African American Poetry (Part 2)

Source of book: I own this.

 

It’s time to kick Black History Month off this year with another installment from my Library of America collection of African American Poetry. This section is entitled “Lift Every Voice (1900-1918).” You can read about part one, “Bury Me in a Free Land” here.

 

There are a number of familiar names in this section: Paul Laurence Dunbar, W.E.B. Du Bois, and James Weldon Johnson should be known to everyone, and are authors I have blogged about before. While there are good poems by these authors, I chose to feature the other, less known writers in this post. 

 

The poets within each section are in alphabetical order, which makes as much sense as any other method of anthology organization. 

 

The first poem I chose to feature is by William Stanley Braithwaite, who not only wrote everything from poetry to essays to literary criticism, but was instrumental in getting Harlem Renaissance writers, particularly poets, published and exposed to a broader audience. 

 

Regular readers know I love sonnets, so it was natural that I loved this one, from the cycle, “The House of Falling Leaves.”

 

I

 

Off our New England coast the sea to-night

Is moaning the full sorrow of its heart:

There is no will to comfort it apart

Since moon and stars are hidden from its sight.

And out beyond the furthest harbor-light

There runs a tide that marks not any chart

Wherewith man knows the ending and the start

Of that long voyage in the infinite.

 

If change and fate and hapless circumstance

May baffle and perplex the moaning sea,

And day and night in alternate advance

Still hold the primal Reasoning in fee,

Cannot my Grief be strong enough to chance

My voice across the tide I cannot see? 

 

I have re-read this one a few times, and I swear it gets better every time. 

 

One of the things I appreciate about this anthology is that editor Kevin Young gives plenty of space to women. One of those is women’s rights and civil rights activist Carrie Williams Clifford. I have gone back and forth on which of two of the poems I should feature. I can’t decide, so here are both.

 

The first one a castigation of America for failing - nay, refusing - to fulfill its promises of equality, freedom, and opportunity to all its citizens. Since Trump’s election, I decided I was no longer going to soft pedal things, but call racism racism, hate hate, and evil evil. And furthermore, to all those who so loudly proclaim their Christianity, to remind them that their actions will - by their own deeply held beliefs - send them to hell. Clifford very much does so in this poem. 

 

America

 

America is not another name for opportunity

To all her sons! Nay, bid me not be dumb —

I will be heard. Christians, I come

To plead with burning eloquence of truth

A brother's cause; ay, to demand, forsooth,

The manhood rights of which he is denied;

Too long your pretense have your acts belied.

 

What has he done to merit your fierce hate?

I charge you, speak the truth; for know, his fate

Irrevocably is bound up with yours,

For good or ill, as long as time endures.

Torn from his native home by ruthless hands,

For centuries he tilled your fruitful lands,

In shameful, base, degrading slavery;

Your humble, patient, loyal vassal, he —

Piling your coffers high with magic gold,

Himself, the while, like cattle bought and sold.

 

When devastating war stalked through the land,

And dangers threatened you on every hand,

These sons whose color you cannot forgive.

Did freely shed their blood that you might live

A nation, strong and great. And will you then

Continue to debase, degrade, contemn

Your loyal children, while with smiling face

You raise disloyal ones to power and place?

 

Is race or color crime, that for this cause

You draft against the Negro unjust laws?

Is race or color sin that he should be

For these things treated so outrageously?

O, boastful, white American, beware!

It is the handiwork of God you dare

Thus to despise and He will you repay

With generous measure overflowing, yea,

For all the good which in his life you've wrought.

For helpful deed, or kindly, loving thought —

For every act of cruelty you've done,

For every groan which you have from him wrung.

For every infamy by him endured,

He will you all repay, be thou assured!

Not here alone ere time shall cease to be,

But likewise There, through all eternity.

 

I didn’t feature a Paul Laurence Dunbar poem, but there is a passage in “An Ante-Bellum Sermon” that links with Clifford’s “America.” 

 

Now don't run an' tell yo' mastahs

Dat I's preachin' discontent.

'Cause I isn't; I'se a-judgin'
 Bible people by dier ac's;
 I'se a-givin' you de Scriptuah,
 I'se a-handin' you de fac's.
 Cose ole Pher'or b'lieved in slav'ry,
 But de Lawd he let him see,
 Dat de people he put bref in,
 Evah mothah's son was free.

 

Judging Bible People by their acts. Hell yes. It’s absolutely damn time. Beyond damn time. 

 

The next one asks the question about what really matters. Clifford reminds us that for all our arrogance about what Europe and America have done, we really do not have a monopoly on culture. What we white people have had is an advantage in resources combined with a certain ruthlessness toward others.

 

Character or Color - Which?

 

What is blood, or what is birth?

What is black or white?

Or small or great, or rich or poor?

Just so the man's all right?

 

O, vain and haughty white man, why

Of ancestry prate so?

Can you in tracing your descent.

Farther than Adam go?

 

Why boast of culture ? Well you know.

Ere to your present state

Of progress and renown you'd come,

(With statesmen wise and great — )

 

The blacks had splendidly achieved

Long centuries before;

Their monuments, unrivaled still,

Adorn old Afric's shore.

 

No adventitious circumstance

Can fix a people's station.

Integrity's the thing that counts

In any man or nation.

 

Then modestly let's run our course —

All hist'ry tells the story:

No race but has its page of shame.

None lacks its page of glory.

 

So what is blood or what is birth?

What is black or white?

Or great or small, or rich or poor.

Just so the man's all right?

 

“No race but has its page of shame. / None lacks its page of glory.” That’s a fantastic line. 

 

The next poem I wanted to feature is by Alice Dunbar-Nelson. That name sound familiar? She was Paul Laurence Dunbar’s wife, before they had a bad breakup. Unfortunately, while Dubar was a great poet, he also had issues with alcohol, and was violent toward her. While not an excuse for violence and abuse, she had a series of affairs with women behind his back. Suffice it to say that the marriage was bad, and unsurprisingly broke up. 

 

Of the poems in this collection, I thought that her sonnet, “Violets” was particularly good. Whereas William Stanley Braithwaite used the Italian sonnet form, Nelson used the English (Shakespearean) form. 

 

Violets

 

I had not thought of violets late,

The wild, shy kind that spring beneath your feet

In wistful April days, when lovers mate

And wander through the fields in raptures sweet.

The thought of violets meant florists' shops,

And bows and pins, and perfumed papers fine;

And garish lights, and mincing little fops

And cabarets and soaps, and deadening wines.

So far from sweet real things my thoughts had strayed,

I had forgot wide fields; and clear brown streams;

The perfect loveliness that God has made,—

Wild violets shy and Heaven-mounting dreams.

And now—unwittingly, you've made me dream

Of violets, and my soul's forgotten gleam.

 

There are a number of poems in this collection by Angelina Weld Grimke, who has a fascinating backstory. Grimke was born to a mixed-race father and a white mother. That marriage didn’t last long, in part because her family freaked out about her marrying a black man. 

 

But before that, well, there is even more story. Her father Archibald was born into slavery, one of the openly known sons of his enslaver. During the Civil war, he and his brothers hid out, until the end of the war and freedom. They were recognized as highly intelligent be the abolitionist Pillsbury brothers, who raised money so they could attend college. He eventually became a successful lawyer. 

 

Archibald’s white uncle was also an enslaver and notorious white supremacist. However, his two daughters, Angelina and Sarah, became anti-slavery as children, rebelling against their father and eventually becoming the only significant Southern women to become feminist activists. They openly accepted and acknowledged Archibald as part of their family, a truly scandalous act at the time. 

 

Archibald never forgot that kindness, and named his daughter Angelina Weld Grimke after her great-aunt, Angelina Grimke Weld. 

 

Like her great-aunts, Grimke would become a feminist activist herself, as well as a poet and writer. Here is my favorite of her poems. 

 

Tenebris

 

There is a tree, by day,
That, at night,
 Has a shadow,
A hand huge and black,
With fingers long and black.
   All through the dark,
Against the white man’s house,
   In the little wind,
The black hand plucks and plucks
   At the bricks.
The bricks are the color of blood and very small.
   Is it a black hand,
   Or is it a shadow?

 

The title is Latin for “darkness” or “shadow.” I love the way the poem invokes the idea that since the plantation house was built on the backs of black humans, its very bricks will be picked apart by the ghost hand of those who built it. 

 

Fenton Johnson was not related to James Weldon Johnson, but was considered by the latter to be a forerunner of the Harlem Renaissance, and the finest poet of that pre-era. Many of his poems are dark, including this one. 

 

Tired

 

I am tired of work; I am tired of building up somebody else’s civilization.

Let us take a rest, M’Lissy Jane.

I will go down to the Last Chance Saloon, drink a gallon or two of gin, shoot a game or two of dice and sleep the rest of the night on one of Mike’s barrels.

You will let the old shanty go to rot, the white people’s clothes turn to dust, and the Calvary Baptist Church sink to the bottomless pit.

You will spend your days forgetting you married me and your nights hunting the warm gin Mike serves the ladies in the rear of the Last Chance Saloon.

Throw the children into the river; civilization has given us too many. It is better to die than it is to grow up and find out that you are colored.

Pluck the stars out of the heavens. The stars mark our destiny. The stars marked my destiny.

I am tired of civilization.

 

I’ll finish up with a third sonnet, another in the Italian form. Lucian B. Watkins was another luminary in the early Harlem Renaissance, and his idea of the “New Negro” became central to the intellectual and artistic movement. His poem of the same name captures the essence of the idea. 

 

The New Negro

 

He thinks in black. His God is but the same

John saw - with hair “like wool” and eyes “as fire” -

Who makes the visions for which men aspire.

His kin is Jesus and the Christ who came

Humbly to earth and wrought his hallowed aim

‘Midst human scorn. Pure is his heart’s desire;

His life’s religion lifts; his faith leads higher.

Love is his Church, and Union is its name.

 

Lo, he has learned his own immortal role

In this momentous drama of the hour;

Has read aright the heavens’ Scriptural scroll

‘Bove ancient wrong - long boasting in its tower.

Ah, he has sensed the truth. Deep in his soul

He feels the manly majesty of power. 

 

I still have six more sections in this book to read, and am looking forward to doing so. There are many less-known poets that are worth discovering and reading, and the voice of America would be incomplete without its black voices. 

 

Related: Kevin Young also edited the small volume anthology, Jazz Poems, which I read recently. It is also very good - Young has a great ear for the best poems.