. Sarah Fabio: And a thing that LeRoi has on his records, Beautiful Black Women. Beautiful Black women fell. They asked. Stop them raining. They're so beautiful, we want them with us. Stop them raining. Beautiful, stop raining. They fell. We fell them and their lips stick out perpetually at our weaknesses. Raining. Stop them. Black queens. Ruby Dee weeps at the window, raining, being lost in her life, being what we all will be. Sentimental, bitter, frustrated, deprived of her fullest light. Beautiful Black women it is still raining in this terrible land. We need you. We flex our muscles, turn to stare at our tormentor. We need you raining. We need you raining Black queen. This terrible Black lady's wander. Ruby Dee weeps. The window raining. She calls and her voice is left to hurt us slowly. It hangs against the same wet glass. Her sadness and age, and the trip and the lost heath, and the gray cold buildings of our entrapment. Ladies, women, we need you. We're still trapped and weak, but we build and grow heavy with our knowledge. Women, come to us. Help us to get back what was always ours. Help us, women. Where are you, women? Where and who and where and who? And will you help us? Will you open your bodies, souls? Will you lift me up, mother? Will you let me help you, daughter, wife, lover? Will you? Sarah Fabio: Two voices by the same man. Almost 10 years in between. In a book called For Malcolm, a poem by Sonia Sanchez on Malcolm. Do not speak to me of martyrdom, of men who die to be remembered on some parish day. I don't believe in dying, though I too shall die, and violets like castanets will echo me. Yet this man, this dreamer, thick-lipped with words will never speak again. And each winter when the cold air cracks with frost, I'll breathe his breath and mourn my gun-filled nights. He was the sun that tagged the western sky and melted tiger-scholars while they searched for stripes. He said, "Forget you, white man. We have been curled too long. Nothing is sacred now. Not your white face nor any land that separates until some voices squat with spasms." Do not speak to me of living. Life is obscene with crowds of white on black. Death is my pulse. What might have been is not for him or me, but what could have been floods the womb until I drown. Sarah Fabio: And Etheridge Knight's Cell Song. Night music, slanted light, strike the cave of sleep. I alone tread the red circle and twist the space with speech. Come now, Etheridge, don't be a savior. Take your words and scrape the sky. Shake rain on the desert, sprinkle salt on the tail of a girl. Can there anything good come out of prison? Sarah Fabio: Nikki Giovanni, called My Poem. I am 25 years old. Black female poet. Wrote a poem asking, "Nigger can you kill?" If they kill me, it won't stop the revolution. I've been robbed. It looked like they knew that I was to be hit. They took my TV, my two rings, my piece of African print, and my two guns. If they take my life, it won't stop the revolution. My phone is tapped. My mail is opened. They've caused me to turn on all my old friends and all my new lovers. And if I hate all Black people and all Negroes, it won't stop the revolution. I'm afraid to tell my roommate where I'm going and scared to tell people if I'm coming. If I sit here for the rest of my life, it won't stop the revolution. If I never write another poem or short story, if I flunk out of grad school, if my car is reclaimed and my record player won't play, and if I never see a peaceful day or do a meaningful Black thing, it won't stop the revolution. The revolution is in the streets, and if I stay on the fifth floor, it will go on. If I never do anything, it will go on. Sarah Fabio: I'll read one more poet before Don's. They'll Put You Up Tight. To rest your body, to lay it down on a bed, on a couch, or on the floor, is a very, very difficult thing to do for free, even with friends, like rhyming the word America. This is by Ted Joans from his Black Pow-Wow. Sarah Fabio: A poem called Natural. Thick lips natural. Wide nose natural. Kinky hair natural. Brown eyes natural. Wide smile natural. Black skin natural. And if you're proud of what you naturally got, then your soul is beautiful, thus, naturally hot. So be natural. Stay natural. Swing natural. Think natural, and for God's sake, act natural. Sarah Fabio: Customs and Culture. Perhaps what beans and potato mean to me is what cornflakes and yogurt mean to you. Maybe the machine tells your insides something similar to what the drums inspire in me. Do you believe cold weather is invigorating as the sunshine? Is fine every day every way for me all the time? If you really think your way is right and fine, then why do you pass laws against mine? Sarah Fabio: And from Don Lee. Don Lee has said in a Negro Digest article, September, October 1966, one entitled, Black Poetry, Which Direction? Black poets, Black artists per se, are culture stabilizers. They bring back old values and introduce new ones. Black poets are continually defining and redefining present values, and will help destroy anything that is detrimental to our advancement as a people. Black poetry will give the people a future, will show visions of tomorrow. Black poetry not only gives positive direction to the community, but shows the people Black beauty and Black substance. Sarah Fabio: Don't Cry, Scream. For John Coltrane From a Black Poet in a Basement apartment crying dry tears of, "You ain't gone." Into the '60s a trane came out of the '50s with a golden boxcar riding the rails of novation, blowing a melodic screeching, screaming, blasting, driving some away. Those paper readers who thought manhood was something innate. Bring others in, the few who didn't believe that the world existed around established whiteness and Leonard Bernstein. Music that ached, murdered our minds, we reborn, born into neoteric aberration, and suddenly you envy the blind man. You know that he will hear what you'll never see. Your music is like my head, nappy, Black, a good nasty feel with tangled songs of we-ee, wee, wee! People playing the sound of me when I combed it, combed at it. I cried for Billie Holiday the blues. We ain't blue. The blues exhibited illusions of manhood destroyed by you ascensions into screaming, screaming, screaming! We ain't blue. We're Black. We ain't blue. We're Black. All the blues did was make me cry. Soul trane done gone a trip. He left man images. He was a lifestyle of man makers and annihilator of attache case carriers. Sarah Fabio: Trane done went, got his hat, and left me one. No, brother. I didn't cry. I just screamed, screamed, wee, wee, wee. Where you don't gone brother? It hurts. Grown babies dying, born. Done caught me a trane. Steel wheels broken by Popsicle sticks. I went out and tried to buy a nickel bag with my Standard Oil card. Swung on faggot who politely scratched his self in my presence. He smiled, broken teeth stained from his overused tongue. Fist faced, teeth dropped in tune with Ray Charles singing, "Yesterday, blondes had more fun than snaggletooth niggers who save pennies and pop bottles for weekends to play negro and other filthy inventions." Bebopping to James Brown, cold sweat. Those niggers didn't sweat. They perspired. And the blonde's dye came out. I ran, and she did too with his pennies, pop bottles, and his mind. Tune in next week, same time, same station for anti-self in one lesson. Sarah Fabio: To the negro causes who did Tchaikovsky and the Beatles and lived in split-level homes and had split-level minds, and babies who committed the act of love with their clothes on, who hid in the bathroom to read Jack Magazine, who didn't read the Chicago Defender because of the misspelled words, and had shelves of books by Europeans on display untouched. Who hid their Little Richard and Lightin' Slim records and asked, "John who?" Instant hate. They didn't know any better, brother. They were too busy getting into debt, expressing humanity and taking off color. Scream, wee, screech, tee, a hee, scream, ee, ah, wee, scree, wee, wee, wee. The old phase heard you and were wiped out, spaced. One clown asked me during my favorite things if I was practicing, and I fired on the mother and said, "I'm practicing." Nah, brother. I didn't cry. I got high off my thoughts. They coming back, back to destroy me. And that blind man, I don't envy him anymore. I can see his hear and hear his heard through my pores. I can see my me. It was truth you gave, like a daily it had to come. Can you scream, brother? Can you scream, brother? I hear you. I hear you. And the gods will too. Sarah Fabio: And I'll read two more of his. But He was Cool, and A Poem to Compliment Other Poems. But he was cool, or He Even Stopped the Green Lights. Super cool, ultra black, a tan purple, had a beautiful shade. He had a double-natural that would put the sisters to shame. His dashikis were tailor made, and his beads were imported sea shells from some Black country I never heard of. He was triple hip. His tikis were hand carved out of ivory and came express from the motherland. He would greet you in Swahili and say goodbye in Yoruba. Woo, Jim! He be so cool, and ill-telligent. Cool cool is so cool, he was un-cooled by other niggers' cool. Cool cool ultra cool was bop-cool, ice box cool. So cool, cool cool, his wine didn't have to be cooled. Him was air conditioned cool. Cool cool, real cool made me cool. Now ain't that cool? Cool cool, so cool him nicknamed refrigerator. Cool cool, so cool he didn't know after Detroit, Newark, Chicago, we had to hip cool cool, super cool, real cool, that to be Black is to be very hot. Sarah Fabio: And A Poem to Compliment Other Poems. Change. Life, if you were a match, I would light you into something beautiful. Change. Change for the better into a real real together thing. Change from a make-believe nothing on cornmeal and water. Change. Change from the last drop to the first. Maxwell House did. Change. Change was a programmer for IBM, though him was a brown computer. Change. Colored is something written on southern outhouses. Change. Greyhound did. I mean, they got restrooms on buses. Change. Change. Change, nigger. Saw a nigger hippy. Him wanted to be different. Change. Saw a nigger liberal. Him wanted to be different. Change. Saw a nigger conservative. Him wanted to be different. Change. Niggers, don't you know that niggers are different? Change. A double change. Nigger wanted a double zero in front of his name, a license to kill. Niggers are licensed to be killed. Sarah Fabio: Change. A negro is something pigs eat. Change. I say change into a real Black righteous aim, like I don't play saxophone, but that doesn't mean I don't dig trane. Change. Change. Hear you coming but your steps are too loud. Change. Even a lamp post changes, nigger. Change. Stop being an instant yes machine. Change. Niggers don't change. They just grow, and that's a change. Bigger and better niggers. Change into a necessary Black self. Change like a gas meter getting higher. Change like a blues song talking about a righteous tomorrow. Change like a tax bill getting higher. Change like a good sister getting better. Change like knowing wood will burn. Change. Know the real enemy. Change, change, nigger. Standing on the corner, thought him was cool. Him still standing there. It's winter time. Him cool. Change. Know the real enemy. Change. Him wanted to be a TV star. Him is 10 o'clock news. Wanted, wanted. Nigger stole some lemon and lime Popsicles and thought them were diamonds. Sarah Fabio: Change, nigger, change. Know the real enemy. Change. Is you is or is you ain't? Change now, now. Change for better change. Read a change. Live a change. Read a Black poem. Change. Be the real people. Change. Black poems will change. Know the real enemy. Change. Know the real enemy. Change your enemy. Change. Know the real change. Know the real enemy. Change, change. Know the real enemy. The real enemy. The real real enemy. Change your the enemies. Change your, change your, change your enemy. Change your enemy. Know the real enemy, the world's enemy. Know them, know them, know them. Know the real enemy. Change your enemy. Change your, change, change, change your enemy. Change, change, change, change your, change, change, change your mind, nigger. Sarah Fabio: Black people from all walks of life are dealing with poetry, and this is a football player, professional football player, Bernie Casey. And he's also an artist and now a poet. Here's one called Not Me. I just can't hate me anymore. I just don't believe the things you say. At last, I know you for the liar you are, and for all the time I spent letting you make me hate myself, I shall spent twice the time hating you, cause man, you got it coming. Sarah Fabio: Prison. Oh, God. Am I never to find myself? How many days, months, years am I going to go on looking and in vain? For this prison, which I am locked, is of my own making. If I set myself free, what will I do then? Sarah Fabio: Why don't I entertain some questions, or something from the floor at this point? Do you want to ask any questions about specific poems that I might have read or some of the authors? Yes. Speaker 3: That work of Don Lee's that you read from, what was the title of that? Sarah Fabio: The work, or the books? The book is Don't Cry, Scream. Speaker 3: Don't Cry, Scream. Sarah Fabio: Put out by Broadside Press. And as I said, Dudley Randall whom I quoted yesterday, publishes a whole series of Black poets out of Detroit, Michigan with his broadside press. And these are Black poets who could not have gotten published in the white publishing houses publishing Black materials as they were. In other words, in order to publish you would have to go into what would be a white aesthetic, rather than a Black aesthetic, and Black poets find this very hard nowadays to do, so that they figure it's just a matter of money. And Black people haven't had money all along, so they won't give up their integrity for pennies. So you have people like Dudley Randall filling in the slack. He's a librarian and also a poet. So of course his poetry suffers while he makes room for others. Sarah Fabio: One thing about the community of Black poets, always it's been a thing where you had to have a brotherhood. Langston Hughes couldn't just do his poems. He had to run around and apologize to someone, which brings me, that's someone that I certainly meant to read at least one of Langston's poems, if I could find that. But in all cases, these people could have done much more if they had just simply wanted to have gone out for self. But that wasn't what they were about at all. They almost without exception helped other Blacks, and people like Braithwaite helped a whole American poetry scene, much to their own discredit sometimes. Sarah Fabio: Langston Hughes, his Merry-Go-Round, Colored Child at Carnival. Where is the Jim Crow section on this merry-go-round, mister? Cause I want to ride. Down South where I come from white and colored can't sit side by side. Down South on the train, there's a Jim Crow car. On the bus, we're put in the back. But there ain't no back for a merry-go-round. Where's the horse for a kid that's black? Sarah Fabio: And his The Negro Speaks of Rivers that he did as a high school student. I've known rivers. I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers. I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset. I've known rivers, ancient, dusky rivers. My soul has grown deep like the rivers. Sarah Fabio: Of course, it was a shame that that man died without having any, really, honors. He did about 40 books in all. And it's like Duke Ellington and trying to get a Pulitzer for music. Duke has written maybe 200 upward composition. Very fine music everybody knows. But even when they get ready to crown a king of jazz, it'll be Paul Whiteman. Who's ever heard of him? Thank you. Speaker 1: That was Sarah Fabio from the University of California at Berkeley with today's lecture. This series of programs is presented by the broadcasting service of the University of Iowa in cooperation with the Department of English and the Afro-American studies program at the university, as material for the course Afro-American literature. Today's program originated as a live broadcast at 1:30 PM, May 7th, 1970 from Shambaugh Auditorium and was recorded for future broadcasts. This is the broadcasting service of the University of Iowa.