Depth of Culture—Depth of Heart! (African-American Poetry)

 

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A very thoughtful person just blessed me with a volume of African-American Poetry going back 250 years. How large do you imagine such an anthology would be? A few hundred pages? No—there are 242 poets represented here. Maybe 500? No, it’s 1110 pages, including short bios of the poets, indices, etc. And then the editor had to leave out considerable material. So I’m not posting this to say run out and buy the book. Rather just savor what a depth of culture we have, what a chorus of bards have written from the heart of our African-American journey. They are our historians and our griot-figures. They are our healers …

Some speak with a solemn voice, in the cadences of an Anglican hymn. Some favor dialect. Some are unembarrassedly naughty. Jupiter Hammon, the first published African-American poet, was born in 1711; many of the poets are living today.

Some poems are like time capsules; some contemporary and cathartic. Sterling A. Brown wrote four poems about Ma Rainey’s cathartic power: “She jes’ catch hold of us, somekindaway.”

After such a lonely year, it’s good to pick up a book of African-American verse or Spirituals and reconnect with ancestors, new friends, and poets who feel like kin. I can’t help but wonder how my life would have changed had I run across a volume of this depth in middle school—how my feelings about literature would have been transformed. Patricia Smith shared poetry in a 6th grade class:

“You.
You.
You
Angry, jubilant, weeping poets—we are all
saviors, reluctant hosannas in the limelight,
but you knew that, didn’t you? So let us
bless this sixth grade class—40 nappy heads,
40 cracking voices, and all of them
raise their hands when I ask. They have all see
the Reaper, grim in his heavy robe … .”